[We are reproducing here the text of our column published in the Nouvel Observateur]

Can we support both the Iranian women's revolt and the right of women to wear the veil in France?

On October 29, "L'Obs" published an article by the Anglicist Eric Fassin and the American historian Joan Scott, stating that there would be "nothing contradictory in supporting the right of women to wear the veil in France, and not to wear one in Iran." This raises some surprises.

The first surprise concerns the strange use of this sociological injunction: "Ignoring the context makes no sense," they say. Certainly, but taking contexts into account does not consist of making it impossible to compare situations; it is to highlight similarities and differences - and it is even a foundation of the social sciences. Now, if there are obviously fundamental differences between veiling in Iran and veiling in France (if only because it is prescribed there while it is permitted here in public spaces and prohibited in schools and civic settings), there is also a similarity that the two signatories refuse to see: the consequence of the veiling of women for religious reasons, regardless of the country where it is practiced, is to impose a representation of women as necessarily impure, guilty of uncontrolled sexuality, and to subordinate their inclusion in the ad hoc community to respect for this injunction.

"There is nothing contradictory in supporting the right of women to wear a veil in France, and not to wear one in Iran," by Joan W. Scott and Eric Fassin

This is why defending this practice in the name of individual "freedom" ("In both cases, feminists are protesting against a State that hinders their freedom of choice") is to ignore - through bad faith or blindness - that its effects are necessarily to curb the freedom of all other women not to wear the veil. How can we not see to what extent community pressures are at the root of the so-called "choice" of veiling? How can we not understand that it does not only have a personal "meaning" for those who brandish it but also and above all effective consequences for others? How can we be so blind to the fact that far from being a simple expression of personal convictions, it is above all a religious symbol carrying fundamentalist proselytism? And would it be too much to ask of social science specialists to take into account the collective dimension of the phenomena they are supposed to analyze, as well as this very real context which is the weight of religious injunction and Islamist militancy in France?

"Stunningly blind"

Second surprise: having affirmed that "we cannot therefore interpret the veil outside of time and space", the signatories immediately lose interest in the temporal context, thus avoiding worrying about the obvious fundamentalist regression that has affected the Muslim world for three generations, and which we cannot ignore affects above all the freedom of women and gender equality. Thus, in Morocco and Algeria, the more the veiling of women has progressed since the 1970s, the less women are integrated into the world of work: only 10 to 15% of them work outside their home: for the others, it is veiling, family and home! This is why putting on the same level "the imposed veil" and "the forced unveiling" as part of the same fight against "all forms of patriarchal domination" is astonishingly blind to history. Is this really the kind of allies that Iranian women who are fighting today are calling for, just like the many Muslim women in France who are waiting for help to defend themselves against the grip of bigots?

Third surprise finally: by demanding the right to freedom for Iranian women but not for French Muslim women subjected to communitarian harassment by Islamist "big brothers", are the two authors not using double standards? On the one hand, the universality of the value of freedom, on the other, its conditioning to "cultural" characteristics that would justify removing certain women from this right? It is this same reasoning that, not long ago, had incited progressives to refuse to condemn excision in the name of respect for exogenous "cultures". Universalism here is variable geometry: anti-patriarchal solidarity beyond the Mediterranean, but patriarchal complicity as soon as it concerns our suburbs.

Yet one would expect someone who presents themselves as a sociologist to go beyond the proclaimed intentions of certain actors, especially when they are subject to sectarian influences (this is the ABC of sociology), and a feminist to refrain from promoting religious patriarchy. For those who have not understood what the "useful idiots of Islamism" are, here is a perfect illustration.

Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, anthropologist
Nathalie Heinich, sociologist
Xavier-Laurent Salvador, linguist
Pierre Vermeren, historian