PETER VAN DER VEERliving tradition, there is much Islamic debate surrounding the issue; but if we want to
recognize difference, we must acknowledge the debate on its own terms and not replace
it with one about parity.
Fraser’s view on the second issue, whether wearing the headscarf exacerbates female
subordination, fails to engage conceptions of male-female relations that are hierarchical
in nature, but rather condemns these conceptions as univocally patriarchal and thus as
acceptable only in a strategy that leads to gradual emancipation from them. That is fine
as an expression of value pluralism, but the real clash comes with the power of the state
to enforce equality against the wishes of the Muslim minority. In fact, the banning of the
headscarf is a direct result of majoritarian democratic politics in the framework of the
nation-state; it has everything to do with governmentality and little with emancipation,
and will probably result in strategic essentialism on the part of Muslim girls who want to
assert their difference. Even if a defense of headscarves is accepted by the state, it must be
phrased in Fraser’s secular language of autonomy and freedom and not in the religious
language of moral reasoning that the minority uses. Fraser’s fine attempt to bridge the
gap between redistribution and recognition in social philosophy does not question its
underlying secularism and will thus fail to effectively recognize difference.
My account of the events in Holland goes beyond the contradictions generated by
policies of equality or parity. These events have been triggered by open disrespect and
even aggression by the majority population against Muslims. The common perception in
the Netherlands is that Muslims must be secularized and integrated into society; otherwise
they will be a threat to the unity of the nation. The perceived need for this secularity and
unity is embedded in a society’s history and is clearly different in different societies. In
the Dutch case, it is not an elaborated theory oflaicite ́that is the foundation of the state,
as in France; it is, rather, the shared and recently developed values of liberty of choice in
consumption that are the ideological basis of Dutch unity. The fact that the clash with
Muslims in European societies commonly centers on the headscarf does not imply that
that issue means the same thing everywhere. In Holland, I think it reflects not so much a
perceived challenge to the secularism of the state as a perceived rejection of sexual liberty
and consumer values.
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