Any number of cliches pertain to the problem facing hijab defenders in France, who are outraged that French Olympics athletes can’t cover their heads during play.
Secularist France has nothing against people wearing the thing in all other Olympics venues, but wants those officially representing the country during games to project religious neutrality.
Supported by many human rights organizations, hijabis are making a lot of noise about overturning the ban before the event begins next month.
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Ecoute. Here’s the problem, if you ask ol’ UD.
The far right so massacred Macron’s government in the recent EU election that Macron has called snap elections. My guess is that support for hijabs, abayas, burqas, etc., among this lot is approximately zero percent. Left, center, or right, in any case, French governments have long banned various forms of veiling, and it sure looks as though growing majorities of the French people object to strongly visible religious garb. At the moment, ye olde will of the people is against you, in other words, and while you’re free to fight the good fight, it’s arguable that this isn’t the moment.
It can’t help matters that, hijab-wise, most of the attention of the world is riveted to Iran, whose vile theocracy has succeeded in linking the head covering to murderous surveillance of women. Certes, it’s unfair, certes, it’s illogical, but efforts to portray the hijab as a symbol of healthy diversity, gender equality, and individual expressive rights (which all the letters from human rights organizations gas on about) are currently up against super-repressive mullahs who have made the hijab the central actor in their globally notorious death-to-women thing.
Hijabis in France, seems to me, would do well to acknowledge what they’re up against there, and act more strategically.
Here’s where you might start. Concede that hijabs don’t seem to most people to have jackshit to do with gender equality. (Recall this unfortunate campaign.) On the contrary. Drop that quixotic quest, and confine your language to religious freedom more broadly and indeed more vaguely.