Berkley Center

Many Americans talk about the importance of separation of church and state. The French, however, commit themselves to the concept. The debate over the law that would outlaw wearing overt religious symbols in public places has been going on in France for several years; I remember reading debates about it back in my high school French classes. The issue is still controversial, and since arriving here I've seen TV debates and newspaper articles on the topic. While the law bans all religious symbols, including crosses, stars of David, etc., the real topic of debate is the ability of Muslim women to wear headscarves in public. It's easy to wear a shirt with a high collar and hide your necklace with a cross on it, keeping your faith private while in public. Muslim women in France, of course, do not have this quick fix option, making the law seem like it is specifically targeting them rather than addressing all religious paraphernalia. While many Americans have a knee-jerk reaction to how the government has no right to interfere with what people wear, I've slowly come to understand how the French interpret human rights in a completely different way than the average American.

For the French, being a French citizen and having equal rights as other French citizens means being completely neutral in public spaces; there should be nothing about you to set you apart from other citizens. The French are proud to be the country of “liberty, equality, fraternity,” and consider France to be the country where such ideals originated. And for them, the veil is directly in opposition with these ideals, to the point where Nicholas Sarkozy, the French president, has said straight out that he will not allow France to be a country where women wear veils in public. Wearing a veil is alienating, marking a person quite overtly as Muslim and thus allowing others to stereotype the woman wearing the veil. Many Americans believe that everyone should be allowed to express themselves as they wish as a basic human right, whether that means wearing a Muslim veil or a Jewish kippah or a miniskirt. For the French, wearing religious signs takes away the human right of equality rather than reinforcing the right to freedom of expression.

The French look at Muslim veils and see oppression. They see women who have been forced to hide themselves from the world, usually by men. On the other hand, when I see someone wearing a veil, particularly when I'm on Georgetown’s campus, I say to myself, “"Wow, that woman's really sticking by her guns…...good for her!"” This is mainly because, regardless of what we say about freedom of expression, female college students would rather go to class looking like they’re ready to step onto the runway at a fashion show than wearing a veil. And I can usually safely assume that a Georgetown student wearing a veil is choosing to wear that veil. Of course, considering France, many veil-wearing women are immigrants or from immigrant families, which tend to be in a different social and economic bracket than the average Georgetown student. That is to say, it is far more likely that these women actually are being forced to cover themselves rather than making a choice based off of personal beliefs.

Of course, the proposed law might not be the best way to combat the problem; if the women truly are being forced by their families to wear the veil, a law prohibiting the veil in public spaces would simply force these women to remain trapped at home, or to face domestic abuse from their families if they did leave. Though the French may be taking the wrong route to fix their perceived problem, I find it fascinating to look at the different ways that human rights can be perceived. Equality and liberty mean so much to the French that they're willing to make laws about the way people dress in public; it's a concept of civil liberties that is almost completely opposite how we perceive them in the United States. But then, it's always nice to have a reminder that our version of what is equal and what constitutes freedom is not shared by everyone, even in Western countries as similar to ours as France.