Opinion: Veiled threat?

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Comments continue to cascade in response to Catherine Lyons’ thoughtful post on the president of France’s broadside against burqas. I thought I’d add my 2 cents’ worth, even they’re pennies I spent in 2004 when I was writing for another newspaper. In a column headlined ‘Scarves and Smugness,’ I suggested that Americans ought to refrain from judging the French too harshly for their ban on the wearing of headscarves -- and other religious garments and adornments -- in state schools.

That policy had drawn criticism from the Bush administration, criticism echoed by President Obama in his June 4 speech in Cairo. Freedom in America, he said, ‘ is indivisible from the freedom to practice one’s religion. That is why there is a mosque in every state of our union, and over 1,200 mosques within our borders. That is why the U.S. government has gone to court to protect the right of women and girls to wear the hijab, and to punish those who would deny it.’

In my column (full text here) I wrote:

‘Official tolerance for religious diversity in this country is a relatively recent phenomenon. It wasn’t until 1987, in response to an adverse Supreme Court decision, that Congress allowed Jewish military officers to wear yarmulkes with their uniforms. Only recently have Christmas pageants in public schools been repackaged as ecumenical ‘holiday celebrations’ that also make note of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. . . .

‘It is tempting to recommend to the French that they copy the U.S. First Amendment, which the Bush administrations seems to think offers simple answers to the question of religious expression in state schools. But that amendment itself pulls in two directions: prohibiting governmental ‘establishment of religion’ but guaranteeing the ‘free exercise’ of religion. Into which category should we place an exception in a school dress code for religious apparel?

‘The sort of ‘multicultural’ pluralism the Bush administration recommends to France took time to develop in this country and in England, where until the 19th century Roman Catholics and other ‘Nonconformists’ were second-class citizens. Earlier than that, in Elizabethan times, Catholics were presumed to be traitors because they answered to a pope who had excommunicated England’s Protestant queen. The line between religion and politics in those days was a blurred and bloody one. So it is, some would argue, in contemporary France with its large Muslim minority.’

‘Some would argue’ was a hedge on my part, and I’m still torn about whether France should bolster its wall of separation between church and state. I do think that the burqa controversy raises the question of whether Americans should equate the particulars of our democracy or civil society with universal imperatives like representative government, separation of church and state and fair trials. Take the question of an independent judiciary, which appears on the checklists of most definers of democracy. In this country, an independent judiciary includes the right of the Supreme Court to nullify unconstitutional statutes. Britain historically has not gone that far, not surprisingly given its lack of a written Constitution. But British justice, though sometimes flawed (as is American justice), has a deserved reputation for political independence. And while the British have an encouragingly expansive understanding of freedom of religion, they also have an Established Church.

Banning women from wearing the burqa anywhere strikes me as a violation of the basic principle of religious freedom. Banning headscarves and crucifixes from state schools, not so much. France is more of a stickler for secularism than the is United States, because of its history and culture and not just out of concern about unassimilated Muslims. I’m not quite willing to say ‘Vive la différence,’ but neither will I excommunicate France from the free world.