A comment on MPACUK's article "France's 'War on Veil'"

On 18 December 2009, MPACUK published an article entitled "France's 'War on Veil'". Below is the letter to Editor that I wrote in response to that article.

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to the article published on your website on 18 December 2009 titled “France’s ‘War on the Veil’”. In particular, I would like to address a couple of issues raised in the article in the hope of articulating the background to political passivity of French Muslims.

Your article states, quite correctly in my view, that “France's Muslim community needs to start actively engaging in political and media activism and to stop waiting for somebody to do it for them”. A call for Muslim political activism within the societies we are living in is not only pertinent and admirable but also addresses the widespread tendency of most Western Muslims to sit on their hands in the hope that someone else will come along and solve their problems for them. This, as stated in your articles on numerous occasions, is the fundamental problem facing Muslims today and is one of the main causes of Islamophobia and disenchantment of Muslim youth.

What I would like to note, however, is that the call to the French Muslims to act on the issue of the full-body veil, or even niqab (which the proposed ban may extend to), is a false hope. My position on this is underlined by simple statistics and the experiences of my family some of whom reside and work in France.

Before I enumerate the above point, allow me to state that despite the statements of various pundits or the French politicians, such as Jean-François Copé’s statement quoted on your website, the potential outcome of political activism in France does historically lie in favour of the Muslims. To site just a few examples, I would like to note that as far back as November 1989 the French Council of State, which is effectively the highest administrative court in France, handed down a ruling that affirmed that “the wearing of the Islamic headscarf, as a symbol of religious expression, in public schools was not incompatible with the French school system and the system of laïcité [i.e. French model of secularism]”. Furthermore, before the passing of the 2004 Hijab Law, in 50% of cases, where expulsion of girls from French schools on the basis of wearing the hijab was challenged, such expulsions were overturned. The only reason the 2004 Hijab Law remains in force is that to date no member of the French Muslim community has attempted to challenge the Ban all the way to the European Court of Justice[1]. There is simply no will to do so. What is clear from the above is that were the Muslims to seek to assert their rights, there is a very good chance they would be able to achieve their aims.

I now return to my initial point - that calling on French Muslims to politically mobilise in response to the proposed “burqa” ban is a false hope. The reason lies in the religious demographics of French Muslims. A number of surveys, while not necessarily the gospels of truth, do provide an indication. Specifically, while 70% of French Muslims tend to fast during Ramadan, general religious observance (in this particular case illustrated by the percentage of people praying five times a day) varies from 6% to 36% between the French Muslim ethnic groups – Algerian men who pray five times a day come at the lowest end of 6%, while the Turkish Kurds come at the highest of 36%. At the time of the 2004 Hijab Ban, 40% of Muslim women in France were “for” the Ban. It has been estimated that the “burqa” ban, should it come into force, would only affect a few hundred women.

While statistics, in and off themselves, are an indicator of the reason for lack of motivation to mobilise behind any campaign to fight the “burqa” ban, anecdotal evidence from my family members is more revealing about the attitudes of French Muslims. My cousins-in-law are unable to get a job if they wear hijab – therefore they choose to not wear hijab, rather than challenge the employer in court or look for another job. My brothers-in-law are unable to have a beard at work or pray at work, and therefore choose to postpone their prayers and forgo the wearing of the beard. When I asked both groups as to why they did not seek to enforce their rights in a legal way, two answers were given: “this is not England” and “I need a job”. The point that is self-evident here is that French Muslims, unlike the British Muslims, fail to appreciate the concept of citizenship – in particular, having rights and asserting them through the legal system. As a counter examples, in the UK, through political activism and a realisation of the concept of being a citizen, British Muslims have achieved the ability to work while wearing hijab, to have prayer facilities at places of work and to have flexible working practices in relation to Ramadan.

I hope the reasons for my statement that a hope to see political active French Muslims is a false hope, at least for now, are evident. What is more important, however, is that it is also clear from the above that, for those of us living in the UK, political activism and engagement with the society has brought real tangible benefits, not achieved on basis of compromising our faith but because of our desire to live according to it. It follows that we, as a community, should seek to be more politically active rather than shying away from it.


Yours faithfully,

Abdulhafid ar-Russi
www.abdulhafeed.com

1 - This statement is based on the personal research. Should you have information to the contrary please let me have the references – no one is beyond fault.

A response to "Muslim Brotherhood vs Saudi Salafis – The Political War for the Muslim Mind"

On 6 December 2009, MPACUK published an article entitled "Muslim Brotherhood vs Saudi Salafis – The Political War for the Muslim Mind". Below is the letter to the Editor I sent in response to that article.

In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and the Source of All Mercy

Assalamu aleykum,

Dear Editor,

I am writing further to your article posted on 6 December 2009 titled “Muslim Brotherhood vs Saudi Salafis – The Political War for the Muslim Mind”.

In my opinion your article somewhat misrepresents the situation vis-a-vis the so-called “salafi” movement and the Middle Eastern governments, which are, as you correctly point out, dictatorial. You suggest that this movement is in fact favoured by such governments at the expense of movements such as Muslim Brotherhood due to alleged advocacy of political passivity. I would venture to say that your assertion is not entirely correct.

There two issues that need to be understood in this context.

First of all, most Middle Eastern governments in countries such as Morocco and Egypt, countries I have personal experience of, would ideally prefer to be rid of both types of movements – the conservative “salafi” movements and the “political Islam” movements, such as Muslim Brotherhood – since both movements seek to challenge the status quo on which the power of those governments rests. Both in Egypt and Morocco, members of both types of movements face arbitrary arrests, restriction on activities and other forms of political persecution. The recent moves against hijab in Egypt as well as closing of “salafi” Quranic schools in Morocco are among the examples of such persecution aimed at the “salafi” groups, while regular arrests of Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt and similar group in Morocco continue to illustrate those governments’ hostility towards “political” Islamic movements.

Secondly, to speak of the “salafi” movement as a single movement is factually incorrect. Various stripes of “salafis” exist today and these range from jihadis and takfiris to those who advocate abstinence from politics to advocates of Islamic State based on the 7th century model.

The main point of your article, I believe, addresses a far more important, difficult and deep rooted problem of the ummah – the question of political participation, or rather the clearly apparent lack thereof. The causes of this problem are manifold but I would like to mention just two aspects of it, for the sake of brevity.

First and foremost, the cause of an apolitical attitude among many Muslims lies in the fact that the scholars of today have not managed to work out a unified fiqh understanding of the place of modern politics in Islam. No unified modern political theory exists in Islamic law today – save for a couple of general works on the subject, there is no authoritative and agreed upon fiqhi position regarding political participation of Muslims in modern Muslim and non-Muslim societies. As an example of this, you will quite easily find scholars advocating political “abstinence” and active political participation in one Google search. This lack of an authoritative Islamic position leads many Muslims to simply forgo the question altogether. In the modern times there has been no successful attempt to build a political system entirely and exclusively based on Islamic principles and therefore there has been no impetus to develop the fiqh of political participation.

The second related aspect is that there appears to be a lot of contradictory statements coming out from scholarly circles. Respected scholars, often seen as representatives of the “Muslim establishment”, have made statements encouraging political participation while visiting non-Muslim countries with Muslim minorities, while at the same time their colleagues have come out strongly against political activism in their own countries. One of the examples of this would be Sheikh Sudais’ advocacy for political participation on his recent visit to London, while the Saudi religious establishment came out strongly against demonstrations in support of Palestine during the Gaza Massacre, declaring the whole concept of demonstration to be unIslamic. This, almost two-faced, nature of the debate, sows a lot of confusion in the minds of ordinary Muslims who tend to afford a lot of respect to the opinions of such scholars.

Islam cannot be divorced from its scholars and therefore until the above issues are sorted out, it is natural that active/not active dichotomy will remain.

Wasalam,

Yours faithfully,

Abdulhafid ar-Russi
www.abdulhafeed.com