Ireland should avoid the headscarf debate. The best way for society to react to religious bigotry is with indifference: the alternative is the sort of destructive scenarios played out in other countries, writes Jakob de Roover
THE HEADSCARF keeps returning to the centre stage of public debate in Europe. Today Ireland seems ready to join France, Germany, Belgium and Turkey in the debate about banning the headscarf. As a fellow European, I would like to share three reasons why it is better to refrain from doing so.
First, there are few rational grounds for banning the headscarf as a "religious symbol". To whom is the headscarf a religious symbol? Not to Grace Kelly when she popularised the fashion accessory. Something is a religious symbol only to followers of the religion that identifies it as such.
It is a specific interpretation of Islam that transforms the headscarf into a religious symbol. To those outside this religion, it is simply a piece of clothing.
To some this piece of clothing symbolises the oppression of women or Islamic fanaticism. But what is a symbol to one is not to the other. Many view the headscarf as a piece of clothing, no more, no less. How could a neutral state then accept that the headscarf is a religious symbol, to be banned from public institutions, if its symbolism depends on individual opinions?
One could argue that the headscarf is a religious symbol to the Muslim women who wear it. This works if one is consistent: one should view all symbols of all religions as religious symbols and ban these from public institutions.
The Irish can learn from the French here. In 2004, the French minister of education demanded clear criteria to determine under what conditions a headscarf or a beard becomes a religious symbol. Indeed, when is a beard a religious symbol? When Muslims wear it?
The state might prohibit its Muslim employees from growing a beard, but this would amount to religious discrimination and a violation of equal rights.
One could perhaps suggest that the beard should be barred in cases where its wearer views it as religious symbol. But how can the state determine a man's motive to grow a beard? How can it distinguish between a beard that grows for aesthetic reasons and one that is religiously inspired?
The secular state could prevent all employees from growing beards, but this policy goes against democratic freedom.
The only way out is to decide that beards of a particular shape and length count as religious symbols. No bureaucrat may have such a beard. Then the state faces an embarrassing difficulty: it has to prove that a beard suddenly becomes a religious symbol on the day that the collection of hairs reaches a particular length.
This reveals the absurdity of the debate: it is impossible for a secular state to determine from a neutral perspective when something is a religious symbol. Here the headscarf is no different from the beard.
The second reason why the Irish should not join the debate is the weakness of the arguments to ban the headscarf. What harm is caused by allowing this piece of clothing among state personnel or students?
Religion should not interfere in the public sphere, some argue, but this principle was created to prevent religion playing a decisive role in political decisions and the rule of law. In itself, the headscarf cannot possibly play this type of role. Why ban it nevertheless?
European citizens know that headscarves represent conservative Islam, some say, and this religion causes problems in one's functioning as a bureaucrat, because the accompanying views on homosexuality, toleration and gender equality are incompatible with modern democracy. This argument reduces the headscarf to the underlying beliefs.
But how does wearing a headscarf prove that a woman holds certain opinions? Many Muslim women admit that they wear it only because it became a marker of identity in European societies. Others do so because their husband prefers things that way. The headscarf is worn for all kinds of reasons. Only sometimes is it inspired by the injunctions of conservative Islam.
Besides, how could one use personal opinions as a criterion to assess state personnel? Without doubt there are Irish bureaucrats with opinions incompatible with modern democracy. One could argue that in the case of the headscarf it concerns public expression of one's personal preferences. This is unacceptable for state personnel and students. In that case, how does one cope with gay men who wear rainbow badges, Jewish women having on wigs?
The majority of the Irish recognise the headscarf as the expression of a problematic form of religion, some may emphasise, and this justifies banning it. Here we end up in a dangerous alley: tyranny of the majority. The majority with its own views is now free to determine which things count as public expressions of unacceptable religious views and ways of life.
The third reason to avoid the headscarf debate is pragmatic. Since there are no neutral rational grounds to ban the headscarf, such policies will inevitably appear as religious discrimination to the targeted groups. In France and Belgium, we have seen that the headscarf debate has led to more uniformity and hostility towards the state among Muslim communities. It is mainly in response to the secularist argument that the headscarf became a strong marker of Islamic identity in European societies.
If Irish society has its own round of headscarf debate, it threatens to end up in the same cycle: rabid secularism and Islamic fanaticism will feed on each other. The most effective public stance towards religious bigotry - as long as it does not turn violent - is indifference.
In the case of the headscarf, this means that we should approach it as a piece of clothing, rather than a "religious symbol". Then the entire dispute is deflated to the scale it deserves, so that public debate in Ireland can focus on the issues that truly pose threats to our democracies.
Jakob de Roover is a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation (FWO) at the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Ghent University, Belgium. He specialises in western cultural history, problems of intellectual history, the emergence of liberal toleration and secularism, and dominance of liberal toleration in Europe and India. Further information from www.cultuurwetenschap.be