The Veil Debate - is it a prelude to eliminationist politics in Europe?

Belgium is all set to become the first European nation to ban the Burqa (the face-covering veil that is worn by some Muslim women). The move will affect an estimated 650,000 Muslims in Belgium - 6 per cent of the population. Belgium's lower house of parliament banned burqa-type Islamic dress in public. But the measure may face a challenge in the Senate where Christian Democrats and Liberals questioned the phrasing of the law, which says no one can appear in public "with the face fully covered or partly covered so as to render unrecognizable." 

Belgium, like many northern European countries, has a cold climate with daily temperature minimums of 7 C (44.6 F) and maximums of 14 C (57.2 F), based on the averages for the years 2000 to 2006. The average temperature is lowest in January at 3 C (37.4 F) and highest in July at 18 C (64.4 F). It does not take a genius to see the hypocrisy in the bill. During the winter season most Belgians end up using some forms of headscarves and face-masks (similar to ski-masks) to fight the cold, blistery winds blowing from the North Sea to render them unrecognizable. The text of the new law does not specifically mention Burqas but makes it illegal for anyone to wear clothing 'that covers all or most of the face' in any public place. And yet, the law doubtlessly will racially profile Muslim women for wearing burqa and niqab (face-covering). Under the proposals, Muslim women could face a week in prison or a fine for wearing a veil in public.

The Belgian move against Burqa comes as debates continue over banning the Burqa in France, Switzerland and Italy. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is the European lead dog leading this crusade. As I have shown elsewhere, while most European leaders are racists by nature, very few are as hostile to Islam and Muslims as Sarkozy has been. As the grandson of an opportunist Jew from Salonika (in today's Greece and the old Ottoman empire) -- the homeland of many Donmehs (that lived there since the time of Sabbatai Zevi, a 17th-century Jewish kabbalist who falsely claimed to be the Messiah), the Young Turk movement and the Free Masons that brought down the fall of the Ottoman empire -- and a Free Mason himself, Sarkozy's hostility to anything Islamic is simply unbelievable. It is rabidly eliminationist and extraordinary. 

Sarkozy is also very close to Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. It goes without saying that Sarkozy's enthusiasm to punish Iran and deny her the legitimate right to develop nuclear energy is rooted in his bigotry and Zionist heritage; he is doing the pitching for his eliminationist friend Netanyahu and the rogue state of Israel. In a May 10, 2007 issue of the Jewish Journal, Raanan Eliaz wrote something that escaped most people's attention but given the fact that both Sarkozy and Netanyahu are the leaders in their respective countries, it is important that we revisit it. Raanan Eliaz, a former director at the Israeli National Security Council and the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. wrote, "Although Sarkozy's family roots will not bring France closer to Israel, the president's personal Israeli friends may. As interior minister, Sarkozy shared much common policy ground with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The two started to develop a close friendship not long ago, and it is easy to observe similarities not only in their ideology and politics but also in their public image. If Netanyahu returns to Israel's chief position, it will be interesting to see whether their personal dynamic will lead to a fresh start for Israel and France and a more constructive European role in the region."

It is not difficult to connect now the dots in Sarkozy's crusade against Muslims in France, in particular, and Islam and Iran, in general.

The essence of Sarkozy's new paradigm, if we are to switch Jewish author Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's (the author of the book - Worse than War) terms from the German scene to today's France is 'eliminationist anti-Muslim'. We see a good parallel in Goldhagen's depiction of German anti-Semitism with today's anti-Muslim campaign by Sarkozy and his European ilk. At one extreme of this new spectrum is the French and European perception that Muslims are vaguely different. At the other extreme is the perception that Muslims are distinctly violent who, if not stopped now, will one day impose their 'shariah' on the French or European society. Between these poles is the perception that Muslims are more or less flawed. As we know from history, moving from one end of the spectrum to the other, the complementary German desire to eliminate an unappealing feature of the Jews rapidly yielded to the desire to eliminate Jews altogether. "The eliminationist mind-set", Goldhagen proclaims, "tended towards an exterminationist one." Through their speeches and acts today's Sarkozy and other European leaders - closet and open bigots - have unmasked their own evil mindset. 

President Sarkozy has said more than once that the face-covering veil is not welcome in France, and that he wants a law restricting it. In January, a French parliamentary committee issued a much-anticipated, 200-page report recommending that women be banned from wearing the full-face veil in public office buildings, schools, hospitals and while using mass transit. The full-face veil is viewed by many in France as a sign of extremism and a threat to gender equality and secularism.
Sarkozy began the debate in June 2009 when he said that the full-face veil was "not welcome" in France, currently home to more than 5 million Muslims, the largest such population in Europe. At present, fewer than 2,000 Muslim women wear the full-face veil in France, according to Interior Ministry statistics. Lawmaker Andre Gerin, the president of the 32-person, multi-party parliamentary panel, has called the full-face veil in France "the visible part of the iceberg" and warned that "behind the iceberg is a black tide of fundamentalism."

Last week, a school in Spain - Instituto Camilo Jose Cela at the Madrid locality Pozuelo de Alarcon -- banned headscarves for Muslim girls. The school board's bigoted decision is forcing the 16-year old Najwa Malha to not attend class while wearing headscarf. Like many places in Europe these days, the regional government (Comunidad Autonoma de Madrid) is held by a right-wing Fascist party - the Popular Party. As expected, when the student's parents appealed against the school decision, it upheld the school decision. Interestingly, the national government, held by the left-wing Socialist Party (PSOE), has a dubious position. While the Minister of Education has stated that the right to religious freedom and the right to an education should prevail over the prohibition to use the headscarf, he, like many hypocritical Christians, differentiates between the presence of a Christian (Catholic) Cross in a class-room as a collective symbol and the headscarf as a personal symbol. Obviously, to closet bigots like him, too afraid to appear xenophobic on the religious ground, headscarf worn by a Muslim girl is symbolic of women's oppression and not of her religious freedom. Not surprisingly, Christian female students in the catholic convents are not prohibited from wearing headscarves.