Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label "French secularism"

Capitalist Modernity in France

“Two researchers from Stanford University, Vasiliki Fouka and Aala Abdelgadir, documented and analysed the ban's consequences in 2019. They found that the ban hurt Muslim girls' ability to complete their education and obstructed their access to the labour market. It doubled the gap between the percentage of non-Muslim and Muslim girls completing their secondary education in favour of the former.” Like hypocrisy, double-standard, complicity, racism, commodification, etc, the ban on the headscarf has been normalised . Related The law on theheadscarf The imaginary separatism of salafist women

French Structural Violence

I recall a colleague who a few years ago, pointing to photos of women wearing the headscarf, asked me: "Why are they still like this?" In an era of globalisation and a triumphing "liberal democracy" "liberating" everybody, my colleague, a white Westerner, thought, and probably still does, that those women are resisting "freedom" and the "free world", preferring "backwardness" and "submission."  "Today, behind the terrible shaming and violent treatment of a Muslim woman and her son, is the ongoing structural violence against Muslims and other people who speak out against inequality and injustice, couched in the corporatisation of everything (including war, which must be maintained for the secular system to profit)." French fear and loathing of Muslim women