Ruth Harris: How the Dreyfus Affair Explains Sarkozy's Burqa Ban
[Ruth Harris is a fellow of New College, Oxford, and author of Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion and the Scandal of the Century.]
...Indeed, the debate [over banning the burqa] has a long history in France and is not merely a product of the right, though Sarkozy's opponents denounce it as a nakedly political attempt to attract anti-immigrant support. A powerful, and sometimes irrational, fear of religious influence -- once Catholic, now Muslim -- has long been a part of French society, through the anti-clerical campaigns of the 19th century and the anti-Jesuit paranoia of the Dreyfus affair. It's impossible to understand the burqa debate without understanding the nature of the polemics that shaped it.
Anti-clerical sentiment became a major force in French political life in the 18th century, when philosophers attacked the Catholic Church as an enemy of the Enlightenment and a supporter of the oppressive monarchical government. Many of the early debates centered around women's bodies and freedoms, with religion depicted as attacking society's weakest and most vulnerable members. In La Religieuse (The Nun), Denis Diderot's 1796 novel, a young innocent, Suzanne, is unscrupulously pressed into taking the veil and then subjected to the sexual advances and moral perfidy of her superiors. In the work, the veil is a symbol of imprisonment, darkness, and unbridled, corrupt power. As historian Caroline Ford has shown, "forced claustration" became a legal cause célèbre in the 19th century, as lawyers denounced the loss of women's "civil personality" when they entered convents.
Anti-clerical campaigners condemned nuns' habits in much the same way that today's commentators rail against the full veil as the ultimate symbol of sexual and political oppression. The 19th century in France saw a massive growth in the numbers of women entering orders, and a corresponding increase in the number of wimples that distinguished their distinctive vocations. Nuns' habits were denounced as outward proof of the church's ability to enforce an unnatural spiritual and physical discipline on victimized women. Even today the occasional commentator acknowledges that the Carmelites and Clarisses Sisters, both contemplative orders, impose a strict confinement on their nuns and require a costume little different from the burqa....
Read entire article at Foreign Policy
...Indeed, the debate [over banning the burqa] has a long history in France and is not merely a product of the right, though Sarkozy's opponents denounce it as a nakedly political attempt to attract anti-immigrant support. A powerful, and sometimes irrational, fear of religious influence -- once Catholic, now Muslim -- has long been a part of French society, through the anti-clerical campaigns of the 19th century and the anti-Jesuit paranoia of the Dreyfus affair. It's impossible to understand the burqa debate without understanding the nature of the polemics that shaped it.
Anti-clerical sentiment became a major force in French political life in the 18th century, when philosophers attacked the Catholic Church as an enemy of the Enlightenment and a supporter of the oppressive monarchical government. Many of the early debates centered around women's bodies and freedoms, with religion depicted as attacking society's weakest and most vulnerable members. In La Religieuse (The Nun), Denis Diderot's 1796 novel, a young innocent, Suzanne, is unscrupulously pressed into taking the veil and then subjected to the sexual advances and moral perfidy of her superiors. In the work, the veil is a symbol of imprisonment, darkness, and unbridled, corrupt power. As historian Caroline Ford has shown, "forced claustration" became a legal cause célèbre in the 19th century, as lawyers denounced the loss of women's "civil personality" when they entered convents.
Anti-clerical campaigners condemned nuns' habits in much the same way that today's commentators rail against the full veil as the ultimate symbol of sexual and political oppression. The 19th century in France saw a massive growth in the numbers of women entering orders, and a corresponding increase in the number of wimples that distinguished their distinctive vocations. Nuns' habits were denounced as outward proof of the church's ability to enforce an unnatural spiritual and physical discipline on victimized women. Even today the occasional commentator acknowledges that the Carmelites and Clarisses Sisters, both contemplative orders, impose a strict confinement on their nuns and require a costume little different from the burqa....