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Presentation of the document:

The next congress of the New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France will discuss, in particular, three questions : the socio-economical crisis and how to answer it ; the political perspectives and the choice of political alliances ; the issue of religion and emancipation. The document below is a contribution of the « regroupement “féminisme et laïcité” » (RFL) (Grouping “Feminism and secularism”) on this last theme.

The RFL regroupement formed within the NPA in the framework of the debates initiated by the presentation in the Vaucluse aera of an activist wearing the islamic veil during the March 2010 regional elections. It was a matter of controversy, amplified by the media, because it is an extremely rare event in France, and it was the first time the discussion occurred on a national scale. This candidatures raised a range of issues as the conception of feminism and secularism, as the orientation of the intervention within popular disctricts, as the vision of internationalism, as well as on democracy within the NPA – issues on which we felt there were disagreements. The question of democracy was an important issue at the start of the discussion, when some of us felt they had been somehow betrayed, and wanted to raise the question of how to guarantee it would not happen again. It is not so much at the forefront now.

Somehow, the political profile of the NPA and its emancipatory project is at stake in this discussion. This collective text is the product of exchanges between activists, among whom members of the NPA national leadership.

The regroupment

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In the face of mounting reactions, we must develop combined solidarities

Divisions and unity at the hour of the capitalist crisis

We have to take seriously the deepening of xenophobic feelings in Europe, together with nationalist feelings over identity and discriminatory measures. With the expected deepening of the social crisis, this could lead to pogroms where people described as Muslims (but also the “Roma”) will be in the firing lines as scapegoats. It is no cliché to say that our governments want at all costs to divide the exploited by provoking opposition between the victims of racism (Arabs, blacks, Jews, Chinese…) “national” workers and immigrants, permanent and temporary workers, officials and private sector salaried workers, men and women, old and new generations. It is a major element in the situation.

Indeed, if this desire to divide and rule is the watchword of the capitalist crisis, as old as the class war, there is nothing that is routine about it. The question takes on a special importance at a time when capitalist globalisation is eviscerating political democracy (however bourgeois it may be) and dissolving the area of citizenship. At a time when neo-liberalism attacks the solid achievements of yesterday, collective rights such as retirement, social security, health or public education… A moment of a great historic change when the European bourgeoisies truly wish to demolish the social gains of the post war world.

It is vital in this deteriorating situation to consolidate the unity of solidarity, and to be at the same time, anti-racist, feminist and secular.

Feminism is not only something achieved, it is a combat and a project for emancipation

For the past thirty years, we have witnessed a systematic counter-offensive by extreme reactionary religious movements against feminist gains. This appears in an open alliance between Anglo-Saxon Protestant conservatives, the Vatican and the representatives of Muslim countries in international conferences on women or population, against the right of abortion, against the free choice of sexuality…etc, in the context of the neo-liberal offensive.

In France, this basically reactionary movement strengthened at the turn of the century. As partisans of a “socialist feminism”, we are called on to defend an outlook which has an anti-capitalist, ant-racist and international feminist perspective. We fight not only for equality between men and women in every field (professional work, the sharing of domestic and parental tasks, in political life, in sexuality, etc.) but also against any form of sexist education which builds and reproduces social and sexual division of labour in every sphere of society and produces moral and sexual norms that are differentiated for individuals according to their gender or sexuality. This struggle goes along with the recognition of the right to the self-organisation of women who are mobilised for their emancipation, with the struggle for equality between heterosexuals and homosexuals and against discrimination against sexual minorities.

This understanding of the feminist struggle contradicts monotheist religious “dogmas” which support a “complementary” model of the sexes, based on the assignation of women as a priority to motherhood, the rejection of homosexuality as being “against nature” and for which sex is only licit within the context of marriage. This prescription is a permanent source of inequalities between boys and girls and of undeclared hypocrisy. Who is going to regulate – and how – the “virginity” of young men? The transgression of these norms has heavier consequences for girls, with the result that some of them wait until the last minute before talking about an unwanted pregnancy or are led to undergo surgery to remodel their hymen and their reputation! This is not to argue that there should be a sexual model that makes it obligatory for every young person to have sexual relations at a particular age. Everyone, boy or girl, should have his or her own experience, based on a personal choice. This implies the need for us to condemn firmly religious prejudices which restrict the life of young people and particularly young girls.

In the same way, the wearing of the headscarf or the Islamic veil cannot be regarded as a matter of indifference. From an individual point of view, the wearing of a headscarf can take on various meanings. Some girls have chosen to wear it as a sign of resistance or of politico-religious belonging, while others are obliged to do so from family pressures or pressures from the neighbourhood, etc. But whatever the motives of individual girls (very varied), the headscarf (and even more the full veil) is not just an item of clothing, like any other. To conceal the hair and the body of women has the same meaning in all the monotheist religions. A woman’s body should be hidden from everyone, except the husband, since it is supposed to arouse uncontrollable desire on the part of men. In this view of sexuality, women are represented either as dangerous seductresses or as totally asexual beings, with men being always regarded as feeble beings unable to resist their “instincts.” In a country where the right to have an abortion is endlessly challenged, or where the victory over the Catholic moral order hardly dates from a generation and has not yet become stable in Europe, this can only be regarded as a “regression” by many feminists.
This is why it is a gross error to choose a candidate wearing a Muslim headscarf.

This refusal to regard the veil as a matter of indifference is accompanied by an equally clear rejection on our part of the new law against the “burqa,” an opportunist measure designed as a diversion, in relation to the unheard of questioning of workers’ social rights and the social rights of the unemployed of both sexes, which forms an attack on religious freedom and the ability to circulate freely in public places. We are firmly against the segregation of the sexes which is implied in the wearing of the full veil, but it is not by a law of this kind that one can guarantee the dignity of women. Here as always, we must at the same time oppose government attacks and vigorously carry on our feminist combat.

Defending Secularism

However true it is that the laws on secularism were voted by a republican majority that was colonialist and opposed to votes for women, at the end of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th centuries, these laws represent a basic acquisition for us: a recognition of the freedom of conscience, the principle of equality between all citizens whatever their beliefs and convictions, free education (primary education at that time), the education of boys..and of girls; the separation of church and state (an end of state control over the functioning of religions and an end of their being financed by the state, while religions no longer had the right to interfere in the functioning of the state). All these laws had the merit of curbing the privileges of the Catholic Church and of defining an area of citizenship independent of religious connections and vice versa.

At the moment when Sarkozy diminishes secularism by affirming the primacy of the priest over the teacher, by increasing the funds available for private schools, etc., we should reaffirm as clearly as possible our will to unite the exploited and oppressed of both sexes, independently of their religious affiliations. Thus to put forward a candidate (whatever his or her religion) wearing an ostentatious symbol of religious affiliation can only obscure this message. We consider that believers have every right to a place in the New Anti capitalist Party (NPA), but on three conditions: that they should keep their distance from the religious authorities and oppose any reactionary tendencies; that they should openly question the official pronouncements of their religion on sexuality, relations between men and women, homosexuality, the right to abortion, sexual apartheid, etc.; and that everyone should admit that there should be no proselytism within the ranks of the NPA : it is not religion that unites us, but the will to fight, here and now, against social injustice and capitalism and the will to promote an alternative society freed from the law of profit and from every oppression.

This means that it is not possible to set up religious tendencies within the NPA.

Our actions in working class districts

This concept of solidarity and secularism in political combat should accompany our activities in working class areas.

The multiple forms of social insecurity that the inhabitants of working class districts face are made worse by the systematic repression and the increasing stigmatisation of certain people (particularly of Muslim culture or the “Roma”) who are portrayed as scapegoats. It is imperatively urgent to put an end to racism and repression by police forces, the quasi-military occupation of some working class districts, arbitrary arrests and discrimination over recruitment or accommodation.

These districts need developed public services, particularly in the fields of education, health, housing, child care, transport and culture. There should be a job for every adult, social, material and pedagogical conditions for a real equality in education (re-establishment of the carte scolaire, increase in the means available for national education, an end to inequalities between schools whether they are in rich or poor areas). Young people need material conditions which enable them to study and train, without having to do part time work. Social housing should be built (1 million units are lacking), particularly in better off areas, to avoid the ghettoisation of workers. People should live nearer their work place. Free public transport should be instituted and developed. Health centres should be (re)- established, to permit access to health care for all. Training that provides qualifications and diplomas should be at the heart of the struggle for employment. Sackings of workers should be forbidden and enough jobs should be created to improve and extend the public services, thus putting an end to unemployment in areas where it reaches twice the national average and is even higher for young people, for immigrants and above all for women. Youth centres should be developed to give access to various cultural activities. Local associations should be re-established and their funding increased, to encourage their intervention particularly in schools on various questions, particularly sexuality, contraception, abortion, but also violence against women, sexism, discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersexuals (LGBTI)…etc.

NPA activists are present in many collectives and associations engaged in working class districts. We should further develop our activities and bring our active help to the struggle for employment, health, housing, access to culture and the distribution of wealth. The fight against exclusion, racism and anti-Muslim propaganda is also a priority in these districts. But this struggle should nowhere relegate to a second place the question of the oppression of women and the violence that some of them undergo, nor the combat that many women in these districts carry on for their emancipation. We should be alongside all those who fight against patriarchal oppression in all its forms, including the imposition of the veil, and be alongside all those who fight against religious conservatism.

A multidimensional internationalism

In our political struggles, we must take fully into account the concrete situations which vary according to the countries and regions concerned- but also everything which they have in common. Whether these situations take the form of racism, xenophobia or religious sectarianism, the persecution of minorities is not the concern only of “post colonial “ metropolises, however affected they may be. Depending on the country, there are Christian or Muslim communities, Shiites or Sunnites, natives or immigrants, who are the victims. Attacks against women have nowadays an almost universal character and the increase of sexism is felt (almost?) everywhere.

Unfortunately, we are no longer in the 1970s, when the currents of liberation theology were developing. Today, the rise of the far right and of religious reaction can be seen in Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, Buddhism… and not only in Islam. This is active in the United States, in India and in the Middle East, as it is in Europe. It leads to serious attacks against the right to abortion, going as far as its total suppression (Nicaragua!). It presses women in the Muslim world increasingly to wear the veil or the full veil.

Attacks against secularism have a truly international dimension, targeting even its foundation, the separation of church and state, and not simply some particular aspects in certain countries. At the initiative of Pakistan, the UN Human Rights Commission has condemned blasphemy in the same way as it has condemned racism, even though such a decision is opposed to the freedom of conscience or expression and its implementation would lead to the direst violence. Community courts begin to operate in countries such as Great Britain, which (in the case of sharia law in particular) puts into question the rights that benefit the women concerned. Secularism is one of the conditions – necessary indeed, though not sufficient by itself – of a shared citizenship, a common law and political democracy.

As anti-imperialists, we fight against globalised capitalism, the policies of war carried out by Washington, the attempts at domination carried on by the European Union, and against our own French imperialism. We refuse to introduce a hierarchy of oppressions or to play the game of divide and rule, by only supporting certain victims, in the name of “principal enemy.” In Afghanistan, for instance, we defend women, whether they are the victims of NATO armies, the allies of Washington or of the Taliban. Internationalism obliges us to support the fights of all those oppressed and exploited throughout the world, not only against American imperialism but also against local reactionary regimes.

Lets develop democracy within the NPA

At the next congress, we’ll have to vote in particular on 5 questions:
* On our conception of democracy within the NPA to avoid in the future new “faits accomplis” like what happened at the occasion of the regional elections. The candidature in the Vaucluse of a veiled activist was decided without any national collective discussion, while this choice did have a national dimension. The NPA was summoned to shoulder this decision, as if the discussion was closed before having begun, while everyone knew that this question deeply divided the NPA. A democratic party cannot function in such a way. The rule commonly accepted until now is that discussion always precedes decision. In the present case, it has been the opposite. We know that many activists were appalled that was imposed upon the whole organisation a candidate displaying a religious sign, which became for some a flag;

* On the process of selection our candidates to elections or to position of responsibilities putting them in direct contact with the media;

* On the need not to trivialize the islamic veil, etc.;

* On the possibility or not to accept members conspicuously displaying their religion and wearing a sign discriminatory toward women; *

* On our conception of secularism.

Many of us consider that all these questions must not be overlooked by the coming congress and that clear votes on them are necessary.

* Note: all the main “trends” within the NPA, including authors of this document, consider today that the party must remain opened to women wearing an Islamic scarf.

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