Is the Ban on Ostensible Religious Signs in France a Sign of Tolerance Discourse or the Liberal Regulation of Aversion – Arts & Humanities Assignment Help

Assignment Task

Is the ban on ostensible religious signs in France a sign of tolerance discourse or the liberal regulation of aversion?

Tolerance and depoliticization:
Individuals and groups across the political spectrum invoke tolerance as an apolitical value: a universal and impartial concept. This approach is clear, for example, in the report of the Stasi Commission, which was set up to investigate the application of laïcité in France, and whose recommendations led to the introduction of the 2004 law which banned the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols in public schools. The report tries to associate the Commission’s recommendations with a “liberal and tolerant” version of laïcité, that it attributes to the 1905 law on the separation of churches and the state (Stasi Commission, 2003, p.11). Yet, as Brown highlights, tolerance is imbricated with power and politics (Brown, 2009, p.9). Tolerance marks out its objects as requiring toleration for some reason, and as such it “inevitably affords some access to superiority” (Brown, 2009, p. 14). Thus toleration is often referred to only in relation to the majority, although minorities are likely to have to practice ‘tolerance’ in daily life – drawing on Tønder’s definition of this as “the disposition to endure pain and suffering” (Tønder, 2006, p.328). This is also borne out by the Stasi report, in which ‘tolerance’ is almost always implicitly attributed to the majority (Stasi Commission, 2003). In line with Brown, I do not mean to argue that ‘tolerance’ should necessarily be rejected as a result, but simply to note its involvement with power (Brown, 2009, p.11). It is also worth noting that while, as Brown argues, the assertion of tolerance does not usually function through legal means, the limit to tolerance can do so – as demonstrated by the ban on ostensible religious signs (Brown, 2009, p.11).

Brown’s theory highlights the way in which tolerance discourse, within the framework of governmentality, is often deployed as a strand of depoliticization: construing “inequality…marginalization, and social conflict” as “personal” or “religious, or cultural” issues (Brown, 2009, p.15). I intend to argue that the ban on ostensible religious signs in France demonstrates that Brown’s theory also applies to discourse around the limits of toleration. The Stasi Commission combines its assertion that headscarves in public schools breach the limit of toleration, with an emphasis on other issues relating to “Turkish, North African, African and Pakistani” communities”, including the purported refusal of some men “to see their wives or daughter treated by male physicians”.

While the report refers briefly to political, economic and social issues that relate to the banlieus, it maintains that one should not use “the excuse that social injustice exists” to distract from the “high principles” of laïcité (Stasi Commission, 2003, p.49; Terray, 2004). The report thus limits the political recognition of pressing questions of social injustice, by framing political questions of marginalization as less important than the “high ideals” of secularism in relation to religion and culture (Terray, 2004, p.123). For example, the report strongly emphasises its commitment to gender equality and then limits the application of this to schoolgirls’ headscarves – just as it displaces the question of inadequate funding threatening social services, in favour of concern with hospital corridors being “transformed into private prayer places” (Asad, 2006a, p. 514; Stasi Commission, 2003, p. 42). Terray argues that the report uses depoliticization to substitute a “fictional” problem that can be mediated through symbols alone, for real ones “that it finds insurmountable” (Terray, 2004, p.118). As Terray highlights, “scant numbers of girls” have actually sought to wear scarves at schools (Terray, 2004, p.121). The culturalization of politics is woven into this depoliticization (Brown, 2009, p.17). By concentrating on Islam as a religion, the Stasi commission fails to address issues of “poverty, othering, and global politics” (Jansen, 2006, p.492). Generalized and essentialized ideas about the difference of ‘Muslims’ – for example, that the headscarf universally signifies “the low legal status of women in Muslim society” – supports Brown’s argument that tolerance discourse invokes ‘ascriptive identities’ which are seen as generating inherent and permanent differences (Asad, 2006a, p. 502; Brown, 2009, p.45). This draws on Foucault’s identification of the shift from considering difference a sign of “temporary aberration” to considering it a sign of “a species” (Foucault, 1976, p.43). For example, the commission’s report fails to consider that wearing a headscarf could signify postcolonial or class-based assertions, such as those voiced by a woman quoted by Jansen: “our mothers wore headscarves when they cleaned the houses of the French and it was never a problem” (Jansen, 2006, p.493). The complex political and economic implications of ‘religious’ signs are ignored here, in favour of reaffirming inherent cultural difference (Asad, 2006a, p.514).

While the main object of the Stasi commission’s report was to assert the legal limit of toleration, its members sought at the same time to argue that its proposals were tolerant. One member, Patrick Weil, later argued that the report and its subsequent law should be interpreted “as a moment of compromise” in which “the French State and French society” decided for the first time “to adopt a strong Muslim minority and to recognize it” (Weil, 2004, p.146). This interprets the decision to ban headscarves in public schools as a move in favour of pluralism regardless of the fact that this recognition of a “Muslim minority” is largely negative and essentialized. The
commission also distances itself from “racism against Muslims” by condemning such racism on the part of particular individuals (Stasi Commission, 2003, p.48). Thus issues of social conflict and marginalization are again depoliticized by the suggestion that they are matters of individual prejudice alone (Brown, 2009, p.15). This rhetoric of tolerance is echoed in the majority decision of the European Court of Human Rights in 2014, upholding France’s 2010 ban on the concealment of the face in public, which targeted niqabs and burqas. The decision argued that the ban advanced an aspect of “tolerance and broadmindedness” by supporting the principle of “living
together” (S.A.S. v France [2014]). This again construes the regulation of France’s “Muslim minority” as a gesture in support of “tolerance” – because this regulation will lessen the aversion of dominant French society, thus making it easier to tolerate Muslim communities. Tolerance discourse is used here to justify and depoliticize the regulation of Muslim communities. This supports Brown’s argument that the invocation of tolerance is, at times, a sign of the management of marginalized identities for the sake of the happiness of the majority, in which this management is simultaneously disavowed by the rhetoric of “living together” in harmony and diversity: it signifies a “buried order of politics” (Brown, 2009, p.14)