France’s parliament will be debating a full ban on the hijab, or Muslim face veil, this Spring. The Dutch are considering a similar ban in schools and government offices. Several states in Germany have already banned teachers from wearing the veil. The Swiss will most likely debate a ban soon, after recently prohibiting the construction of new mosque minarets. Dutch far-right parliamentarian Geert Wilders went on trial last week for, among other things, calling for an end to “the Islamic invasion” and likening the Koran to Mein Kampf.
Restricting overtly Islamic dress is nothing new, even within the Muslim world. Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey all have varying degrees of prohibition against the veil to combat the influence of political Islam in their societies. For most women, many of them Muslim, the veil has no basis in Islamic tradition. It is an innovation meant to exploit and oppress. But perhaps the more pertinent question is this: in Europe’s thousand year history of conflict and coexistence with the Islamic world, why is the reaction to Islamic symbolism gathering steam now? Europe certainly is not more Christian than in any time in its history. On the contrary, one can say religion has been playing a steadily decreasing roll in politics and society since the age of Inquisition and Crusade. So what’s going on?
One must look at this as a struggle over collective identity, with Islam and Europe representing opposite sides of the same coin. The supreme irony is that as the co-dependency between Europe and the Muslim world builds, so does potential conflict. As Europe ages, it must import more and more younger workers from the Muslim world to fuel the labor demands of its economies. Similarly, Muslim economies have failed to provide for the employment and social safety net needs of their growing populations. The people move where the supply-demand imbalances are. In places like France and Germany, Muslim workers are approaching 5% of the total population. They are more visible than at any other time in history.
Many of these Muslims, like so many immigrant populations through the ages, wrap themselves tightly in their traditions as they resettle in foreign lands. This inevitably provokes a reaction as European leaders question whether new populations can be “integrated” or will they begin to threaten the values of broader society. In effect, the insecurity of each group, its obsession with retaining its identity, feeds upon each other, building the tension to a boil.
Extremists on both sides will exploit this tension to create conflict. Politicians like Geert Wilders will use the backlash against the Muslim influx to gain votes and political power. Radical Islamic fundamentalists with no modern tradition of nonviolent political competition will take this to the realm of violence. They count on the general malaise and identity crises of disenfranchised Muslim youth in Europe to recruit the foot soldiers of terrorism.
Given this reality we are tempted to conclude that Muslim immigration in Europe is bad, that it should be scaled back because it exacerbates tensions and leads to radicalization. But this is exactly what Muslim radicals are banking on. This extremist minority in the Muslim world feeds off the ignorance and isolation of both sides. Among Muslims, conspiracy theories and insidious propaganda about the “Crusading Christians and Jews of the West” work best in the absence of meaningful dialogue between every day people on both sides of the two civilizations that can debunk this disinformation. In Europe, panic and backlash can be sown more effectively when average Europeans cannot see for themselves that most Muslims are moderate and only want to educate and feed their families. This is what the extremists want- for people to remain separated by a wall of insecurity so that both sides can be better exploited.
In the long war on extremism, accelerated integration between the Muslim world and the West is perhaps the key to victory. This is the soft war of nuance and persuasion, interaction and cooperation that snuffs out the fires of extremism through patient dialogue. It transcends the drone attacks, troop surges and enhanced interrogation techniques that can only target a small minority of extremists. Most of the other radicals continue to live within broader Muslim society, counting on its sympathy and ignorance to perpetuate their ideology of hate. Greater day-to-day interaction between Muslims and Europeans erodes this ignorance and reduces the potential sympathy of the broader population for extremist violence. It inculcates shared values as culturally diverse populations come in closer contact and overcome stereotypes. There are bound to be tensions. This is natural. But the lesson should not be to back off or slow down. Otherwise, we give terrorists what they want.
European governments should be free to pass laws that prohibit Islamic dress in certain instances, such as in government offices or schools. After all, the veil is offensive to many women, both Muslim and non-Muslim. These laws are also a signal to Muslims in Europe: these are our values and they are universal. When it comes to state institutions that are being used by all citizens, everyone- men, women, children- must reveal themselves. But a proper balance must be struck. Dictating what Muslim women can wear in the general public space or within their homes could itself be viewed as a form of oppression against women who truly wear the veil for their own personal reasons (however misguided they might be, that is not for a government to decide in a free society). For these women, better to use the blunter instruments of education and further inclusion into broader society. Their children, raised and educated in a free Europe, will no doubt have a very different viewpoint on appropriate female dress.
We must continually remember what extremists hope we will forget: there is more of a linkage between civilizations than a divide. There is a reason why the prophet Muhammad looked back to Abraham as the founding father of his faith and why the earliest Muslims prayed in the direction of Jerusalem. He placed Islam firmly within the Judeo-Christian tradition. The great Islamic civilizations that rose up in his wake prospered through trade, tolerance for minorities, and intellectual exchange at a time when Europe bled with bigotry. The Greek masters- Plato, Aristotle, Galen- became a shared scholastic tradition between European and Islamic society, but only because Muslim scholars first bothered to translate, preserve and comment upon them. If it weren’t for the exchange between civilizations back then, a patient interaction that continues until this day, the reason,logic and philosophy that is the foundation of “Western thought” may have been lost forever.
