Here and there in the midst of American society you meet with men full of a fanatical and almost wild spiritualism, which hardly exists in Europe. From time to time strange sects arise which endeavor to strike out extraordinary paths to eternal happiness. Religious insanity is very common in the United States.
I was at a local discount store the other day, where I saw a common sight here in Northern Virginia: a woman in a niqab. An African-American woman, wearing a niqab, was standing at the customer service counter trying to return an item. The customer service rep - another African american woman - was straining to understand her. Both were so engaged in the transaction that only the woman’s young daughter - adorned in a hijab - noticed me observing the transaction. The customer service rep was clearly uncomfortable with the transaction. Having worked a similar job, I could sympathize with her. Part of deciding whether to accept an item for return is assessing the customer’s sincerity, a nearly impossible task if you can’t see the person’s face. The niqab is a discomforting site for many people, but it very rarely poses a threat to the “public order."
Among American Muslims the niqab is shrugged off as an expression of extreme practice, but not much more. The community of women who wear niqab may be small, but more important, it is part of a broad and variable continuum of Muslim religious practice. In other words it is just one idiosyncratic expression of faith among many.
Anyone who sincerely practices an Abrahamic faith recognizes those co-religionists who perhaps take it a little too far. For the most part, they inspire indifference. Idiosyncratic characteristics of all three Abrahamic faiths lend themselves to America’s vibrant faith life. America has become home to many communities of extreme practice that co-exist in mutual indifference with everyone else. They echo de Tocqueville’s idea of America’s unique “religious insanity.”
Not so the government of France which has been meddling in the conscience of its Muslim citizens since the first hijab controversy in 1989. But with its latest effort -- the 2010 national “burqa ban” -- the government tacitly accepts defeat in a decades-long engagement with Muslim communities within French society.
France’s much-admired intellectual and political classes apparently never fully engaged the country’s Muslim communities. Its collective arguments are generalized (women’s rights), condescending, (they’re forced to wear it), and weak (it’s counter to French “ideals”) when juxtaposed to extreme Islam’s powerful appeal to conscience. As a result, whatever engagement did occur had no effect on the religious practices of the most extreme of France’s Muslim community. One spoke post-structuralist jargon concerning the power of “symbols;” the other spoke of a personal relationship with God. Both spoke past each other. In the end, the French political class chose to imposed its view of Muslim religious practices through the full force of government.
There are lessons in France’s “burqa” and foulard laws for anyone involved in the current dialogue over counterterrorism strategy or counter violent extremism (CVE) policy. They are terrible policy, creating an artificial confrontation between government and citizens where none existed before. They ignore the true roots of radical Islam in both its intellectual and physical confrontation with secularism and secular governments. Its enforcement builds a long-term environment of mutual distrust and intellectual isolation that practically guarantees homegrown collective challenges to the state within a generation
More later..
