Burqa ban unveils contradictions

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-14 09:50

PARIS: Fashion week in Paris, and after a display of pink and purple mini-dresses in an elegant apartment near the presidential palace, an assistant wheels out a rack bearing two very different creations: black abayas.

As France considers banning full facial veils, the fact that it is a major exporter of couture abayas may seem odd. [Agencies]

The gowns, usually worn with a veil, have been made for the Saudi market by Paris-based couturier Adam Jones.

As France considers banning full facial veils such as the niqab and the burqa, which President Nicolas Sarkozy has said is not welcome here, the fact that it is a major exporter of couture abayas may seem odd.

But that is just one of the many contradictions exposed by the latest clash between secularism and religion in the home of Europe's largest Muslim community.

"If someone tells me, 'design an abaya,' why not, I'm proud of that. It's just a garment," haute couture designer Stephane Rolland, who has made many abayas for Middle Eastern clients, told Reuters backstage after his fashion show in Paris.

When asked about the broader debate whether veils are a sign of subservience and should be outlawed, his confidence wavered.

"I don't want to speak about religion, that's a different subject. But I don't want to cover the woman - alas, I don't want to think about that," he said.

While French designers are wooing Saudi clients in airy showrooms, across town in the working-class neighborhood of Belleville the picture is very different.

"If you wear the veil, you get insulted and attacked all the time, you get called a terrorist," said Ikram Es-Salhi, a 20-year-old student standing outside the Zeina Pret-A-Porter shop that sells mass-produced headscarves, tunics and abayas.

Many feminists - not only in the West - see the veil as an expression of a spreading ideology that wants to hide and silence women, undoing years of struggle for women's rights.

But as educated French women from immigrant families, Es-Salhi and friend Aichatou Drame reject the notion that this debate is about women's rights.

Even those who find the garment odious do not necessarily believe a ban is the best way to get rid of it.

In Afghanistan, where the Taliban once ordered women to cover up, Suraya Pakzad, executive director of the Voice of Women organization, says she agrees with Sarkozy's view that the burqa is a bad thing, but disagrees with his conclusion.

"I am against the burqa being imposed by force. But what Mr Sarkozy is saying is another type of enforcement on women. No one should be able to compel someone to dress in a certain way," she told Reuters.

Reuters