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August 6, 2009

Pants-Wearing Woman Challenges Sudan's Decency Law

Lubna Hussein says she'll take 40,000 whippings if it will change her government's human rights policies.

Katelyn Beaty

French president Nicolas Sarkozy has thrown in support for a Sudanese woman who faces 40 lashes for wearing pants in public, a display the Sudanese government says violates its Shari'ah-based laws on public decency.

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"We will continue to work with [Lubna Hussein] to help in her struggle, which is the struggle of all women," Sarkozy wrote in a letter Thursday. Hussein, a journalist in her 30s working for the United Nations, was among 13 women, some of them Christians, arrested at a Khartoum restaurant July 3 for wearing pants.

Ten of the women were flogged and fined the next day, but Hussein and two others went to trial to challenge the law, in place since 1989, when President Omar al-Bashir instated a strict interpretation of Shari'ah. U.S. and international agencies have consistently ranked Sudan as one of the worst human-rights violators, particularly for its complicity in the ethnic cleansing in Darfur since 2003, and for its failure to uphold religious freedom.

After a protest on Tuesday outside a Khartoum courthouse where police fired tear gas at a crowd of about 100, Hussein told Associated Press she is "not afraid of flogging. ... It's about changing the law," which she believes violates both Sudanese and Islamic law.

"If the [rulers] claim this is based on Islamic Shari'ah [law], can anyone show me a verse in the Qur'an or in the prophet's teachings that speak of flogging women because of their dress code?"

In June Sarkozy spoke out strongly against the wearing of burkas — a garment covering women head to toe — in France. "The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic," he said. Five years ago France banned Islamic headscarves and other conspicuous religious symbols, such as cross necklaces, in state schools. The U.S. State Department estimates that Muslims compose 10 percent of the country of 65 million.

Meanwhile, the Khartoum judge has adjourned Hussein's trial until September, where she might have immunity for her job at the U.N., which she recently quit. However, Hussein has said she's willing to waive her immunity in order to fight the law: "[I]f the constitutional court says the law is constitutional, I'm ready to be whipped not 40 but 40,000 times," she told Middle East Online.

How might Christians respond to stories like this? In light of Sarkozy's comments, might condemning all Islamic women's traditional clothing actually impede on their freedom to express religious beliefs as they see fit? Or, in light of Hussein's case, might there be some religious practices — like flogging Sudanese women if they wear pants — that clearly violate basic standards of human dignity, and should thus be condemned?

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty on August 6, 2009 9:10 AM

Comments

In the burka ban, France is preventing an individual from expressing her religious belief in a way that harms no one, which is a human rights violation. In Sudan, the government is imposing its religious view on an individual without her consent, another form of human rights abuse. Both are wrong, although clearly the second, involving violence, is clearly a more egregious violation of human rights.

Interestingly, however, both Sarkozy and Sudan believe they are helping women through their bans on, respectively, the burka and pants. Sarkozy believes he is helping the Muslim women toward independence and the Sudanese government believes it is helping to keep women chaste (or from being the objects of lust). Both laws are paternalistic and wrong, although clearly there is a significant difference of degree since France isn't threatening to flog women who wear a burka.

Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of these two stories demonstrates that when the government gets itself in the position of imposing a religious (or secular) belief or lifestyle choice on its citizens, even when the law purports to be for the benefit of those upon whom it is being imposed, the results are bad -- bad for the women who feel naked without the burka and even worse for the women who were flogged for violating a religious dress code.

I don't see the questions in the last paragraph as being either/or. My answers are yes and yes. Yes, Sarkozy is wrong to ban the burka because that ban impedes the religious freedom of those women who choose to wear it (however misguided I may believe they are). And, yes, of course some religious practices should be banned -- mandatory dress codes, genital mutilation, child marriage -- NOT merely because they violate basic standards of human decency, but also because they either restrict freedom or physically harm the object of the law. The wearing of the burka, however, because it's an individual practice harming no one, is not a practice that warrants banning as a violation of human decency.

Posted By: Christian Lawyer | August 6, 2009 10:04 PM

I agree with Christian Lawyer: yes and yes. As for France, what I see is a state that is more interested in freedom from religion than it is in freedom of religion.

Posted By: Merciel | August 7, 2009 10:53 PM

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