I will begin by stating that I do not like Burqa. It’s certainly oppressive but would I really want to ban it when many Muslim women, or so to say, Islamic feminists claim that my desire to ban a female garment, when the judgement must be ideally left to them, goes against the very fundamental definition of feminism? There’s certainly a kernel of truth in their argument. They say, “It is my free will to wear anything I like to. I alone get to decide because it is all about me & you should probably take a hike”. How do you unpack this sentiment? It’s not as simple as it really sounds to be, that’s certain for sure, because the Burkha is an oppressive tool of social conditioning as well as a choice, at the same time.
I think that the argument of choice/free will therefore is needed to be addressed because there’s no better way to approach the paradox at play here than this. The argument that needs to be addressed is fairly straightforward, it merely states that by actively banning something, we are curtailing someone’s choice, thereby impinging on their free will, ergo Hizab & Niqab don’t have to be banned.
WHAT REALLY IS FREE WILL
I agree with a part of aforementioned statement but I also believe that it takes willful liberties with the concept of free will itself. Allow me to quote the argument on the concept by Simon Blackburn who addresses the issue with choices in his work, ‘Think’ by narrating a parable from Gospel, Mark 11: 12–14. It goes like this: Jesus had once traveled a great distance from Bethany & the journey took a toll on him, he was hungry. Naturally, as he saw a fig tree in the distance, his hopes were raised & he gathered pace & will, & made a determined walk to the tree. But alas, the tree had no fruits. Enraged & dejected, Jesus cursed the tree & proclaimed to his disciples that no man were to eat this wretched tree’s fruits again thereon. And lo & behold, as they decided to resume the march, they encountered the poor shrub, dried to its very roots, withering & dying.
Let us consider the tree’s position in the entire matter. At any rate, if the fig tree was mindful that this being winter he couldn’t have borne any fruit, because god has made it that way, you know, it can only bear fruit in summer, he could’ve argued with Jesus that no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t have done anything to satiate the old man. However, this argument presupposes that the tree is mindful of its condition in entirety. But what if it isn’t? What if all it knows is that it has the ability to bear figs, on occasion, & feels bad for not having borne fruit at this particular occasion when the stakes were high for him. What if the fig tree believes that the ability to lay fruit itself is voluntary for him, without having breached the subject any more than that standalone thought? When that happens, the fig tree may believe that it holds the choice to bear fruit simply because he can. That he didn’t gnaws at his soul because it failed when it really mattered. That’s what the fig tree thinks but that’s not how things go.
Schopenhauer distills this argument further. He narrates an example of a man who is standing on the street after a tiring day at work. The man thinks he has various options available to him at this very moment. He could hit a bar, he could go bowling perhaps, or even visit a friend. Then there’s always the option of walking back home anyway. Invariably the last option is what the man picks almost everytime. Well, to him, he picked, but it really wasn’t him, it were the larger conditions of his personal life that made the decision for him. In short our man did not exercise free will.
We are for the most part not conscious of the underlying conditions that not only make us, us but also control our arguably intimate freedom to act freely. Take Burqa for example. Religious Muslims claim that it is not sanctioned by divinity, however that doesn’t negate its sanctity. And we do know, with little doubt, that Burqa is indeed an object associated only with Islam. If you were to see a Burqa clad woman on the road even whilst knowing zilch of her faith or how she looks like, you will correctly guess her faith 10/10 times. If Burqa is closely associated with Islam & has endured the sands of time, not having changed much since the times of yore, then most certainly it has some sentiment of morality attached to it. It is considered to be a mark of loyalty to one’s God & husband. In this setup, if a Muslim woman is brought up on such clothing since here adolescence, has been conditioned to be religious & God fearing, then this women most certainly will carry on with the clothing even when she’s no longer being watched or judged for what she does. The point being, that the woman in the question is as free as our friend on the street & poor Mr Fig Tree. She thinks she has a choice, I mean on the face value she does. But does she really? In ideal conditions when she’s on her own in a different culture, she thinks, “Well, I can wear a hundred different clothes if I wanted to but let me wear my Burkha today, since I’ve made a choice & I had an abundance of options, I must surely be acting out of my free will”. However, like our friend who ends up walking back to his wife every evening, our Muslima isn’t really being free. Not only does her social upbringing makes her to anthropomorphize garments as evil & good, but she was also never really given an option in her growing years to try something different & decide for herself & even if she was, her religious faith came in between of her making a true choice.
But what of Muslim women who have been brought in very liberal surroundings & adopt Burqa voluntarily. Well, like our friend on the street, who wasn’t being forced to walk back home but did anyway, the Muslim woman chooses Burqa because that’s an acceptable piece of clothing over some other choices, something that’s supposed to make her more pure & be acceptable to fellow Muslims. Perhaps the zeal of the new convert: a person who goes out of his way to show that he belongs, muddles her choice making ability. A major determinant of free will is the concept of responsibility. If you’re truly free to make choices, the outcomes are your responsibility. So if let us say, you had an exam & you decided not to study because you had this splitting headache that won’t let you to, would you hold yourself responsible in an event of failure? Some might but that would be irrational given you already made a choice by weighing the consequences. The question in case of Burqa is about the consequences & the underlying moral responsibility. It is really not as intimate & personal than the poor kid flunking the exam in my example, it is passive because you risk judgement from the larger society or you end up chastising yourself for not having met the exacting test of purity of your faith. If the consequences began & ended with you & if nothing really controlled your decision making, then you’d have been free.
IS BAN A SOLUTION:
Here I agree with the liberal argument against banning of Burqa. Quite simply we aren’t making people free by banning something which largely should be left for themselves to decide. What you wish to eat or wear are intimate decisions regardless of the deterministic or free will arguments for/against them. Bans curtail your choices, thereby cutting down on your options & your agency of choice.
So how do we get about it for we have a damned if you do & damned if you don’t problem. Setting aside the lack of utility on the act of outright bans aside, I believe we have a path to circumnavigate the problem at hand. What if we looked at the root of the issue itself, which is lack of agency & lack of conscience of lack of agency. What if we are to create active conditions where people are presented with a plethora of choices with no divine/moral/cultural sanction against these choices? That would mean reforming Islam, which I believe is an arduous & painstaking task, but one which will invariably bear fruit. Banning Burqa in France or India for a supposed goal of women upliftment will not magically stop making their relatives & in some cases, even them, to stop associate positive emotions with the clothing. It might achieve what it desires to outwardly, I don’t know, I’m no sociologist, but most certainly it could also end up becoming a symbol of resistance. And what I do know that a better way exists that addresses the problems rather than outrightly lunging at the symptoms & declare victory over a supposed defeat of religious prudish behaviour & fundamentalism.
Spinoza states this with some conviction. He says that freedom & knowledge are directly proportional to each other but knowledge itself, is not of much use unless we have a proportional number of opportunities presented to us. Blackburn simplifies this further by providing an analogy of a crime scene where the victim dies of poisoned coffee. Can it be argued that the victim was free to not drink the coffee because no one forced him to, thereby assigning part of the blame on his person? No, because lack of knowledge on the nature of coffee prevented him from making an informed decision. If he knew any better, he’d have acted differently. Or what if he knows the coffee is poisoned but is forced to drink it at gunpoint, hoping his system metabolizes the poison to waste? Is he at fault of making a wrong assumption & dying a horrible death in return? Wouldn’t it be fairer to say, that this person could have died a better death if he had chosen differently, therefore again he’s at blame? No, because he never knew the nature of the poison & didn’t want to die anyway.
Knowledge & independent decision making are two true pre-requisites for an individual to be free. While the ban is not concerned about the former, it curtails the latter, therefore if someone says that Hijab is anti-free will, so is its banning.
