Veiled Bigotry in Germany

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/opinion/veiled-bigotry-in-germany.html

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Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has been a bulwark against the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-globalization forces afflicting Western democracies. So it was dismaying when, on accepting her party’s nomination on Tuesday as its candidate for another four-year term, she joined in the spreading European campaign against the full-face veil worn by some Muslim women.

In France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Bulgaria and Norway, where bans on face veils are in force or in the works, they have been portrayed as a defense of women against patriarchal subjugation, or as a security measure, or as an incentive to assimilation. But the truth is that the bans are first and foremost a direct expression of antipathy toward Muslim immigrants, usually meant to appease far-right xenophobes.

Ms. Merkel apparently believes that her endorsement of restrictions on face veils “wherever legally possible” is a relatively innocuous sop to discontent among Germans over her decision to allow more than a million asylum-seekers, most of them Muslims, into the country since 2015. Her address to her Christian Democratic Party was otherwise an admirable reaffirmation of her faith in human dignity and tolerance, along with a realistic assessment of an era in which “many people have the feeling that the world has gone off the rails.”

The chancellor had rejected a drive in August for a complete ban on face veils by members of her party, ordering them to write a more limited law. The measure Ms. Merkel spoke of this week would not be a blanket ban, but would apply only in places like courtrooms, government buildings, schools and public demonstrations.

But that change doesn’t alter the effect of associating Muslims who maintain traditional customs with terrorism. The rapturous applause that greeted Ms. Merkel’s remarks on the ban was about Islamophobia, not a serious security concern over a rarely encountered form of dress.

In France, which was first to impose a full veil ban in 2011 and where some seaside cities last summer ordered even more absurd and humiliating injunctions against body-covering swimwear called the “burkini,” one official claimed that the bathing suit “conveys an allegiance” to terrorist movements. Islamic leaders in Europe have countered that the bans in fact lead to women feeling excluded from Western societies, and thus facilitate radicalization.

Ms. Merkel is right to see a growing threat from anti-immigration parties that have seized on popular anxiety over migrants and the fear of terrorism to challenge mainstream parties. But she is wrong to believe that trampling the rights of Muslim women to wear what they please will satisfy the anti-immigrant forces. The real danger is not the veil — it poses no threat — but the bigotry of those who’ve made it a symbol of their own fear and hate.