----- Original Message -----
From: John A Imani
To: [email protected] ; [email protected]
Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 6:31 PM
Subject: [rac] The New Anti-capitalist Party and Islamophobia
The New Anti-capitalist Party and Islamophobia .
10 December 2010
Ilham Moussaid
Last week, 12 Muslim activists in France's New Anti-Capitalist Party
(NPA), including Ilham Moussaid - whose candidacy for the regional elections
caused controversy both within and without the party on the basis that she
wears a hijab - resigned from the party.
Socialist Alternative spoke with John Mullen, a member of the NPA in the
Paris region, about the issue of Islamophobia in France, and the debates within
the NPA that led to these resignations.
First of all, John, could you elaborate on what caused these members to
resign and the contours of the debates within the NPA about the rights of its
Muslim membership?
Ilham was chosen as one of a list of candidates in the regional elections
last year. This decision was made in the region - the NPA is very much a
federal organisation. The NPA was attacked from all sides for giving in to
Islamists, fundamentalists and for abandoning secularism.
The party's national spokesperson - Olivier Besancenot - defended Ilham's
right to be a candidate, but a vocal minority inside the NPA is hostile to
having members with a hijab. For the upcoming conference, this minority has put
forward a motion that hijab wearers can't be candidates for the party. A
counter-motion defends equal rights for all members to apply to be a candidate,
and a third motion suggests a dreadful compromise (that hijab wearers can be
candidates if approved by special commissions).
The group of comrades of which Ilham is part, near Avignon, have been
running dynamic local campaigns on local issues, including the question of
Islamophobia. A campaign against them inside the party has worn them out and
rather than fight at the conference, they have chosen to continue their
activism outside the party - it's very sad. The very real and slowly growing
support they have had from a minority of comrades around the country has not
been enough to keep them in our party.
One of the things Moussaid stated on her resignation was, "We need to
concentrate on what unites us, on the fight for equality between men and women,
and not to say we should all dress the same way, that you can't wear a
headscarf because otherwise you're not a feminist." What do you say to the
argument so often employed in these debates, that wearing the hijab is "an
assault on feminism"?
The majority of the left in France believe that the hijab is an assault
on women's rights. This position quickly moves into the prejudice that Muslim
women in France are more oppressed than non-Muslim women, that the experience
of women in, say, Saudi Arabia is merely an extreme case of an oppression which
is inherent in Islam.
Muslim and Arab men are then presented as the major source of women's
oppression and contrasted with the progressive white values of Republican
France. So opposition to religious practices on the basis of progressive values
can easily turn into a thinly disguised form of racism - and often does.
In fact, if Muslim women in France suffer oppression, get mostly low-paid
jobs and bad housing, this is not usually because of their husbands and big
brothers. It is because capitalism wants cheap labour, and treating ethnic
minorities badly is good for profits.
Pieces of clothing have symbolic meanings in all cultures. In many
cultures, women must cover their breasts, men must not wear dresses. In Sikh
culture men must not cut their hair. And in many Muslim cultures women must
cover their hair. When French women cover their hair to please their God, they
are not saying "Treat me as an inferior".
There is another point: in France, where anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism
is at a high level (which has a lot to do with France's imperial past and
neo-colonial present), wearing the hijab is about showing you are proud to be a
Muslim, (and often proud to be an Arab) in a fairly hostile situation.
Tragically the opinion of the women who wear the hijab, or the niqab, is
practically never asked. "Enlightened" left anti-sexists speak for them and
tell them how they should dress. It's an old colonial tradition, telling
oppressed groups what is good for them.
The right-wing Sarkozy Government, with the support of the Socialist
Party, recently banned the wearing of the hijab in state schools and the public
service, and the full veil is now illegal in the streets. How is this issue
exploited by France's politicians and how prevalent is racist abuse of Muslims
in France today?
A few months ago, researchers sent out to French companies applications
for jobs accompanied by CVs. They wanted to compare how a young black Catholic
woman fared in comparison with a young Black Muslim woman. The CVs were
identical except for first names and a mention of their religion (one said she
was active with a Catholic organisation, the other with a Muslim one).
The "Catholic" black woman got asked to an interview 21 per cent of the
time. The "Muslim" Black woman got asked to an interview 8 per cent of the
time. That's how bad it is. The mainstream press covered this story; the left
press almost totally ignored it. That's how bad it is.
Meanwhile racist graffiti on mosques and desecration of Muslim graves are
becoming more common - there have been at least twenty cases of vandalising
Muslim graves this year. A mosque and a halal butcher shop were shot at earlier
this year - 32 bullet holes were left in the mosque walls. And a number of
veiled women have been attacked in the streets.
The recent law to ban women who wear the "full veil" from leaving their
homes was initially a proposal of a Communist MP! And the law in 2004, banning
high school students from wearing a hijab was initiated by a campaign against
two young Muslim women in which Trotskyist teachers were very active!
Two months ago, when the Senate was debating the law against the "full
veil", a group of Muslims and left-wing supporters organised a rally outside.
We got sixty activists there: not many, but in the French context quite an
achievement. Almost all of the left organisations ignored it.
The NPA leadership decided to "support" the rally...seven hours before it
was due to start, although it had been planned for weeks. Internal division
paralyses the NPA and many other organisations on anything to do with
Islamophobia.
We understand the issue of the hijab will be debated at the NPA's
upcoming conference. How do you think socialists should respond to Islamophobia
in society?
The radical left should launch an active and dynamic campaign against
Islamophobia, and not just "debate" the issue. This means allying itself with
Muslim organisations. This is a very obvious point, but highly controversial on
the French left.
In Britain the Trade Union Congress has run a joint campaign against
Islamophobia along with Muslim organisations. Islamophobia is tremendously
useful to Sarkozy to divide us, to point the finger at the Muslims as a threat
to "our culture" in order to divert our attention from the real enemy.
Islamophobia is a gigantic blind spot of the French left. The NPA is
better than the other organisations of the radical left, (which is not hard).
The upcoming "Conference against the Islamic domination" in December, run by
groups which came from the left but have ended up on the far right, will see
sections of the NPA mobilising against it. And at the party conference we have
a good chance of winning the demand for equal rights for Muslim party members.
But the conference will debate almost exclusively about the rights of
Muslim members of the NPA. Only a few isolated voices are calling for an active
NPA campaign against Islamophobia. This is a tragedy. In the mass strike
campaign to defend pensions these last few months in France, NPA activists
everywhere played an excellent role, in the forefront of building the strikes
and building unity between different sections of the working class and
different generations.
It is a party with tremendous positive potential. But old French
traditions of left wingers mocking or hating those who believe in God, and more
recent trends towards demonising Muslims since 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan seem to be blinding comrades and they are falling for old divide
and rule tactics.
Progress is slow, but this question will have to be faced. We have to
actively fight Islamophobia both because of how hard it makes life for many of
our Muslim sisters and brothers, but also because working class rebellion is
made harder every time workers believe that "Muslim threats to our culture" are
what we need to be fighting, not the capitalists.
http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3028&Itemid=213
Feedback on this article
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