Gendering the diversification of diversity

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the recent headscarf debate inBelgium, and explores in particular to what extent issues of gender equality and feminist arguments were central to the discussion. It is argued that compared to France, concerns about secularity and state-neutrality, national identity and equality, all find resonance in the Belgian context, but are articulated in a more ambiguous and less 'principled' way. This partly explains the paradoxical situation in which, despite a widespread resistance to a general law banning the wearing of religious symbols in public schools, in practice, headscarf prohibitions are on the rise throughout various regions of the country. Although issues of gender equality and cultural diversity often cut and flow across debates and policies in European nation states, the Belgian hijab question provides a unique case, because of various lines of fracture and processes of increasing diversification that characterize Belgian society.

Muslim journalists in Western media: Maria TV reported by Telecinco, CNN and the BBC

“…The report by Telecinco, which seems to be approached from a gender perspective, transmits the perception that Muslim women are blissfully ignorant of their oppression by an ultraconservative religion. The phonetic strategies of the news presenter, the stereotyping of women who, moreover, are not given a voice (Torres, 2009) and the fact that the women are not presented as journalists all would indicate that the Telecinco report, in the guise of a defence of women's rights, is nothing less than an exercise realizing 'patronizing Western patriarchy' (Coene and Longman, 2008), as widely denounced by leading Muslim feminists (Hussein, 2015).…”

“…The paternalistic view of Muslim women (Coene and Longman, 2008) is that, in comparison with liberated Western women, they are repressed. Not taken into account, however, is that the Muslim woman may -or may not -opt for a more Western lifestyle and that violence towards women is not limited to any one religion or geographical area.…”

Secularity, gender, and emancipation: thinking through feminist activism and feminist approaches to the secular

“…Heralded as a 'multicultural' nation in terms of its dealings with linguistic-ethnic diversity among its dominant Dutch-French-German regions and populations, the current dominant political climate tends more to Flemish-ethnic nationalism and is increasingly exclusionary vis-à-vis what are perceived as non-European minorities. Despite the educational and institutional diversity that impedes central and general legislation with regards to bans on veiling, in practice today the headscarf is effectively banned from most schools in the country (Coene and Longman 2008;Bracke and Fadil 2012). In 2017, a federal ban was implemented on wearing the burqa and face veil in public spaces (Ouald Chaib and Brems 2013).…”

Countering illegibility: Religion, ethnicity and sexuality in public debates and lived experience in Belgium

“…In Belgium, headscarf debates and regulations have increased in number and intensity since 2004, when the French National Assembly and the Senate passed a law that bans obtrusive religious symbols, including headscarves, from the public domain. While the Belgian history of acknowledging, dealing with, and supporting various religious and nonconfessional communities could be described as a locally specific model of multiculturalism, the current debates on and regulations of the headscarf and the face veil draw upon Republican notions of neutrality and secularism that are much more typical of the history and self-definition of France (Coene and Longman 2008;Bracke and Fadil 2009). They can therefore be seen as signalling transformations in prevailing Belgian church-state relations (Fadil 2011, 87, 88).…”

“…The brutal and bloody nature of this maintenance work is everywhere in evidence ' (1994, 1). Critical insights into the dynamics of structural inequalities, disadvantages and privileges have spurred antiracist, anti-Islamophobic, anti-fundamentalist, feminist and LGBTQI critique and social movements (Bracke 2004;Coene and Longman 2008;Midden 2010;Tauqir et al 2011;Aune 2015;Dhaliwal and Yuval-Davis 2015;Roodsaz and van den Brandt 2017). In these critiques and movements, 'difference' is often criticised in terms of processes of marginalisation/minoritisation, and simultaneously affirmed in terms of the specificity of religious, ethnic, sexual or gendered viewpoints and experiences as the ground upon which society might be envisioned 'differently' ( Van den Brandt and Longman 2017).…”