IInterventions during the act seminar

1° Member of the European Parliament (ALDE)
2° Noura Jaballah, President of EFOMW
3° Sarah Ludford
4° Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament (ALDE)
5° General Secretary of European Forum Of Muslim Women
and others

1° Member of the European Parliament (ALDE)

Welcome everyone and thank you for coming. It is a great pleasure and privilege to be with you here today. I would also like to thank the European Forum for Muslim Women for inviting me to open this seminar, a momentous and timely discussion of the challenges faced by one of Europe’s biggest and most understated minorities.

Europe is facing a dangerous situation with the rise of Islamophobia. This form of intolerance is worryingly commonplace today and is fuelled by a sometimes hysterical media. This, in turn, is only further inflamed by reactionary government policies such as demanding cultural assimilation and banning Islamic garments. And increasingly, the targets and victims of such discrimination within Europe’s vast and varied Muslim communities are women.

Over the years, I have worked on this issue with many dedicated parliamentarians within the committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs as well as the anti-racism and diversity inter-group. We have made no secret of our frustration at national governments’ failure to tackle such intolerance head on. We have vociferously campaigned for more robust EU legislation to do exactly that. Indeed we have had some success in the form of the recently passed race hate law. As an MEP, I am proud to say that my own constituents will now finally have similar protection from racial abuse abroad as at home.

However, this alone will not protect them from draconian laws designed to appease popular prejudices rather than tackle them. Prejudice, after all is not an act but an idea, one reinforced by stereotypes perpetrated in wider society by its main opinion formers, the press.

There are few better examples of how such stereotypes are shaping public debate and in tu the laws of EU member states than the Netherlands, where MPs are debating a ban on wearing the burka in public. The supporters of this ban have included hard liners who claim that Muslim women are failing to properly integrate into Dutch society and indeed could be hiding explosives under the garment. The so-called progressives, on the other hand, have argued that the ban is necessary to liberate such women from “clothes of control”. How ironic that the denial of a civil right as basic as deciding what to wear is actually viewed by some as liberating.

In the Belgian city of Maaseik, a ban is already in place and women who do not abide by it can be fined or even imprisoned. The decision was defended by the city’s mayor on the grounds that women dressed in burkas were scaring old ladies and making little children cry.

These views are very much peddled across Europe by the media who, in each of their respective member states, have exhibited a deep hostility for Islam as a religion and a culture.

Never was this more apparent than in Denmark in 2005 upon the publication of a series of cartoons satirically depicting the prophet Muhammad.

Although freedom of the press is sacrosanct in any liberal democracy, there is a lot to be said for a newspaper which championed caricatures of Muhammad as a victory for free speech, but refused to publish satirical images of Jesus Christ two years earlier for fear of causing offence.

The ensuing protests and even outbreaks of violence were led by a vocal and radical minority whilst the silent, but still aggrieved, majority did not question the newspaper’s freedom to print whatever it wanted. The reaction of the rest of the European press though was to condemn Islam as being incompatible with liberal democratic principles laying their hostility bare.

Their message was that while Muslims may live and work in Europe, while they may marry in Europe, dress like Europeans and even speak like Europeans, they can never assimilate European values.

This perceived rift between Islam and liberal democracy has ultimately led populations and policy makers to question whether Muslims belong in Europe at all. This has inevitably taken its toll on the citizenship rights of Muslims in those countries that decide the answer is no. As a result in countries like the Netherlands, Muslim migrants are forced to undergo tests to prove their allegiance to the nation just to gain the right to reside there, let alone become a citizen there.

Immigrants from the US, EU, Canada and Australia though are commonly exempt from such tests.

These restrictions on residency and citizenship rights hit Muslim women the hardest.

Although such discrimination can arise simply when residency rights are dependent on marriage, it is often because they stand out the most.

Critics refer to the sight of Muslim women wearing burkas and hijabs as visible proof of their subjugation under men and therefore a further indictment of Islam as being incompatible with

European values and of Muslims as being unwilling to integrate.

This is because such customs are associated with Muslim countries where they are enshrined in Sharia law. They are associated with legal inferiority imposed on women by repressive regimes where a woman can be raped and beaten only to then be accused and convicted of crimes against chastity. Therefore, women who embrace their faith and practice traditional customs are perceived as either apologists for these repressive regimes or victims of them. As a result, they are either shunned or pitied by their European detractors.

Of course this could not be more false. Islam has been around for more than a millennium and has helped to shape modern European law, medicine, science and culture alongside Christianity and Judaism. Furthermore, as real as the subjugation of women’s rights in many Muslim countries is, it is hardly synonymous with Islam as the emergence of Islamic women’s rights compaigns proves.

I use that phrase instead of the simpler term ‘feminism’ as I understand that it carries western connotations which miss the point. This point being that campaigning for women’s rights is just as possible within an Islamic framework as it is within a western liberal democratic framework.

Indeed, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Turkey have had female Prime Ministers. Iran for all its failings regarding women’s rights has a sizeable contingent of women sitting in its Parliament. As a matter of fact, there are more women in the Iranian parliament than there are Muslims in the UK parliament.

However, merely the sight of so many of you here today who have campaigned tirelessly for these key freedoms and entitlements whilst retaining your beliefs and traditions is proof enough of Islam’s compatibility with European values.

Furthermore, the combination of Islamic and western beliefs and cultures directly entails a tempering of the extremism and ignorance that has led to the polarisation of cultures in Europe.

Access to jobs, security and social acceptance engenders trust, respect and confidence. The friction between Islamic communities and wider society, depicted by the media as a fundamental clash of cultures, has intensified in the context of the war on terror, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition.

So as long as stereotypes are allowed to prevail and the achievements of women such as yourselves are dismissed as exceptions that prove the rule, we run the risk of moderate voices not being heard; women’s voices not being heard.

On that note, I want to introduce to you two colleagues of mine from the Alliance of Liberals- 4 - and Democrats in Europe who have been instrumental in the organisation of this seminar, Saj Karim and Filiz Husmenova.

Saj, also a colleague of mine in the antiracism and diversity intergroup, of which he is Vice-President, and the Liberal Democrats, is a truly exceptional parliamentarian. He is a member of a range of committees through which he addresses the key challenges of the 21 globalisation, climate change and freedom and security in the global war on terror.

Saj, on becoming the first British Muslim to be elected to the European Parliament in 2004 has been very active tackling the rising levels of intolerance and the emergence of Far Right groups across Europe and he shall of course, be moderating today’s seminar.

Filiz is a recent and welcome addition to the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe since Bulgaria’s accession. She is currently vice chair-woman of the committee on regional development and, since 2006, has been a member of the central executive bureau of the movement for rights and freedoms.

I give special mention to her now as she unfortunately will not be able to join us today as she is leading her election campaign in Bulgaria for which I wish her the best of luck.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I will hand over the podium to our next speaker. Celebrated for her defence of Muslim women’s rights and for her leadership of Muslim women in Europe, I give you the President of the European Forum for Muslim Women, Noura Jaballah.

Thank you very much.

-      Noura Jaballah :

 Ladies and gentlemen, members of parliament and journalists, dear guests, I am very happy to welcome you and thank you for your participation in this meeting aiming at exchange and mutual enrichment.

Let me present the EFOMW, this organisation of young Muslim women anxious about their future in the European space. This organisation seeks to bridge a gap in the representation of Muslim women on the European scale.

It is a group of fifteen organisations that are eager to act and participate fully in building a fairer, more human Europe, a multicultural Europe where dialogue is possible and essential.

They have resolved to break away from the archaic image of Muslim women and testify to their importance, action and involvement.

Our main objectives are :

- Helping Muslim women behave as exemplary citizens, despite discriminations and islamophobic acts, and strive to change mentalities, a necessary condition to make it possible to live together.

- Increasing Muslim women’s awareness of the importance of getting involved socially, and initiating a real citizenship impulse.

- Bridging gaps, starting to look, together with Muslims and non-Muslims alike, into the difficulties hindering a full social and professional integration of Muslim women and drawing some provisional conclusions.

- Within the Muslim community, restoring the true personality of Muslim women, as learned, enterprising, socially involved, and free to choose their way of life.

- Promoting such an image of Muslim women in Europe, where their image is tarnished by stereotypes and prejudices.

Our main challenges are twofold :

On the one hand,  blameworthy practices within the Muslim community itself, where some rigorist trends opposed to women’s full development still persist.

On the other hand, we want to remedy some of the consequences linked to the islamophobic atmosphere nurtured by the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 that put forward the image of a warlike Islam in the West’s collective representation.

The media’s discourse about the fight against international terrorism has created an atmosphere of fear and dread of Islam and Muslims, now supposed to constitute a threat to stability and peace inside Europe itself.

As far as today’s subject is concerned, I have a story to tell you and two remarks to share with you :

The story seminar. It largely epitomizes our fellow citizens’ mental set-up, that remains conditioned by the media’s treatment of Muslim women :

Our partners at the ALDE were responsible for preparing the poster for the seminar, so the assistant showed us a first proposal (poster n°1) : a burka-clad Afghan woman carrying her baby !

 

Of course we refused the proposed poster and we made it clear that this was about European women. This resulted in the second proposal (poster n°2): a picture of two Yemeni women wearing niqab, an Afghan woman and a demonstration of young veiled women in Turkey !

We therefore asked her why she insisted so much on those pictures that did not represent European women. She told us she could not find anything else in the archives of the Parliament’s media service ! So, this is the only kind of pictures available in those services because those are the pictures that the media publicize and put forward !

We later provided our friend with our own pictures taken during our great annual congress in Brussels, that got important media coverage but to which very few European media came. Thus, this story reveals the general media atmosphere in Europe, and how citizens must act to change the situation (the last poster, n°3, takes reality into account).

is that of the poster for today’s

The two remarks

1- It is easy to notice that most of the time, for commercial reasons, because the press thrives on sensation, the media give a caricatured image of Muslim women :

According to the media, Muslim women fall into two categories:

• Some are modern, happy and accomplished : they are those who give up and denounce their original culture to achieve social success

• Others, on the other hand, are submissive: they are those who remain attached to their original culture, in particular their religion, and especially those who wear the so-called Islamic headscarf : they are shown, according to local circumstances and the international context, either as submissive and oppressed, or as extremists and terrorists.

Thus a simplistic, Manichean vision has led to the creation of two types of women that carry immutable characteristics. Yet, everybody knows- that such a vision is far too reductive. A closer look reveals how complex Muslim women are, and this is not specific to Muslim women alone, but it is true of all women. The way they dress or the headscarf alone can neither make women accomplished nor prevent them from being so.

Indeed, this biased reading is the direct consequence of the confusion that exists between the fantasy of oppressed, submissive women in some societies, and the complex reality of women in European society, where women enjoy every kind of freedom. It is most naive to draw such an unjustified parallel.

2- We can just as easily notice what an important part the media play in orienting public opinion. The media’s power even reaches up to the spheres of government, that sometimes just have to follow the general trend in order to keep up with public opinion.

The headscarf affair in France is emblematic of how the media are set on Muslim women and how the media treatment they receive is used to stigmatise Islam itself.

Throughout 2003 and up to March 15 2004, not a day went by without the media publishing an article about those poor Muslim women who were oppressed in Muslim countries, or a report on forced marriages of young girls in French suburbs, or testimonies of girls beaten by their brothers, accusing Islam by simplistic deduction since all that happens in the Muslim world can only be explained through religion. For example in Spain, when a woman dies every week because her husband beat her, the explanation lies in the high rate of female unemployment that is supposed to breed domestic violence ! This is the explanation given most seriously by the Spanish Socialist party. On the other hand, similar domestic violence in a Muslim country or in a Muslim-majority suburb would necessarily have its roots in the Islamic religion.

That headscarf affair took on such importance that analysts like Pierre Tévanian, in his book “ Le voile médiatique ” (The media veil) states and demonstrates through statistics that this headscarf business was built up, he thinks, by the French media, that it was invented by journalists and politicians and gradually took on gigantic proportions, leading to a repressive law being passed and hundreds of teenage girls dropping out of school.

While it is true that some Muslim women do suffer violence from ignorant or extremist Muslims, it is neither fair nor sensible to stigmatise a whole community and condemn all those young European Muslim women, who were raised on the values of freedom and equality and who have to put up with stares, confusions and disparagement, and sometimes even exclusion and marginalization.

The aim of this seminar is obviously not to attack the media : on the contrary, we think that revealing and denouncing the oppression of women, informing about unlawful practices, is the very essence of a journalist’s work. However, journalists must not leave out the efforts of European Muslim women in defending their rights, in changing archaic and misogynistic frames of mind, fighting for equality between men and women and hoping to be a voice for all those women.

The aim of this seminar is to ponder together over the image of Muslim women and how it is perceived by different people.

 

I hope that through the discussions, we shall all reap from this debate better knowledge and new approaches. 


 

3° Sarah Ludford

Thank you very much, Noura. I think we can all appreciate from that speech why your reputation for leadership of Muslim women is so well deserved. I think you have given us a good basis for the discussion in the next hour or so. I do regret actually that Filiz is not able to be here because I think that she, her experience, she’s the second liberal Muslim member of the Parliament and it would have been very good to have a discussion with her here today, but we have our first liberal Muslim member of the Parliament, Sajjid Karim with us, who was elected in 2004.

He was actually the first British Muslim parliamentarian. We need a lot more but we’re very grateful that Sajjid Karim was elected to the European Parliament so we made a parliamentary breakthrough in that respect. But Sajiid has been very active in community issues, in tackling intolerance, both domestically in his part of the U.K. and across Europe. And he is, as I said earlier, he is vice-chair of the anti-racism intergroup. I think he has taken a particular interest in combatting the emergence of far right groups and parties and with considerable success in his locality. He’s going to be moderating today’s seminar and introducing all the other speakers. Also I mentioned Cem Ozdemir, who is a German Green and a good colleague on our Civil Liberties Committee and in other contexts.

But I could just say a particular word on Alima Boumediene, who was also a colleague, until 2004, also from the Green group, but for France, also on the Civil Liberties Committee. I think we have a tendency to cluster on the Civil Liberties Committee. But it is very good to see her here as well this morning. So with that all due, if I can hand over to Sajjad.

 

4° Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament (ALDE)

Good morning. Thank you very much Sarah and Noura, for your introduction. Can I just... I’m conscious that we do have some time pressures, the time table that we have to work towards, so I’m going to be fairly quick with my introductory remarks. Can I first of all, I am pleased that so many of you have come to the European Parliament, to follow this discussion and this round of contributions to take place. Also welcome to Cem Ozdemir, who’s sitting to my left. He’s a good colleague from the Green party here in the European Parliament, from Germany.

It’s very interesting this whole issue of the portrayal of Muslim women in the media, and the point that Noura made regarding the making of the poster. That for me was a very interesting exercice. The look of horror on my face when the first poster flashed upon my screen, and the reaction that prompted from me was clearly an indication of the sort of battle that we’ve got here and some of the things we have to do, of some months ago, where in my constituency the leader of the House of Commons, he’s a gentleman of the name of Jack Straw and he’s a member of Parliament from Blackburn, and he said that the wearing of a veil was a sign of separation.

And of course I do take on board the points that Noura has made in relation to that. But a very interesting thing happened immediately after that in my locality and I was lucky to be in my constituency the moment that the story broke and the local radio station “Radio Lancashire” went out, and there is a very high Muslim population in that area. And they invited Muslim women who were wearing either the headscarf or the veil, to put forward their contribution why they choose to dress in this particular way. And some very interesting things emerge from that. Many of the women were stating that, in fact they were the- 8 - only family member that was choosing to dress in this maner.

Not only in the United Kingdom, but also in the country of origin. And these people, these individuals had – all have been brought up in the United Kingdom, or had certainly spent the large majority of their lives in the United Kingdom and they’ve gone through the education system in the United Kingdom, their upbringing in the UK and particularly in Lancashire. And many of the people who took part in these contributions, made this point, as a liberal actually ---, she said “Look, we are told, from the point of schooling here in the United Kingdom, as European women we can dress the way we like and we can choose what we like, and now we’re choosing to dress in this way, and you have a problem with it, because it is not the way that you want us to dress.” Now as a liberal, I have to accept that as a vey valid point.

 

 

If I am going to protect and argue that each individual has the right to dress in the manner, that they like, of course in any manner that they like, within the bounds of decency. The very real challenge that we have. I’m going to move on to the introduction of the interventions, everybody should have a program which sets out the people who will be contributing. The fifth intervention will not now be taking place, the Commission Representative will not be joining us.

Four contributors and I intend, due to the time pressure, I was due to finish at 10.15 in order for a debate to take place and I hope we have a very vigorous debate, but what I intend to do, without being unfair, is to allow 10 minutes ot each of the people presenting so that will still leave a reasonable amount to take place, immediately afterwards. If I could go straight away to the first intervention “A Female engagement, a history of choice” and I would like to invite Dorsaf Ben Dhiab to make her contribution.

 5° General Secretary of European Forum Of Muslim Women

First of all I would like to apologize for the academic aspect of my intervention, for I think we do not know one another enough, and we should seize this opportunity to tell one another basic things, that seem obvious to some but may not be so for others.

I would like to speak about women, about Emilie, Déborah, Magali, Hiba, Salima, Fatiha, Béatrice, and others, and about all the others I know and those I do not know. About those women who have a past, a fight, and who have made a choice. Why do I say their names ? Because one has long been seeing a ghost-like image, an image of veils without names, without faces. Ghost-like figures, described as deprived of intellect or evolition, just appearances, outlines, without any affective or intellectual reality. Why is image so important to every one of us ?

Image is seen as important from our very childhood, when the schoolteacher tells us to “make a nice drawing”. Such an exercise consists in representing the world around us, in drawing up a grid according to criteria. It goes together with another exercise, just as important, that is selfperception.

Self-perception and the perception of others : the heart of the matter lies in those two categories. For personalities are partly built through this narrow interaction with the other’s gaze, how we see ourselves through their eyes (the other can refer to many identities : our parents, family, neighbours, school, society in general). The process would have been very different if distortion by the media did not contribute to building a collective image where individuals such as Emilie, Déborah, Hiba, Salima, and the others dissolve into a compact whole : the Muslim woman.