Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Also available en Français The French obsession with the veil Related The Imaginary Separatism of Salafist Women

“ Two tyrants, Reza Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini focused on policing women’s bodies as the site of their respective ideologies of power and domination, with the bodies of women as the ideological battleground of their patriarchal practices. “What we are witnessing in Iran in the imposition of mandatory veiling is, of course, the reverse of what we see in much of Europe and North America where Muslim women are systematically harassed if they choose to wear the Muslim hijab.  For decades not a single day passes without a racist, misogynist, bigoted violent attack on Muslim women in Europe and the US.” How they became an ideological battleground

A collection of articles

The EU top court vs. Far-right 1-0 The EU’s top court has ruled that employers can in principle ban Muslim women   from wearing a headscarf or any other visible religious or political symbol.

“Yes to the ban on concealing one’s face” The government is urging people to reject burqa ban

 “ Neither Jean-Luc Mélenchon nor Emmanuel Macron know what  laïcité  [French state secularism] is , yet Macron wants to teach Muslims that “Islam is in crisis.” 

 “ The point I try to make in that article is that the debate on whether Jews should be accorded full political rights in 1840s Prussia presents some striking similarities with the debate on Muslims’ integration into French society today. More precisely, my point is that the French state’s demand that religious minorities (and let’s be frank, Muslims in particular) respect the principle of secularism in the public space is reminiscent of Bruno Bauer’s position on the Jewish Question. Bruno Bauer believed that the Jews deserved to be granted political rights only if they stopped being Jews and embraced Enlightenment thought. In other words, he conceived of political emancipation as a kind of award that individuals receive only if they renounce their own religious identity and embrace the identity that the secular state deems as appropriate. Likewise, the French state demands that Muslims get rid of their religious/cultural practices if they want to show willingness to integrate into Fre

  Dear white people of France,