The Veil: Instrument of Women's Oppression

(Letter)

2 March 2015

Re: “For Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution,” reprinted in Workers Vanguard No. 1062

Dear comrades,

Comrades drew my attention to the article mentioned above and the problem on the question of the veil. So I read the article, and there is indeed a problem. As part of the polemic against the feminists, you correctly explain their position on the issue of the veil. But this explanation is insufficient. The article doesn’t state that we are against the veil as a symbol of women’s oppression. Feminists who read our article could respond by saying we are for the veil and thus insensitive to women’s oppression. Wearing the veil is not freedom to dress as one wants. It has another meaning: to be subjected to all the oppressions of family and society (see your article, “No to Reactionary ‘Charter of Quebec Values’,” reprinted in Le Bolchévik No. 206 [SC No. 179, Winter 2013/2014]).

As I said in my presentation, we are known for our position on the veil, for example in Iran and Afghanistan where we’ve had as one of our main slogans, “Down With the Veil!” The point of being against the law is that it is a racist law against the Muslim community in countries in which Islam is a minority religion. But we are of course against the veil, including in such countries. This is essential, particularly in the current situation with ISIS and the imperialist propaganda against “Muslims.”

Cgs,
Myriam

SC replies:

We thank the comrade for her letter. Our article “UQAM Feminists Fail to Gag Marxists: For Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!” (first published in SC No. 183, Winter 2014/2015) rightly attacked those feminists who backed the former Parti Québécois government’s xenophobic Charter of Values, which would have barred Muslim women wearing the headscarf from public sector jobs. We also took out those, including the petty-bourgeois nationalist Québec Solidaire, who called to ban women wearing the full-face veil (niqab) from receiving public services. As we wrote, “The feminist sisterhood may be powerful, as the saying goes, but it doesn’t include fully-veiled Muslim women.” However, the comrade is quite right that we should also have stated that we are opposed to the veil. As she said in her presentation at our forum at the Université du Québec à Montréal last September:

“We say: the veil is the symbol of women’s oppression, but we don’t give the bourgeois state permission to ban it. This law has nothing to do with women’s liberation, but is a racist law for excluding girls from social life—school, work, etc.”