France's misguided burqa ban

This week, in the name of tolerance, France banned the burqa. And then tolerantly proceeded to arrest two veiled women protesting the ban.

The burqa ban has raised not only strong opinions, but also confusions and obfuscations, not the least of which is what is actually banned, why it's banned, and in service of what greater good. It's not just the burqa but also the niqab -- or any garment that fully conceals a woman's face -- that is banned; the official reasoning is that such covering oppresses women, and that a modern country shouldn't tolerate oppression in the name of religious freedom.

Those opposed to the ban say it marginalizes Muslims and targets the very women it professes to protect -- instead of just the men who are supposedly oppressing them.

Beyond simply diverting thinly stretched law enforcement resources or prompting all manner of institutional hypocrisy (a woman -- Muslim or not -- wearing a beret, a winter scarf and dark glasses would not face a fine), this ban forces us to ask what freedom, tolerance and equality mean in a multicultural society.

Should a diverse society tolerate fundamentalist beliefs, which are by definition intolerant?

Quranic modesty has been interpreted a variety of ways by Islamic scholars. Indeed, there are dozens of different types of head scarves, veils, face and body coverings worn by Muslim (and many non-Muslim) people across the world today. It's on this basis that France argued for the ban; that the full-face veil seen in the burqa and niqab, two among several forms of Islamic covering, is a cultural practice and not a requirement of the Islamic faith.

But France, like many plural societies, is multicultural, not just multireligious. And cultural practices often have very different meanings in immigrant communities than in the homeland.

Although women's rights advocates -- Muslim and non-Muslim, French and non-French alike -- are sharply divided on the topic, some professional Muslim women living in Western societies have described wearing the head scarf -- if not specifically the niqab -- as an act of empowerment, a way to express cultural identity and simultaneously reject being treated in a sexualized way. This is just one example of how immigrants bring a different context to traditional -- even traditionally violent or oppressive -- practices.

Immigrants of all kinds use a wide range of practices and customs to define themselves as a part of, and in relation to, their new societies. This week, The New York Times reported that the practice of voodoo is markedly on the rise in the Haitian-American community so heavily concentrated in the New York area. If there is any faith that has been as widely misunderstood -- even feared -- in mainstream American society as Islam, it is voodoo. And yet, its practitioners describe it as a source of comfort, cultural pride and connection to a native homeland struggling under the burden of poverty, violence, political turmoil and the slow recovery from last year's devastating earthquake.

Many of the Haitian-American men and women who are followers of voodoo are highly educated, successful professionals -- leagues removed from the image of the impoverished rural villages in which the religion has its deepest roots.

Like Haitians in the New York area, Muslims in France are scattered from troubled homelands. Little to no evidence has been found to suggest that Islamic communities in which the burqa is worn are hotbeds of anti-French or terrorist activity.

Some may argue that a truly successful diverse society is a finely woven tapestry, not a quilt made of different, unassimilated blocks. But limiting the opportunities for cultural expression instead creates a monochromatic blanket. Unless France's Muslim women have asked for protection, they shouldn't be punished in their own honor.