The constructive feminism of Manal Al Sharif and the destructive feminism of Femen topless activists

The story of Manal Al Sharif, a 32 years old Saudi woman  jailed 10 days for defying the driving ban in her country, is a perfect illustration of the extreme repression endured by Saudi women. Her act – being filmed while driving and uploading the video to promote the Women2Drive campaign – was courageous and thus inspired other women in the Kingdom to follow her example. She expressed in the video the wish that she would be only the beginning of the revolt of women like “the first drop is the beginning of the rain”.

She enhanced a movement that had repercussion far beyond Saudi Arabia: many feminist associations, many NGOs, many papers talked about the event and certainly contributed in the global awareness on the terrific situation of women rights in the Gulf. Meanwhile, Femen, a feminist association in Ukraine organized a solidarity protest protest in Kiev around the Saudi Embassy where several of the protestors showed up topless.

So what is the outcome of the Manal Al-Sharif case?

1. Manal Al Sharif encouraged women (and men!) in her country to stand for their rights. Several dozen of people follow now her example to break the unfair rules. She showed that Saudi  women are courageous enough to take themselves the initiative. What is interesting is that she cares more aboout driving than about, for example, wearing or not the veil: she wants to achieve men/women equality through equal rights to act (drive, express, vote, work, etc), not just through her appearance. Thus her contribution to women cause is positive.
2. Femen activists  exhibited their own bodies and contributed in nothing neither for Manal Al Sharif, neither for Saudi women, neither for Ukranian women. They finished doing exactly what sexists do: use women’s body as an object. What message did Femen send to the world? “We, women, we can’t do anything, we can’t draw attention unless we exhibit our breasts”. Thus, their contribution to women cause is negative.

The feminism of Manal Al Sharif is constructive because it breaks the prejudice about “women consisting only in an empty body”, while the feminism of topless Femen activists is destructive because it does nothing else than enforcing this prejudice. Manal Al-Sharif uses provocation as a tool to change the law, Femen use provocation for the sole purpose of having the feeling to exist. The sad thing is that certainly Femen wants to act to improve women’s rights: but just type “Femen” in a search engine, all you will find is hundreds of entries about the “topless protests”.

At the end of the day, Femen may be very active, the world associates Femen to nothing else than to naked women, while Manal Al Sharif  became a model for women not because of how she looks, but because of how she acts. And that makes a huge difference.

Mohammed Bouazizi would have turned 27 today

He was 26, graduated in computer science. He couldn’t find a job, so he was fruits and vegetables seller in the streets of Sidi Bouzid, a provincial little town of Tunisia. Mohammad Bouazizi didn’t immolate to protest against poverty or unemployment, but against that system that was denying him to exist by denying him the right to survive with dignity by his own very limited means. His last known words were directed to his mother, through facebook:

I am leaving mom, forgive me, Reproach is not helpful, i am lost in my way it is not in my hand, forgive me if disobeyed words of my mom, blame our times and do not blame me, i am going and not coming back, look i did not cry and tears did not fall from my eyes, Reproach is not helpful in time of Treachery in the land of people, i am sick and not in my mind all what happened, i am leaving and i am asking who leads the travel to forgive.

We have a word in arabic, “hogra“, which sense is difficult to translate. It means, roughly, this denial of the dignity of others, this denial of their right to live and to resist to oppression, this denial of their humanity by sweeping away their last chance to have the slightest control over their destiny. It is this generalized feeling of hogra of the authorities towards the people that united the citizens of Sdi Bouzid; where you reach that point where you understand that you have nothing to lose since everything including dignity has been taken from you, you become by befinition subversive by the very fact that you still try to exist. We know the chain reaction: from Mohammed Bouazizi to Sidi Bouzid, to the whole Tunisia, to Egypt and to other arab countries including Libya, Yemen, Bahrein, Syria.

It is relevant that what united people was not a human rights activist tortured by the regime, the massive and usual frauds of the “elections” or some Intelligence Agency treachery, but the suicide of the street vendor caused by the hogra. The popular icons have generally this ability to embody the whole contestation in one attitude. So was Bouazizi, so was also Rosa Parks, so were Tien An Men students. They sound like an allegory of the whole people struggle for justice and freedom and that is why they achieve to unite them to face the same enemy. The deep wish and dream of tyrannic regimes is to be able to create this unity of people for their own purposes, to direct it towards something external: some foreign menace, one specific minority (the Jews, the Gipsies, the migrants, etc), one specific ideology (communism, etc). But History shows that whatever, propaganda, censorship, mind formatting, there is always a way mind uses to access to freedom, and the free mind leads into resistance against oppression, sooner or later. In the end, the only viable existence for a system is to be fair.

Maybe the day where Mohammed Bouazizi would have turned 27 is a day each of us should use on thinking about what oppresses them, what treats them with hogra. And resist. Let it be with thoughts, words or acts, resistance is what is most widely spread all over the world, for it defines, after all, what is to be human: to be those who where given free will.

Muslims in Europe: more than 4 decades of democratic experience

Europe has always seen itself as the continent of origin of democracy. Because of the historical context in France at the time of the Revolution, democracy in Europe is deeply secular and rejects any intersection of religion and politics. So when Muslims in Europe bagan to participate on the political scene, there is only one concern that was expressed everywhere by European non-muslims: is democracy and Islam two compatible set of values? Can it be that one person claims at the same time being muslim (not only in the very private sphere but also publically) and democratic? Is the acceptance of Islam in the public sphere a danger for democracy?

The current events in the Arab World is a very clear proof that Islam and democracy are compatible. But there is also another proof: in analyzing the History of the last half century of Muslim migration waves in Europe, it is extremely clear that Muslims in Europe have always been dealing with the rest of the society through democratic means.

How have been Muslims in Europe acting democratic during the last half century?

During the second half of the twentieth century, Europe faced a major social change when, after decolonization, migrants arrived from Africa and Asia in waves. To each european country its specific history, hence its specific migrations. If we try to stay limited to muslim migrants (for the purpose of this article): Indian-Pakistanese in UK, Maghrebi-West and Central African in France, Moroccan in Spain, Tunisian in Italy, Turkish in Germany, etc. We can also add Bosniac and Albanese/Kosova migrants at the end of the twentieth century; for example Switzerland alone hosts third of the entire Kosova diaspora. Of course those are only basic trends and do not account of the full migration profiles. Each european country had its own policy in dealing with migration that evolved through decades, for better or worse. One has to distinguish here between two “extreme” cases:

• the British case : the State interfers as less as possible in internal affairs of the community, providing them even the option to solve certain type of conflicts in front of a Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT)
• the French case : the State wishes to merge as much as possible all communities into one unique entity, the Republic, bound by common values, summerized as follows: “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité“

Between these two extreme cases a significant number of variations are found. Anyway. What is interesting is that these migrants, that started more or less arriving in Europe in the 60′s, didn’t provide to the economy only labour vs. money: they established in Europe, got married (not necessarely with somebody from the same cultural background), raised children. If not the parents, the children, at least, acquired the citizenship of the “host” country, what enabled them, when reaching 18+, to vote and be actively part of the civil life. Having been in european schools, being introduced to european economy as workers and speaking in general the language of the host country (english, french, german, etc) much better than the language of the country of origin, it seemed to them very natural that they will build their life and career in Europe as fully Europeans.

What is interesting here is that muslim migrants children born in Europe remained quite attached to their roots and origins, although being fully conscious of being european. Many of them also kept a tight bound with Islam. Unlike the parents who felt they were whatsoever “from abroad”, their sons and daughters called for their rights to be guaranted. As the various constitutions were giving the same rights to all citizens, regardless of their religion, they asked for equality and for being given the opportunity to evolve through the civil life in a way that wouldn’t hurt their convictions. This covers topics as different as the end of discrimination in the labour market, authaurizations for building enough mosques for welcoming all the faithfuls, the availability at school restaurants of hallah meat for the children (basic “day-to-day life” rights) but also political rights through representation in classical political parties, visibility in the medias or recognition of colonial crimes (more or less: the right to be recognized as part of the identity of the country). On the other hand, the civil society/established powers asked to this European-Muslim generation to insert themselves as much as possible into the existing structures and follow as much as possible the existing laws, like for example accepting that the secularity of laws requires from them concessions on the dress code when working in public sector or sticking to the idea of the prevalence of the national laws on the Sharia. These two flows of demands meet in a point where they balance. The exact location of this balance point depends first on the integration policy the state applies (like the british case and french case seen above), but also of the socio-economical profile of the communities (number, cultral background, average education level, distribution over cities, etc). Generally the European-Muslims are represented by two main trends: those who believe only in assimilating totally in the “host” society by erasing all what makes them different and those who, although they want to be fully recognized as Europeans, do not want to be forced to let aside their religious and cultural specificity.

It is to notice that whatever the demands are, the European-Muslims, as citizens born in democratic countries and raised in the idea that their parents migrated to offer them an auspicious background for a better living, are claiming and asking for recognition of their rights following democratic procedures. They generally take form of:

• peaceful protests (for example La Marche des Beurs in France in 1983)
• intensive involvment in associations not specifically islamic (like for example SOS Racisme, Les Indigènes de la République, workers syndicates in UK, Turkish secular associations in Germany, political parties, etc)
• foundation of islamic institutions initiated by the community itself (Muslim Council of Britain, Islamic Council of Netherlands, etc) or initiated by the government (Conseil Français du Culte Musulman)
• active participation into the democratic debate through mediatic coverage (like the islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan or the antiracism activist Malek Boutih)
• petitions (against dismissal of employees for religious reasons)
• trials (asking for a space for prayer on the work place, recognition of a discrimination case, etc)
• boycott campaigns (brands not specifying clearly the use of prohibited food in some products)
• assiociative mutual help (when politics do not help): actions for homeless, youth educators to prevent violence, social integration through sports and art, etc
• providing private services in agreement with muslim values, with the agreement of european governments: hallal food providers, islamic banking, private schools, etc

There is also a unique but interesting case of a muslim political party in UK, Hizb et-Tahrir, clearly extremist in its points of view but in the same time “fairly” participating on the political scene by debating (the same way a right-winged political party is considered to be democratic because it accepts the “rules of the game”). All these democratic procedures have in common to be non-violent. Of course, there is also some rare cases of violent acts, although quite limited compared to the number of peaceful initiatives. These acts although restricted in number could be seen as the beginning of a breakdown between the European-Muslims  and the rest of the society: assassination of Theo Van Gogh in Netherlands, the Khaled Kelkal’s terrorist acts, London and Madrid bombings, french suburban areas unrest events of 2005, violent treats after the Muhammad (SWS) cartoons controversy. These violent acts are most of the time tightly entangled with the international context such as the Algerian civil war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Gulf Wars or of course the 11th of September. One has to not confuse between the violent political acts and the criminality and urban violence witnessed in poor stratum of the society and working-poor class, for the latter are not political movements; they might express loudly the despair of a community banned by the rest of the society and living difficult conditions (living in poor suburban areas, being jobless).

But whatsoever, besides those very rare examples, the European-Muslims mostly follow existing laws or fight within the democratic frame for their rights. Indeed, they are extremely present in the front line, and, it has to be pointed, if they are present through the activities listed above, they never pressured through powerful lobbies.

As a consequence, the long-debated question of the compatibility of democracy with Islam is quite non-revelant: European-Muslims have been, for now more than 4 decades, interacting with the European civil, economical, juridical and political society only through democratical means. All the rights debated, obtained or rejected have been issued by a democratic process.

Democratic European Muslims, what is their perspective?

It has to be noted also that other examples of civic causes in Europe have not always been as peaceful as the European Muslims have been: the left wing movements or the altermondialist movement for example have been into much more violent riots and acts (there is not any G8 or G20 meeting that has not been the occasion to massive vandalism), but as it is not “ethnically tagged”, it was always been much more accepted. The altermondialist leader José Bové, currently representing Europe Ecology in the European Parliament has started his political career in destroying a transgenic culture field and a McDonald’s. Such acts, labelled in Europe as “civic desobediance” seem to never be applied to European Muslims: if one of them would act like José Bové, he would be labelled as violent and retrograde; very aware of this, the huge majority of the Muslim community in Europe generally act extremely peacefully and carefully, to not harm the global cause. It is this concern of the global cause that opens the European Muslims to questions wider than their own personnal benefit in the present situation.

In some extent, the European-Muslims have influenced the generation of their parents, bringing them to the fight for their rights that have been denied to them. So is the case of the African Second World War veterans, without any official recognition nor descent wages until the young generation revealed their history on the screens and medias, or the ongoing case of the 50s-60s Moroccan railway workers underpayed and discriminated. This kind of “retroactive” democratic influence isn’t surprising: the generation of muslims born in Europe, in many aspects, acts like an interface between their parents and the host country, due to a better educational background, a better knowledge of the language and of political institutions, etc.

The current economical crisis also resulted in a rise of the right-wing parties all over Europe, achieving to reveal this growing rift between the European-Muslims, as descendants of migrants, and the non-muslim Europeans: the word islamophobia became unfortunately very common. The growing general islamophobic feeling results in a hardening in legislations: ban of minarets in Switzerland being only one example. In today’s Europe, where racist behaviours and opinions are becoming more and more normal (not only against muslims but also against other migrants, like the gipsies), the European-Muslims seem to be an isolated case of civic struggle through the decades for rights. Now, they are in a new unseen situation: they have to fight against the loss of the rights they won only years ago. For example, after making some progress in the fight against discriminations in the 80s and 90s, we see now a rise of openly discriminating behaviour. The fight for equality is never won for good; maybe it has only begun.

The North African and Middle East is living now a turn in its History: the Tunisian and Egyptian popular revolutions opened the path to democracy to the whole region. It might take years, but it is clear now that people are fighting for their rights and for the end of an unfair society. The parallel here is interesting: a Europe in loss of democracy, an Arab World in progress towards democracy. And as a link between them this generation of young European people from Arab migrant parents, and most specifically from Arab Muslim parents (as Muslims not only account for the huge majority of Arabs in Europe, especially because of the Maghrebi migration, but also they had to face much more discriminations due to their religion, giving them more expertise in the fight for justice). The Arab (Muslim) Europeans have been following with interest the events since the beginning. They felt extremely proud of the Arab youth fighting for their freedom. Amongst governments, the recent events in the Arab World were paid a high attention for geostrategic reasons, but also because of the repercussion it might have on those European Muslims: as an example, French President Sarkozy clearly avoided to welcome Ben Ali after his fall down, fearing to  ignite an unrest among the Muslim community in France.

The situation might evolve to a surprising scenario: if we reach a point where Europe offers less freedom and rights to their Muslim citizens than the Arab countries, they might massively  migrate back to Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, etc. Their parents came to Europe, they might go back to North Africa and Middle East. We are already witnessing for a couple of years now an increasing number of young European Muslims working in opening business in their country of origin, transfering their expertise into the local market, creating partnerships, bringing ideas not yet implemented in the Arab World. Many times we hear from young people, born in France, UK, Switzerland or Germany: “Why wouldn’t my arab country of origin benefit from all I can bring instead of Europe that day by day denies me the right to express my personnality, my culture, my religion?”.  The point here is to understand that they do not come back to the Arab World because they have no choice (having European citizenships protects them quite enough), but because they make the choice to give their added value to the country of origin. Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, Libyans, Egyptians, etc, that know the beginning will be difficult for them to adapt, but that want to make it. They know they are certainly going to earn less, but to live better, whilst they will participate in the local and global progress. Their parents were part of an economical migration wave, they are part of a ethical migration wave. Many of them, anyway, won’t migrate “physically” and will continue to live in Europe, but with a greatest concern of their civil role in Arab societies: most of this European Arabs carry european citizenships, but also arab citizenships, giving them the right to vote, to own in the country of origin or to represent it in International Organizations.

The European Arab (Muslim) youth and the Arab youth have many in common: education level, global awareness, similar values, similar goals and a great concern for democracy, human rights, civic rights. It would be interesting if they can benefit from each other’s experience and collaborate together to build a better and fair society, in Europe as well as in the Arab world. One one side they would fight corruption of the system, on the other side they would fight unethical exploitation of workers and ressources, in a situation that would guarantee a stable peaceful relation based on mutual benefit. They could meet in forums, establish partnerships, NGOs, transnational cooperations, exchange knowledge and open markets to each other, advise each other.

That would be a new nice kind of globalization.

To veil or not to veil, that is the (only) question

On the right side of this blog you certainly noted the presence of a tag cloud, i.e. a widget provided by my blog host, WordPress, that lists the most common tags used to describe the content of my articles. The bigger the font size, the more I am obsessed with the related topic. Quite accurate and relevant I have to admit. But you see – try to imagine I am using a soft slow voice and looking at you straight in the eyes like I would do one day with my children when I’ll have to explain to them all those disappointing facts about life – blogs are not the only one to carry tag clouds, people do too. You do, I do, everybody does. We are all categorized following preconceptions, misconceptions and even sometimes inceptions. If you are lucky enough, one or two of the tags would not relate only to your aspect and/or your ethnicity but on the person you are inside – but that’s maybe one case in a thousand.

As for me and more generally for any arab or muslim woman – as people tend to confuse the fact of being arab and muslim – the tag cloud has to list the followings, in font size 72: veil, Arabian Nights, couscous (or baklawa), forced marriage, polygamy, submission, belly dance, virginity, honour killings. Seems long ago we were labelled, and whatever we did or said since, it never changed. The fact is, many arab/muslim women writers, feminists, etc, have fought against these preconceptions that tend to depict us as no more than fully covered under beings with no voice and no will.

But in my opinion, what all of these feminists have failed at is to show that our lives do not evolve only around these topics. For example,  I have so far never read anything written by a feminist that doesn’t imply explicitely or implicitely the question of the veil. Either they would consider it as the symbol of submission of women to men, either they feel the need to object that western women have their own way to be even more submitted by being treated like sexual objects. Some also try to convince that veil is not stipulated as mandatory  in the Holy Quran and finally, some do stress on the fact that wether muslim women wear the hijab or not, it doesn’t matter since you would find strong-minded muhajabat (women wearing hijab) and not-so-strong western-like-dressed women, and, as long as the decision to wear veil or not was freely taken by the woman herself, it is her own business. Anyway, the fact that all those feminists sooner or later discusses the veil issue proves that:

1. whatever is their opinion, they consider it essential in a women’s rights discussion instead of seing it as part of a global discussion on confessionnal freedom (for example, peer pressure isn’t less strong in the case of somebody not wishing to fast Ramadan than in the case of a woman not wishing to wear veil)
2. feminism looks at muslim/arab women essentially “through the tag cloud”, i.e. by confronting the topic of women’s rights only through the few limited topics muslim/arab women are tagged with
3. they assume that arab/muslim populations are accustomed enough to western standards to not consider anymore the option of not wearing the hijab as something “coming from abroad” but really as a choice relevant only about women’s situation

I do not wish at all give any comment about the “veil issue” itself, what interests me here is how the way it is discussed reveals us something about feminism in arab/muslim countries. Actually, feminism in arab or muslim countries is mostly just a not-so-well adjusted version of western feminism, unable to go deeper than the surface. It is understandable that veil generates that much question marks in western world where it appeared only with migration and seems so opposite to western standards. It is on the contrary much less understandable that it goes into so much questions in countries where it is not a “foreign” phenomenon but exists for centuries. As if indians where having a nevertlasting debate over what does wearing a saree means; in such an hypothetic case it would be inaccurate to treat the “saree issue” only as part of the question of women’s rights. It appears then that because of the very limited view feminists have on arab/muslim women, it never really succeeds in defining what is relevant in their situation. My very personnal opinion is that what would help arab/muslim women would be to open the doors out of the clichés and focus on something else than the same 3-4 topics discussed again and again and again. If those were essential to women’s rights in the arab/muslim countries, it would have solved the situation since decades, given the hundreds of NGOs, think tanks, books and talks dedicated to the issue. Meaning we need to rethink totally the basis on which we consider women’s condition in the arab world. Are we gathering the right data? Are we analyzing the right facts? Aren’t we looking in the wrong direction?

Women’s situation in arab world is so difficult in so many ways that the constant focus on the “tag cloud” without noticing how inaccurate this description is ends being almost ridiculous. We need a feminism that gives to women effective solutions to reach visibility in all aspects of civil society, not to focus on the same speeches since decades. For example in many countries women, wearing a hijab or not is not really an issue in day to day life while being sexually harrassed constantly, however she is dressed, is a real problem. A focus has to be done on law: correcting the flaws but also understanding what makes the existing laws uneffective. Inaccecibility to basic education and to higher education for women in rural areas, lack of women in managing positions, under-representativity in politics, lack of means for mothers raising children alone, unavailability of social, cultural and artistic activities outside big towns, etc, all those are topics that need to be at the focal point of our generation’s feminism. The day “to veil or not to veil” will be for real the only question, it’ll mean we made a big step forward.