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March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk
Feb. 19, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

Jewish World Review April 1, 2008 / 25 Adar II 5768

Head scarves are potent political symbols

By Anne Applebaum

Applebaum
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It can be a little wisp of fabric, nothing more. It comes in longer versions, shorter versions, versions that cover the hair, others that cover the face. According to Le Monde, you can even get a Viennese stylist to design one in the manner of "Catherine Zeta-Jones and Naomi Campbell," with a whiff of supermodel glamour.


But whatever shape it takes and whatever you want to call it, the political controversy surrounding the scarves that many (though not all) Muslim women use to cover their heads will not go away. Banned in French schools and some German state institutions, the headscarf has just reemerged at the center of an extraordinary lawsuit, one that could, if successful, bring down the Turkish government.


Brought by the chief prosecutor of Turkey, the lawsuit— to put it bluntly and briefly — accuses the ruling party of violating Turkey's constitution and proposes to evict its leaders, including the prime minister and the president, from politics altogether. The central point of this sticky legal clash between the "secularism" of the Turkish constitution and the "will of the nation," as the ruling party calls it (or the "dictatorship of the majority," in the words of Turkey's chief prosecutor), is the headscarf: Last February, the government lifted a long-standing ban on wearing them at universities, and secular Turks are furious.


This kind of controversy is not entirely new to Turkey, where political parties have been banned in the past (and prime ministers hanged in the more distant past) for insufficient secularism. What strikes me as important this time around is the enduring significance, once again, of that simple piece of cloth.


To outsiders, the issue usually seems petty (the International Herald Tribune headlined its editorial"Much ado about headscarves"). Those with an Anglo-American bias — myself included — have often been persuaded that the issue is one of personal liberty: A headscarf should be a matter of "choice." But if politicians are grandstanding about headscarves, maybe that's because headscarves, at least in Turkey and a few other places, are political symbols and not purely a matter of religious "choices."


Fairly or not, in certain Turkish communities, a head covering marks the wearer not just as faithful but also as a believer in a particular version of Islam. Fairly or not, the headscarf carries with it, at least in Turkey, partisan connotations as well as a suggestion of the wearer's views of women. The political scientist Zeyno Baran pointed out to me that most of the wives of the Turkish political leadership wear headscarves; that most of them donned the scarves after their marriages; and that most of them never worked or studied again after that. You can see why women who want something different might feel threatened.


In fact, the Turkish ban was first instituted in the 1980s precisely to protect bareheaded women, as well as the secular students who wanted to remain so. For about 20 years, the ban was relatively successful too. After a few initial protests, it was widely accepted — how else can a deeply divided society survive, unless it creates zones of neutrality? — at least until the current government tried to get rid of it again this year.


For the record, the French headscarf ban — though widely mocked when instituted in 2004 — is at the moment considered a great success, too, at least by the French government. Droves of girls did not drop out of school, as was predicted. Every year, French officials say, there are fewer conflicts over the issue. Over time, they argue, Muslim girls will find it easier to integrate into French society, too.


None of which is to say that Turkey's supreme court can or should oust the government: I'll let Turkey's lawyers fight that one out. But if they try to do so, let's not pretend it's unimportant. And if, someday, this argument comes to our shores, let's not be surprised, either.


In the end, the headscarf debate isn't about a wisp of fabric but about the viability of secular Islam itself.

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APPLEBAUM'S LATEST
Gulag: A History  

Nearly 30 million prisoners passed through the Soviet Union's labor camps in their more than 60 years of operation. This remarkable volume, the first fully documented history of the gulag, describes how, largely under Stalin's watch, a regulated, centralized system of prison labor-unprecedented in scope-gradually arose out of the chaos of the Russian Revolution. Fueled by waves of capricious arrests, this prison labor came to underpin the Soviet economy. JWR's Applebaum, a former Warsaw correspondent for the Economist and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, draws on newly accessible Soviet archives as well as scores of camp memoirs and interviews with survivors to trace the gulag's origins and expansion Sales help fund JWR.

Comment on JWR contributor Anne Applebaum's column by clicking here.


Previously:

03/26/08: The Olympics are the perfect place for a protest
03/19/08: Could Tibet bring down modern China?
03/12/08: Have political autobiographies made us more susceptible to fake memoirs?
03/05/08: Why does Russia bother to hold elections?
02/20/08: Kosovo is a textbook example of the law of unintended consequences
02/06/08: A Craven Canterbury Tale
02/06/08: French prez' whirlwind romance reminds voters of his political recklessness




© 2008, Anne Applebaum

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