ABSTRACT
This essay examines some of the issues at stake in the foregrounding in France of the teenage Muslim girl wearing what has come to be known, in common parlance, as a “headscarf.” In particular, the focus of attention is on the recent book by the American feminist historian Joan Wallach Scott (2007) who has done a remarkable job in dissecting the outcry in France caused by the presence of such girls wishing to wear the “veil” or foulard at school. But before engaging directly with Scott I want to draw attention to a veritable temptation to adopt a crudely comparative perspective in relation to what Scott sees as a deeply embedded racism directed to people of North African origin of which the question of the veil is the tip of an iceberg. So antipathetic is French political thought to notions of everyday multiculturalism that the levels of hostility and opposition to women wearing the hijab strikes those more familiar with, for example, UK recognition of cultural differences expressed in this way, as particularly alarming and even disgraceful. Succumbing to such a stance, however, runs the risk of either setting up some kind of sliding scale of European racism and tolerance, or it deflects attention away from the intersection of prejudicial practices as they take specific and distinctive forms across countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, France, and the UK as part of concerted effort on the part of government to be seen to be dealing simultaneously with the perceived threat posed by Islamic values and with immigration. The distinct contours of the European political discourses which arise in response to these various threats and the ways in which they cross-fertilise and contest each other, often with degrees of self-righteousness, is itself an important subject for further discussion. And that Britain is perceived as having permitted “multiculturalism” to grow unabated has now entered the realms of racist common-sense discourse in various high-ranking political institutions. 1
