Many observers have commented, correctly, that mandating the veil is like forcing it off. The coercion involved in both is driven by an obsession to impose singularity on a people that have the propensity to be pluralistic, with its individuals choosing how to live their lives in accordance with their choices, preferences, and ideas.
The fact is that one of the reasons for the forceful imposition of the veil is its forced removal, as had been seen in Ataturkist Türkiye, Shahanist Iran, and Assadist Syria during the sultanic years of Rifaat al-Assad.
With that, there are several ways in which regimes, and sometimes societies, impose veils, and they are not necessarily mere pieces of clothing. On October 6, the New York Times published an article about the city of Oran in Algeria, by Roger Cohen, one of its most prominent writers, that begins with these two paragraphs:
“This handsome but neglected port city “turns its back on the bay,” as Albert Camus wrote in his novel “The Plague.” Living in Oran, he found that “it’s impossible to see the sea, you always have to go look for it.”
That is not a bad metaphor for Algeria itself, a country turned away from the world, cloaked in an opacity so dense as to be numbing. It has long sealed its border with Morocco, and only recently reopened crossings into Tunisia after more than two years. It keeps trade with neighbors to a minimum, and its political powers veiled.”
There is no precedent of the veil being forcibly removed to explain this veiling of Algeria, unless we are talking about the memory of colonialism- keeping in mind that Algeria gained its independence sixty years ago and did not have leaders of little religiosity since. Currently, forgetting is better than such a colonial memory that only remembers with extreme selectiveness and one-sidedness. The abundance with which such remembering is characterized speaks only to the paucity of the achievements being realized in the present- to say nothing about how presenting the past like it was a mere war epic solidifies a regime striving to veil its country from the world to the greatest extent possible.
It was surprising, as Iranian men and women are rising up against forced veiling and its regime, to hear the Lebanese Minister of Culture Mohammad Mortada announce a new project to veil us: his ministry had been “informed” that “friendly” foreign parties have organized a cultural event that is set to begin in a few weeks. It will see a group of writers visiting Lebanon to hold roving seminars that will move around to several places, and “among {these authors} are several adherents, in thought and practice, and supporters of, Zionist projects, whether in their literary works or in their everyday lives.”
While the minister’s statement mentioned that “Lebanon is committed to cultural openness and intellectual cross-fertilization among the civilizations of nations, and we thus welcome any cultural cooperation between countries and peoples, and we also value any openness to global thought and its manifestations of knowledge;” he also warned against “exploiting the culture movement to promote Zionism and its plans for occupation and aggression- both apparent and hidden, which began with the land and will not end with the minds." He stressed that “cultural normalization is more harmful to the homeland, its entity and its future than any kind of political, security or military normalization. So long as the Lebanese laws, which express the will of the people in all of its sects, as well as the values, morals, and sacrifices of the people of this country, prohibit all kinds of normalization with Israel, including cultural normalization, direct or implicit, the ministry of culture in Lebanon cannot, in adherence to law and justice, open the door to Zionist culture, even if it is disguised. Nor can it legitimize Lebanon becoming a propaganda hub for Zionist literature and writers with Zionist aims, purposes and passions.”
It would be a waste of time and an affront to the intellect to debate such rhetoric, which Nazi Germany had been the most important founder of (Nazism, by the way, began its actions with culture wars and burning books because it also saw that “cultural normalization is more harmful to the homeland, its entity and its future than any kind of political, security or military normalization.”) Nonetheless, the fact remains that the minister’s declared desire is nothing short of veiling us from the outside world and the flow of ideas and knowledge, leaving us prey to shallow, repugnant propaganda slogans we now see Iranians revolting against.
Finally, a remark shedding light on the twisted political intentions of policies that impose a veil in the name of opposing normalization. The Amal Movement, which Minister Mortada represents in this government, is the same party that waged the most vicious of the wars of Lebanon’s civil war, the ‘war of the camps,’ against the Palestinians. This happened before the Movement, in turn, caught feelings for Palestine that have only led to a devotion to impoverishing Lebanon and isolating it from the world, as well as subjugating its residents, including the Palestinians.
This politics of veiling now no longer has veils of any kind.
