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Anchit Sathi, a friend, who lives, studies and works in France, started an email discussion about the French Scarves Scandal. A couple of people including myself responded, this is the email transcript…

Some of you might have heard of the head scarf scandal in france that s been going on for quite a while now. for those who havent, this is what it is:

it started 2 years ago if i remember correctly, where there was a big issue in france when a small school somewhere suspended 2 muslim girls who insisted on coming to school in veils and/or headscarves. it was a big scandal, that gradually died down, and that surged back up again with a few similar cases last year. in december, the home ministry submitted a detailed report to the president on this subject, and very soon, france is to pass a law banning the wearing of ostentatious religious signs to schools or the work place. this would include the muslim headscarf, the jewish skull cap, the christian cross….and yes, the sikh turban, something that never came to my mind before because there are so few indians here. in the last 2 years, i have probably seen 2 sikhs in france, compared to a 100000000 in the UK.

After a little discussion with some of you on this topic, i thought i d pen an email telling u my thoughts about it. You dont have to agree, but this is something that has reached colossal proportions in france today, especially with the ban imminent. There are protests even today in paris by muslims, and apparently, the community of 15000 sikhs is protesting at their gurudwara too with huge signs saying ‘La foi est non-negociable’ (Faith is not negotiable).

For outsiders to the french society, this might seem as an open attack on secularism. But this is something that needs digging into. I have said this time and again, the French are a peculiar people. I am not being critical, i love the country and the people. But even in the closed subset of continental europe, they are very different people…be it in the extreme importance they accord to good food, be it societal cliches, be it small quirks of behaviour that differentiate them from other europeans.

In any case, the word secularism, as i understood it in india, and I presume as most of us understood it, meant the right to openly practise your religion. France is a secular country. What needs to be understood is the French definition of the word secularism. Here, secularism refers to a right to practise whatever religion you want, as long as you dont impose it on others, either directly or even through ostentatious signs of religion. And in this regard, there are no exceptions for any religion, not even christianity.

The French made a very concerted effort to unify their country, especially after the napoleonic wars. Uniformity was what they were after. Regional French dialects were suppressed in the French nation state and standard French was imposed as medium of instruction in schools. This has led to a country where someone from the north in lille can have a perfect conversation in the same language from someone way down in marseille, something which is far from being true in india. But not only in India…I personally believe this was a remarkable thing that the French achieved, and that helped create a sense of belonging to their country. There are other countried in Europe, Germany for example, where a similar attempt was made but where it was not successful to the same extent. Regional dialects still prevail, and people in many regions and bilingual, or bidialectual.

Getting back to the point. This was all part of the french way of living and the french ideals. Talking about religion in school, the government had made a very concerted effort, amidst phenomenal resistance and protests, to remove the crucifix from above the blackboards of classrooms. Their aim was to totally decimate the influence of the roman catholic church. The country of course remains a predominantly catholic country, but what has changed that religion has become more of a private concern. People dont talk about religion at school, or at work, which is the case in southern Iberian countries. The aim was to detach religion from ‘collective’ life and keep it in an individual’s private life.

This worked well and this is something that is very deeply anchored in the french psyche. The reasoning has been the same with the recent spate of events. “We removed the influence of catholicism, why should we let other religions do the same” , something I personally agree with. People might call this ban extreme, I call it the French way of living. Immigrants who came here made a conscious choice to do so. Failure to adapt to the country’s norms, to me, is ingratitude. The ban is not asking people to give up religion, far from it. There still remain tons of practising muslims, jews, sikhs, etc….who know that they will continue to practise their religion without any problem at all. All the ban is asking is to remove their ostentatious religious signs in collective life and to understand the french way of living and to try and adapt in a country where they consciously chose to come.

By the way, the ban is also being opposed by the vatican for the crucifix, but that s nor going to change anything.

I am writing this because i read an article on bbc this morning, an interview with parisian sikhs, who claim they will be stopping their education next year, but that they refuse to remove the turban. I personally find statements like these innane, and believe they represent a TOTAL failure to integrate.

Again, the country is not asking people to give up their individuality. It is only asking to keep away a very very specific aspect of their individuality, religion, away from influential collective life. This is the way the French live. This is what they believe in. They are asking people to understand this and to accept this cultural peculiarity. Is that asking for too much?

I would like to believe that this email has not been motivated by my atheistic convictions, but rather by my sense of logic.

Any reactions/comments? feel free to write, maybe even a collective answer.

Anchit

I think this Issue raises important questions about liberality and human rights, that need to be answered in a world where people are going to be moving around far more than they used to in the past. I think these are the major questions:

1. What is the meaning of “Freedom of Religion”?
2. Should people moving to alien countries integrate into the local population, or should they retain their identities?
3. How much collective will should impinge upon individual choices?

Taking it from the bottom up.. I think of myself as a libertarian, and like to think in Smithian terms about the happiness of the whole being achieved when each part achieves its own happiness. When the collective starts impinging its writ upon individuals it is difficult to see at what point the “safeguards” for freedom turn into “safeguards” against freedom.

Secularism, is, I think the belief that people should be able to practise and preach their religions in any which way they see fit, and no one is coerced into believing what they don’t want to. Talking about religion in public, or at schools (especially private schools) should not be banned, choices are open to the individuals who are being “subjected” to religious discourse, whether to believe or not to. If people who do not want to believe exert influence over the rest of the population that may want to believe or is indifferent, it is very much a “franco-secular theocracy” or “atheist theocracy” or “affirmative action to protect secularism”, as oxymoronic as that sounds. What if a new religion emerges that uses a bolt through the lower lip as a sign of faith, would that be deemed offensive to secular sensibilities?

I think Europe in general suffers from severe over-regulation, possibly stemming from the French efforts to instill homogeneity. Recently the EU declared that workers should not be exposed to more than certain level of sound, this poses a significant problem for Orchestras … here is the whole post where I read about this, its from Marginal Revolution.

Why Europe is no longer world leader: one illustration
by Tyler Cowen

The New York Times writes of:

…a new regulation imposed by the European Union that reduces the allowable sound exposure in the European orchestral workplace from the present 90 decibels to 85. The problem is, a symphony orchestra playing full-out can easily reach 96 to 98 decibels, and certain brass and percussion instruments have registered 130 to 140 at close range.

The directive ? issued last February and intended to protect all workers, orchestral musicians included ? specifies a daily “upper exposure action value” of 85 decibels, amid a welter of other provisions. It acknowledges “the particular characteristics of the music and entertainment sectors.” It allows discretion to member states to use averaging, specifying a weekly exposure limit of 87 decibels, and to allow a transition period for implementation.

For me this article had a “jaw hits floor” quality. How about legislation saying that no composer can lose blood, sweat, and tears over a masterwork? Bach, after all, wrote the equivalent of twenty pages of music a day. He likely had some form of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Note that private solutions can alleviate the noise problem. Some orchestras increase the spacing between players. Some musicians use earplugs. Sometimes an orchestra will put plexiglass screens in front of the trombones. Or you don’t have to join an orchestra in the first place.

By the way, the trombones are not the only problem. The piccolo also has a negative effect on hearing.

And what about the United States?

In this country, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration takes a more hands-off attitude toward orchestras than the European Union. “We don’t basically get involved with them,” Francis Meilinger, an OSHA spokesman said. Here, too, orchestras fall under the agency’s general guidelines for the workplace, which allow a 90 decibel level over an eight-hour day, and a 97 decibel limit over three hours. Since American orchestras work relatively short days, and the peaks of sound are merely intermittent, they don’t represent a particular concern in this regard.

Imagine that, the EU having less sense than our OSHA. In any case, it remains to be seen how the measure will be implemented and enforced. Many musicians have announced that they plan to continue playing Wagner, Mahler, and Strauss, regardless of regulatory directives.

So whose good is really served by all this impingement on general freedoms? Well a typically libertarian answer, and one i like :-) is the Bureaucracy.. lol

The second question raises some interesting issues, should people immigrating to a foreign land “Do in Rome as the Romans Do”. Here again the issue is majoritarianism, the view, that the majority is always right. Most democracies including the French variety which is particularly quixotic, try to ensure that mandates of various political and bureaucratic offices, are over lapping, so that no one office can exert total power over the political decision making process. Democracy contrary to popular misconception, is not about majorities but about overlapping, possibly competitive mandates, that prevent authoritarian rule. Ofcourse they don’t always succeed, here are two articles about how democracies can fail One and Two.

In other countries where there has been large scale immigration, notably UK and US, the immigrating population has notably contributed to the culture of the destination country. Curry in UK and Chinese Takeout and Pizzas in the US, are now cultural icons, on par with what could be called local concepts, like Hollywood and James Bond, who have been incorporated by the immigrants. I am trying to get at the fact that, culture is not a constant concept, France 1776 was different from France 1814, was different from France 1920, 1962 and 2004. Even if the peculiarities of the French are peculiar in themselves, it does not mean that they are going to have the same peculiarities 10 years down the line. So why should immigrants adapt to specific cultural traits that exist today, just to fit in. On the contrary, the laws of the land should protect individuals who do not want to fit in from being discriminated against, much in the same way that homosexuals and women are protected from discrimination (no affirmative action please!)

Getting back to the core of the problem, Freedom of Faith, I think the general non-aggression norm which we apply to freedoms in general, should be followed here, as I said earlier this just means everyone has a right to roll around in a pig sty if they think that it is going to get them salvation, and this is fine, as long as they don’t force everyone else to roll around as well ;-).

Ofcourse in economic terms the debate could be viewed as one of externalities, it could be framed, that somehow a girl wearing a scarf is exerting a negative externality on the rest of society, i.e. causing some loss to society. But what kind of a loss it could be is difficult for me imagine.

I think, when secularists go over board in trying to ban religion from public discourse altogether, like say the ACLU’s campaign against creationism, it is an aspiration in some sense of a purely scientific society, which deals only with facts and known variables. Unfortunately, despite Bertrand Russell’s proposal of scientific skepticism, as anyone who has ever tried life knows, there are far too many known unknowns and potentially infinite unknown unknowns for us to totally discount faith. Much of the boundary of science and social science boils down to competing speculative theories, that have as much credibility as Religion. A note in point is, “When did the Universe Begin?” no one really knows, so what a Cosmologist says and what a Rector of the “Church of Christ who came Twice” ;-), will say is nearly on par, except that the former has a lot of Math in it. “What is Interest/How does it come about?”, again that is totally based on what you believe in, Economists will give you half a dozen or more theories, and Islamic scholars and Radical Christians will call it Usury.

I think laws should be minimalist, and protect everyone from being trampled over by anyone. Laws should protect people and not societies. IMHO.

Please forgive any insensitivity I might have exhibited :-).

Gautam