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Politics Of The Veil By Joan Scott Summary

707 Words3 Pages

Jonathan Wert
5/7/17
French History
Dr. Blackman
Politics of the Veil Politics of the Veil, written by Joan Wallach Scott, is about the 2004 controversial headscarf ban in France. Scott opens with, “This is not a book about French Muslims; it is about the dominant French view of them.” Scott examines the political storm surrounding the French ban on headscarves for girls eighteen or younger in public schools. The book is an easy read, filled with first-hand accounts of the racism felt by Muslim women. Scott is an American historian who focuses in gender and intellectual history. She teaches at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. Joan Scott has been studying these issues for many years. The main argument, is against the …show more content…

The United States legal system is unlike Frances, because in France, differences of religion are formally unacknowledged, so instead of legal protections based on differences, all French are considered first and most importantly French citizens. French Nationality comes before all other markers of identification. Secularism is supposed to protect French citizens from any claims of institutionalized religion. Scott’s research found very few of the girls wore the headscarves to school. Many of the young girls chose to wear the headscarf. They were not pressured by any imams, the fathers, or brothers. Pro-ban arguments use the French version of secularism which defines not only separation of church and state, but the state’s role as the protector of individuals from religious order. Pro-ban supporters argue that Islam threatens republicanism by stripping Muslim women of the liberty to choose to wear or not to wear the headscarf. Obviously, it’s a poor argument because a majority of the girls were not forced to wear the headscarf. Many pro-ban supporters often downplay the fact that Catholic culture has an embedded role within …show more content…

Scott states, “Islam’s insistence on recognizing the difficulties posed by sexuality revealed more than republicans wanted to see about the limits of their own system.” (Scott, 154). In the end, Scott reveals how the inability of the French government to address the issue of the veil meaningfully understates the current inability of France to create a country that can co-exist with

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