I am not completely sure of my position on the French government’s desire to ban the wearing of the veil or burqa in public places. But I disagree with much in Christopher Hitchens’ Slate column today, in which he offers a full-throated defense of the ban. His opening salvo:
To the contrary, [French authorities] are attempting to lift a ban: a ban on the right of women to choose their own dress, a ban on the right of women to disagree with male and clerical authority, and a ban on the right of all citizens to look one another in the face.
So this argument rests completely on the idea that women could never choose, of their own volition, to don a full veil or a burqa. Now "own volition" is a tricky thing to discern when there might be various levels of social pressure to conform. But while the clothings’ origins surely stem from a clerical and patriarchical system of repression and control and sexual pathology, the persistence of the practice in Western societies or in more secular Muslim countries like Turkey makes it close to impossible to decide by what inscrutable process women choose to dress the way they do.
The NYT article on the ban makes this point:
Fewer than 2,000 women in France wear a version of the full veil, and many of them are French women who have converted to Islam. The full veil is seen here as a sign of a more fundamentalist Islam, known as Salafism, which the government is trying to undercut. On the left, the veil is seen as repressive and a violation of women’s rights, even though many women who wear the veil insist that they are doing it as a free choice and see a ban as a restriction of their liberty.
First of all, France has 62 million people, which makes the existence of 2,000 veiled women not exactly a social catastrophe. Though if you think that the presence of a veil is prima facie evidence of violent coercion and abuse, then yes, the number of such injustices doesn’t matter; one is too many. Hitchens notes that in some Muslim countries the threat of honor killings or brutal beatings—and the knowledge that authorities are likely to look the other way—keep many women toeing the line. This is clearly awful in every way. But physical intimidation and domestic abuse are already against the law in France, and I dare say the authorities there do not look the other way so various religious groups can carry out their depraved version of biblical morality.
If you think a veiled women is by definition a victim of domestic abuse, will criminalizing her veil magically turn her home into a paragon of familial bliss and equality? I think not. It seems bizarre to go after the second-order manifestation of the abuse rather than the source of the abuse itself. Criminalizing the behavior of the victim is an awfully perverse way to tackle the problem.
But that is only if you agree that all these women are unduly coerced. I don’t grant that premise, because how are we to know? Back to that NYT quote above: who is to decide that these French women don’t really mean what they say about it being a free choice? Who is infantilizing whom when we say that these women don’t really know what’s good for them? I know that things like social and religious conformity are powerful motivators and can work on people in various insidious ways even if not explicitly articulated. But how can the State regulate against behavioral conformity? Every day we all act in a million different ways that signal our desire to avoid various social disapprobations. Maybe some of those ways are healthier than others, but that signalling is a complex and thoroughly fundamental social phenomenon. I don’t think I want the State deciding which signals are just too weird to countenance.
I am loathe to give any religious practice special consideration or exemption, or really benefit of the doubt of any kind (don’t get me started on circumcision.) But what is the actual first principle at work here? I don’t think it’s religious exemption. Hitchens seems to think it is this:
My right to see your face is the beginning of it, as is your right to see mine. Next but not least comes the right of women to show their faces, which easily trumps the right of their male relatives or their male imams to decide otherwise.
I have no clue where he gets the idea that he has a "right" to see my face and vice versa. For instance it seems fashionable now for some young women to wear sunglasses that literally obscure three quarters of their face. If they pair it with, say, a baseball cap, I can definitively say that I have no idea what their face looks like and I would have no ability to identify them later if pressed to do so. So Hitch waxing nostalgic for some golden era of physiognomic openness is just silly.
I think the first principle is this: By what right can the State regulate how we dress? As Hitch notes, there are a variety of legitimate security and decency interests that the State can appeal to, and I recognize that each society can draw their specific lines in different places. In some parts of this country we allow public nudity (i.e. beaches), and some parts we don’t. Dress codes or demands of formal attire are ubiquitous. But usually norms are created and enforced through informal social pressure. We choose to dress certain ways in different circumstances because we don’t want to stick out or be objects of group opprobrium. But absent threat of violent reprisal, I don’t know what we can do about such norms. If certain Muslim women identify with a social practice that strongly encourages them to wear bags over their heads, I may readily agree that this doesn’t contribute to their well-being, nor does it foster larger societal cohesion or comity; but I’d be forced to ask myself: what the hell does it matter what I think?
To conclude, if the behavior is coerced under implicit or explicit threat of violence or severe emotional harm, that is already illegal. If the behavior is coerced because women feel a pressure to avoid disfavor in a social/religious group with which they self-identify, that would seem to be a problem for these women and their social group to work out, no matter how distastful or anti-social we find the particular behavior to be. These are grown adults in Western countries; and absent a threat of undue reprisal, the presumption simply has to be that they freely choose their own group identifications, and then proceed to adopt the social norms and practices particular to that group. As long as such norms and practices do not violate the rights of others or interfere with the State’s security function, we just have to deal with it.
Maybe you’re a bit morbid and are wondering, in the wake of the failed Times Square bombing: Why don’t we see more low-level terrorist attacks like this, aimed at the many soft targets in this country? These things seem quite easy, if not to pull off successfully, then at least to attempt. And we can all think of a handful of grizzly ways to hurt a rather large number of innocent people, and most not involving such crudities as strapping a bomb to our genitalia and hoping for the best. 
What is the instinct that gives such a special place in the hierarchy of evil to guys who seem to have gleaned their criminal tradecraft from Wile E. Coyote? I’m serious. Why do our leaders insist on elevating these assholes to the level of comic book villains? I know Magneto can escape from a supermax prison, but KSM can’t. I know trying to read Miranda rights to Doctor Octopus (pictured right) might be a tricky thing for a whole host of reasons, but Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? Please. 
