Power and Morality in French Muslim Society

This post at "This Blog Sits at the . . ." talks about the experience of young Muslims in France:

From an article in the present New Yorker:

[M]ore often those [young Muslim] girls [living in France] were under orders [to wear the veil] from their fathers and uncles and brothers and even their male classmates. For the boys, transforming a bluejeaned teen-age sister into a docile and observant "Muslim" virgin was a rite de passage into authority, the fast track to becoming a man and, more important, a Muslim man. For the girls themselves, it was the beginning of a series of small exemptions from Frenchness — no sports, no biology, no Voltaire — that in the end had nothing to do with diversity and everything to do with isolation.

Power. It all seems to come down to power, doesn't it? For most of us, we may resent the perceived power others have over us — parents, teachers, bosses, even spouses — but we live in a society where, beyond the early teenage years, we have some veto power over all those sources of external control. It is possible, if not advisable, for anyone to walk away from those who want to control us and society will not materialize to drag us back into subservience.

To some, on both the far right and the far left, this is what is wrong with our society. To most of us, it's so ingrained as being "right" that we never consider what it is like living in societies where this is not at all "right" or "proper" or "acceptable". Young Muslim women in France are living in a twilight world: they can see freedom all around them, but they are not free: any attempt to leave the family can lead to forcible return, physical abuse, or even death, with the external forces of societal control unable or unwilling to intervene for fear of antagonizing the Muslim subculture.

Manifestly, this treatment of women is an attempt to achieve power and assert control by a group that feels itself dispossessed of power and denied control. I don't know the historical and cultural details that help explain why young Muslim women proved the victims in this case. It is usually a more "other" other: African Americans for red necks in the American south, Francophones for Anglo Canadians, the Irish for the English, teens by adults, immigrants by the native son. Usually, the other is an outsider. It is not usually your sister.

But when your sister is the easiest target, on whose behalf nobody will speak or intervene, and when you have been brainwashed into believing that you have divine authority for your actions, she becomes a natural victim.

[. . .] this is a fateful enterprise that never works. Control of this kind never stills the anxiety that feeds it. As Eldridge Cleaver pointed out in Soul On Ice, this anxiety renews itself. The more you seek to control the other, the more power you give them. And the more you must seek to control them.

For some people, however, this is not a bug; it's a feature.

Some people thrive on exerting their power, especially when it clearly forces others to conform against their own better interests or judgements. It is a toxic addiction to raw power.