Veiling in Contemporary Art

and Politics in France

 Law banning signs and dress that
ostensibly denote the religious belonging
of students in public schools
Proposed by Chirac, 17 Dec 2003
Passed 15 March 2004
Rhetoric of universality, but target = hijab?
 Law and Lacit
Stasi Report (2003) evaluate state of
lacit
Hijabs worn in school perceived as clear
markers of communitarianism threat to
lacit
Origins of lacit
 1989 expulsions
Constitutional examination by French high court
headscarf not in principle incompatible with
lacit exclusion only justified if ostentatious
or political in intent
Left to individual school teachers to determine
nature of veiling
High court upheld expulsions if caused
disruption
 Disproportionate media attention:
Avant-garde of an Islamist insurgency that
threatens to undermine the Republic?
Victims of violence and subjugation
(fundamentalism of fathers and brothers)?
Social exclusion and intgrisme
Depictions of ghetto Islamism bolstered by
linking to 1995 bombings, arrest of Zacarias
Moussaoui, detention of Fr citizens of N. Afr
descent in Guantanamo Bay
Support for / Opposition to the Law
FOR: leftist intellectuals law as prop for secular French
Republic
Law-and-order right (inc. Sarkozy) law as imp weapon
in war on terror
Feminists NPNS
Berber activists (aids their struggle against Islamist
groups; receive state support)
FN
AGAINST: major French teachers unions fear it will
stigmatize French Muslims
International protests law racist and hypocritical
TORN: anti-racist orgs; Muslim orgs
 Frances War on Terror
Since 1995 bombings gendarmes and riot police,
random identity checks on N. African youth > arrests and
deportations
Tightening of security measures Jospin > Sarkozy
militarization of Islamic suburbs
Efforts to destroy clandestine mosques and create a
secular brand of French Islam (since 1989 creation of
Working Council on Islam in France, by Interior Minister
Pierre Joxe) work with Grande Mosque de Paris
(resisted by other groups)
Post-Sept 11: process revitalised Sarkozy: French
Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) opposed Islam
des caves implicitly linked unofficial Islamic
organisation in cits to global Islamist terrorism. (Islam
en France vs. Islam de France)
La Grande mosque de Paris
 Tricolour Veils
French Muslim
demonstrators (Jan
2004) oppose under
French states own
rubric of human rights
and citizenship
Headscarf as
universal not
religious right.
Individual freedom to
choose (opp NPNS)
VIP: Voile Islamique Parisien
Shadifarin Ghadirian
(b. Tehran, 1974)
Qajar Series