Weekly Worker 511 Thursday January 15 2004

Two sides of same repression

In response to Peter Manson’s article I would like to add a few comments (‘Jacques Chirac’s Lutte Ouvrière policemen’ Weekly Worker January 8).

I believe that no one calling themselves left can support the ban on islamic or other religious manifestations for the following reasons:

1. We on the left must support political freedoms without any ifs and buts. Freedom is indivisible, even where the act may be contrary to one’s own beliefs. Freedom can only be curtailed where it interferes with the rights and freedoms of others. Clearly the hijab - or cross or skullcap - does not come under this category.

2. While undoubtedly the hijab is often enforced on the girls, banning it in state schools will only help drive the coercers into segregating the girls into private religious schools, which will strengthen the hand of the fundamentalists: that is, these young women will be removed from an environment in which they could become empowered to resist religious coercion.

3. The relinquishing of outdated and inherently oppressive customs is only possible through a conscious process of rejection, which can only come out of an open confrontation. It can not be achieved through some ‘enlightened despotism’, which is precisely what has been enacted in France.

4. The law passed in France is fundamentally analogous to laws passed by repressive ‘islamist’ regimes in Saudi Arabia and Iran which ban the absence of the hijab. Both belong to a totalitarian mentality, where the state knows what is best for the individual - and enforces it with a whip. No wonder the reactionary clerics in Al Azhar university have welcomed the move. It vindicates their own policy of enforcing the hijab. The enforced wearing of the hijab and the enforced ‘de-hijabing’ are two sides of the same reactionary and undemocratic coin.

5. The left fighting for a secular society must fight for the total right of individuals to dress as and how they like. This is a fundamental human right where the boundary of the individual and the state is sharply demarcated.

6. The left must also fight for the right of the individuals to hold, or not to hold, whatever religious beliefs they have, while at the same time relentlessly fighting against all forms of superstition - of which religion is in the forefront.

This is a battle of ideas which is muddied by muddled thinking in response to ‘state knows best’ coercive legislation, one example of which we are seeing in France. We need to resist the totalitarian right by confronting the totalitarian left - even those with good intentions.

Mehdi Kia
co-editor Iran Bulletin-Middle East Forum

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