France and the Burqa

With respect to the increasingly secular nature of globalisation in Europe and the prominence of religion in the Middle East - a rising global centre - does France’s action in banning the burqa signify a rising cultural divide between the conservatives and libertarians of the East and West?

Religious purposes and advocacy are, and have been throughout history, a major driving force behind the actions of peoples and individuals alike. Always a highly personal topic, the staunch insistence that one is correct in one’s knowledge of the one, true god inevitably fuels the inter-religious conflict and causes schisms in society and between cultural factions. Absolute conviction in one’s beliefs is hardly a negotiable position, and as a result, clashes with difference are ultimately aggressive and uncompromising. Add into the equation increased occurrences of interaction with “the other” (Beck, 2006; Hall, 1990) due to globalisation, being “the process of increased interconnectedness between societies such that events in one part of the world more and more have effects on peoples and societies far away” (Baylis et al., 2008:8), and we have the world we have today – a world in which difference is often looked upon with distrust and attempts at cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism are overshadowed by suspicion and fear.

In this essay, I shall examine the political dimension of the debate about the banning of the burqa in France, the various responses to it, and the consequential clash of societies that are moving in different directions – traditionally the difference being contrasting religions, but now also the difference between the secular and the sacred, particularly the nature of the progression of a civilisation – and later the effects and consequences of such actions on a global scale. The discussion shall be a progressive examination of the arguments for and against the ban, concluding with an analysis of the relevant right-wing ideologies – that which is...