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Hoda Katebi is a writer, community organizer, and creative educator based in Chicago. She is the founder of JooJoo Azad and Blue Tin Production, a fashion cooperative that employs immigrant and refugee women in Chicago and prioritizes sustainability, fair wages, and transparency.

Last week, the French Senate approved a measure to ban the hijab for women under the age of 18. It was an amendment to a proposed law "reinforcing the respect of the Republic's principles" under the administration of Emmanuel Macron. To be codified as law, the proposal must be approved by the lower house of Parliament, which experts suggest has "no chance" of happening. Still, the ban has triggered global outrage, and rightfully so.

While it may not officially become law, such measures in the name of laïcité, or French secularism, are common tactics by conservative powers to test public reaction in order to determine how and when to actually push them through. Whether this is perceived as a symbolic case study to gather data or an actual attempt at lawmaking, the very introduction of this proposal is cause for alarm. If it doesn't pass this year, it could certainly pass in the near future; in fact, other anti-Muslim laws in France share similar origin stories. The once "outrageous" early 1990s proposal to ban hijabs and "all 'ostentatious' signs of religious affiliation" from schools, for example, was ratified and enforced within the decade and continues to affect young Muslim women today. The new measure would build on that existing ban by outlawing the hijab for young women everywhere in France, not just in schools.

As an Iranian-American, visibly Muslim woman living in the United States, the attempt to restrict our freedom of dress is not foreign to me. Growing up in the South, it was abundantly clear to me that being visibly Muslim-or just not white-and feeling safe in public was not always a guarantee. In middle school, my hijab was torn off, teachers asked me to remove it, and I was physically assaulted by a classmate. These experiences were not unique to me, though, nor were they a product of individuals' personal biases or ignorance; rather, there are deeper roots in the violence I and other Muslims face around the world.

The hijab, women's bodies, and fashion at large have long been battlegrounds for political power, colonization, and state control, from Iran to the U.S. Recall how in 2017, President Trump was encouraged to send more troops to Afghanistan after seeing a 1972 photo of Afghan women in miniskirts, evidently a reminder that "Western norms had existed there before and could return." While everyone was debating the liberatory merits of hijabs and short skirts, the U.S. was setting up infrastructure to extract natural resources. Or consider the legally mandated headscarves for women in Iran and Saudi Arabia, enforced in the name of a national religious identity; until just a year ago, Saudi women could be arrested for choosing not to wear one. It doesn't matter if a state claims to be secular or religious, or if it's banning a garment or mandating it-in both cases, women's bodies are being politicized and exploited as a means of control.

Today, the global war on terror makes such regulation of (particularly Muslim) women's bodies in Western countries especially easy, using the language of "safety" or "preventing radicalization." In the U.S., this looks like Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), which enjoys broad bipartisan support. This Obama-era surveillance program, inspired by the U.K.'s PREVENT policies, looks for "indicators" of "radicalization" to identify potential violent extremism. Despite the fact that white men have committed the majority of mass violence in the U.S., the behaviors listed as "indicators" of violence are everyday Muslim practices, such as wearing a hijab, growing a beard, or going to the mosque. Simply being Muslim has become criminalized and is considered inherently threatening and violent.

This is precisely the logic that France has used to justify its proposals for hijab bans. In 2019, French minister Christophe Castaner suggested reporting those exhibiting signs of radicalization "more systematically." The indicators he suggested? Growing a beard, wearing a hijab, and going to the mosque, among others. This "war on terror" policy justifies not only banning hijabs for young women, but also massive forced closures of mosques and traumatizing house raids in Muslim communities across France, which have been condemned by the Human Rights Watch.

The ongoing violence against Muslim communities and communities of color in France-with the hijab ban simply being one of the more visible examples-is done not in the name of religious discrimination, but under a banner of unity and French secularism. However, since its legal creation in 1905, laïcité has increasingly become about securing state power and demanding allegiance. Specifically, the 1979 revolution in Iran that replaced a Western and Francophile monarchy with an Islamic Republic instilled a deep fear within the French State-and continues to be cited heavily in France during debates around Muslims and hijabs. Seeing a Western power overthrown by self-determined Muslims and other Iranians led French nationalists to question the safety of their power from their own Muslim communities. France responded soon after, and in 1989 expelled three Muslim girls from middle school for wearing the hijab. It was clear that France was redirecting laïcité to a new era that prioritized undressing Muslim minors against their will and instituting repressive policies in the name of equality under secularism-and at the expense of girls' education.

The contradictions and hypocrisies of laïcité are particularly striking amid the pandemic. France banned face coverings and burqas in public spaces nearly a decade ago out of a concern for safety, yet in 2020, face coverings are mandated to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Suddenly, covering your face no longer poses a threat to national security, but is actually required for national safety.

As Muslim women, our identities and bodies are constantly exploited and extracted: by brands casting hijab-wearing models in their campaigns while ignoring the hijab-wearing garment workers in their factories; as symbols of radicalization to justify violent militarism and surveillance; and as a means to govern what we wear (or don't wear) as a point of national debate, not personal preference. It is incredibly important that we continue to express our outrage at these racist and sexist proposals, regardless of if or when they may become law.

While we may not have to fight hijab bans in the U.S., the proposal has shared roots with policies we've normalized here, such as increased spending on counter-terror and surveillance programs; policing of Black and brown neighborhoods; and bloated military budgets. I hope we too can fight passionately against these less-visible, structural modes of violence against Muslims and people of color.

Ultimately, hijab bans or hijab mandates won't bring us safety and equality-nor will the nationalism, laïcité, policing, and militarism that prompted them.

Many thanks to Hanane Karimi, sociologist and associate professor at Strasbourg University, for her expertise in historical origins of anti-Muslim laws in France today, and Léopold Lambert, architect, author, and editor-in-chief of The Funambulist magazine.

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Journalist, Entrepreneur, and Activist Hoda Katebi on France's Proposed Hijab Ban

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Hoda Katebi is a writer, community organizer, and creative educator based in Chicago. She is the founder of JooJoo Azad and Blue Tin Production , a fashion cooperative that employs immigrant and refugee women in Chicago and prioritizes sustainability, fair wages, and transparency.

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Amendment: a change to a law, either one that has already been passed or one that is still being discussed.
Trigger: to cause something to start.
Laïcité: freedom that the public Institutions have from, the Catholic Church.
Gather: To recolect several things or information.
Outlaw: make something illegal.
Tear off: To leave very quickly.
Bias: an unfair personal opinion that influences your judgment.
Headscarf: Hijab.
Garment: a piece of clothing.
Broad: to separate.
Bipartisan: supported /consisting of two political parties.
Inherently: in a way that exists as a natural or basic part of something.
Allegiance: loyalty and support for a ruler, country, group, or belief.
Instilled: to put a feeling, idea, or principle gradually into someone's mind, so that it has a strong influence on the way that person thinks or behaves.
Institute: to start or cause a system, rule, legal action, etc. to exist.
Amid: in the middle of.
Budget: to plan how much money you will spend on something.
Prompted: to make something happen.

Source:
Cambridge Dictionary: Find Definitions, Meanings & Translations. (2021). Retrieved 16 April 2021, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/

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But not all are bad news thanks to these attempts for banning the hijab and other Muslim's clothes the world has seen that this country has a lot of sexist and racist ideologies which are dangerous for all the diversity that France has inside its vast and wonderful territory.
Women, there have now raised their voices defending their natural rights, not only of belief also their right of decision, with which they can decide whether or not use whatever that they want without going to jail.

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Many people have reacted in a negative way to this law because they think that the French government is trying to violate the right of belief that each person has, as it has done on several occasions before when they banned the use of burqas in a public space or the closure of multiples Mosques in all their territory.

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Similar laws have been trying to be approved in France during the last century, not only against Muslims or foreign people but also against Black communities. The Laicité or French Secularism is a principle that rules this state and which tries to stop or reduce violence by privatizing rights from a small group of marginalized people.

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The French government has been creating some rumors inside its territory about creating a law that bans the use of the hijab for women under 18 years. This action was an attempt to control Muslim women and "protect" their citizens against violence.

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Journalist, Entrepreneur, and Activist Hoda Katebi on France’s Proposed Hijab Ban.

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Journalist, Entrepreneur, and Activist Hoda Katebi on France’s Proposed Hijab Ban.

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To establish this law, the Senate has to approve it, but first, they are trying to see the impact that this possible law will have on society, not only french but also worldwide.