By Aisha Gawad
March 4, 2010
An anti-capitalist French political party has fielded a young female activist to run in the upcoming regional elections in Vaucluse. The decision has both right and left-wing politicians up in arms. The reason? The candidate, Ilham Moussaid, wears the hijab.
The party itself, the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA), is even divided among its own ranks over the issue of a veiled Muslim woman representing them in the polls. The NPA was founded a year ago and is a mixture of Trotskyists, anarchists, radical ecologists and trade unionists and is split up into local federations. The federation in the Vaucluse region nominated Moussaid as a candidate, but other federations within the party, as well as leaders from other left-wing parties like the Communist Party, have voiced their opposition to the choice.
As John Mullen, a member of the NPA explains in an interview in the Socialist Alternative, Islamophobia is not just a plague of the right-wing. Leftists in France espouse racist views of Muslims just as often. “It has not been easy for practicing Muslims to join the party because there are a lot of comrades who believe it’s impossible to be a practicing Muslim and ‘really’ opposed to oppression and capitalism...But it also comes from an old confusion on the left in France where to be left-wing has often been considered the same thing as to be very anti-religious and even to hate believers.”
The Socialist Party leader in France, Martine Aubry, publicly expressed her disagreement with the NPA’s choice of candidate. A leader of the Left Party, Jean-Luc Melenchon, said it was a “step backwards.” These leftists find the hijab to be completely opposed to feminist ideals and representative of male domination over women. But they seem to forget Moussaid’s politics. She is an anti-capitalist, a feminist, a Palestine activist, a secular thinker, and an independent French woman working actively to fight for what she believes in.
In a statement to NPA members Moussaid wrote: “It is with great sadness that I watched...my life reduced to my headscarf. It is with great sadness that I hear that my personal beliefs are a danger to others while I advocate friendship, respect, tolerance, solidarity and equality for all human beings.”
This type of Islamophobic treatment of a Muslim woman I expect from the rabidly racist French right, but not necessarily from the so-called revolutionary left. At least the best-known leader of the NPA, Oliver Besancenot, has come out in support of Mossaid’s candidacy: “Our party welcomes youth, the unemployed, the precarious, workers of all backgrounds who find their values reflected in the party. Faith is a matter of personal choice that does not create any obstacle to participation in our struggle so long as members sincerely share the secular, feminist, and anti-capitalist fundamental principles of our party.”
And he’s not the only one who thinks all this controversy is nothing but a demonstration of the French left’s failing to launch a campaign committed to anti-racist ideals. A contributor on a left-wing online forum writes a post about the issue, titling it, “French politicians a bunch of whiny Islamophobic babies.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Additional Sources: Islamophobia Watch
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