Last month I participated in a Channel 4 News debate on the niqab. The debate itself was quite nondescript. It was the behaviour of the niqabi ladies who mobbed me afterwards that told the real story.

Yasmin Alibhai Brown mentioned that she had received violent and abusive messages from niqabi ladies during the week, and the panellists were quick to tutt tutt at such awful behaviour. Within half an hour the hooliganism of the niqabi women who harangued me showed the gulf between actions and words. One lady hissed that I needed to repent and that she did not want to stand in front of Allah because she did not advise me. My crime? I ventured. First, you sat next to a kafir man. Yes, I remember sitting on a chair, which was next to a chair on which Douglas Murray sat. I don’t ever remember sitting on his lap. Do these women travel on the tube or walk down Oxford Street? Or are they chaperoned everywhere by their unemployed mahrams? My second crime was to speak against my sisters. Actually, I did not see any signs of sisterhood in the room that evening.

As I tried to leave, after the debate, a small group of niqabi women surrounded me. The niqab is mentioned explicitly in the Qur’an and yet you deny its validity, was their argument. Having been a teacher of the Qur’an for over twenty years, I am well aware of the lie of this claim. The verse in question is in Surah An Nur: “And do not reveal your beauty except that which ordinarily appears”. The precise meaning of this phrase has been disputed by the greatest scholars of the Muslim world. The Companion Abdullah Ibn Masud was of the opinion that the face and hands have to be covered. The Prophet’s (S) cousin, Abdullah ibn Abbas said that the face and hands need not be covered. Ibn Kathir quotes Aisha who mentioned that the Prophet (S) saw her sister Asmaa wearing revealing clothes and told her that once a girl reached puberty, she could show only this and that. He then pointed to the face and hands. Clearly the Companions themselves disputed regarding the issue of the niqab.

There is no denying the niqab and khimar were features of pagan life, and were Islamicised. Given there is Ikhtilaf on whether or not the niqab is obligatory, neither side can claim to have jumhur on the issue. The great salafi scholar, Sheikh Nasiruddin Al Albani, professor at Madina University, was adamant that the niqab is not wajib. In his book “Jilbab Al Mar’atul Muslimah” he argued this point forcefully. He quotes ibn Rushd from Al Bidaayah that most scholars, including Abu Hanifah, Malik, Ash Shafi’i and Ahmad, are all of the opinion that the face is not awrah.

Sheikh Albani’s colleague, the late Sheikh Ibn Baz, disagreed vehemently and the two men often argued the point. That is the beauty of legitimate Ikhtilaf. The problem with many salafis today is they are incapable of acknowledging the existence of Ikhtilaf. When I told the woman in question that the niqab is not mentioned in the Qur’an, her response was to allude to the Qur’anic verse that “whatever the Prophet gives to you, take it, and whatever he forbids you from, refrain from it.” Her next comment was that I do not follow the Sunnah.

This is the takfiri mentality for which the salafis are famous, not their adherence to the Qur’an and Sunnah. She was implying that I deny the authority of hadith, and this made me see red. My late grandfather was Sheikh Abdul Ghaffar Hasan, professor of Hadith at Madina university. My late maternal great grandfather was Maulana Yunus Qureishi, another scholar of hadith. My father is Sheikh Suhaib Hasan, a graduate of Madina university and teacher of Quran and hadith for over fifty years (may the Almighty give him health and a long life). I have been brought up in the lap of hadith while these women probably grew up in the lap of heresy and pagan ritual. To accuse me of denying hadith when I am simply pointing out a difference of opinion among the scholars is frankly ludicrous.

Therein lies my dilemma. Salafi blood runs in my veins and is embedded in my psyche. I see the wisdom of its insistence on a close contact with the Qur’an and Sunnah. I know the importance of avoiding innovations and heresy in worship in order to keep the faith pure. I acknowledge the necessity of showing respect to 1,400 years of scholarship and intellectual thought. We cannot isolate the Qur’an from its historical context nor from the audience who were the first to hear it. It is precisely this Sunnah that tells us to separate the cultural context of Arabia from the mandatory rules on an Islamic life. Our faith has survived and prospered because generations of Muslims had the confidence and ability to interpret and adapt the framework of Scripture into their particular context. They looked beyond the superficial outward trappings of rules to the inner core of Islam, and they transmitted this beauty through the ages.

But today I feel ashamed to call myself a salafi because of the arrogance, judgementalism and lack of tolerance of these people. The Prophet (S) taught adab, manners, courtesy, gentleness and good character before he taught ritual worship. During the debate Douglas was told by one woman that she had no interest in hearing the opinion of a man. The crowd had booed and heckled him when he spoke. Another woman pronounced she did not care what other people thought of her dress. Interestingly, the niqabis clapped when someone on the panel was speaking. I was under the impression that according to salafi thought, clapping is not permitted. As I tried to walk away from one woman, she grabbed my sleeve and tried to rip it off. I am embarrassed to admit it but I actually lost my temper. I shouted and walked off in anger. This was a mistake and I apologise for it. I should have stayed calm in the face of such provocation.

Women kept coming up to me to pronounce they were students of ‘Alimah courses and would be scholars soon. Is this how our real scholars behaved? Did they get a certificate and pronounce arrogantly that they were scholars? Or did they study in order to learn and to be close to their Creator, and were then pronounced to be scholars by their students because of their characters as well as their knowledge?

If these are tomorrow’s scholars, then let us pray janazah (funeral prayer) for our community.

Khola Hasan is a writer, broadcaster, public speaker, law consultant and Muslim Institute Fellow. Her first short book entitled “The crumbling minarets of Spain” was written at the age of 17, later published in England, and then translated into Arabic and Urdu abroad. She holds a Masters degree in “International and Comparative Legal Studies” from SOAS.

She is currently Director of Albatross Consultancy Limited. She is an executive member of the East London Three Faiths Forum, and involved in Scriptural Reasoning with St. Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation.

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The French Morality Police

Since the enforcement of France and Belgium’s bans on face veils (“niqab”), the countries’ policemen have been assigned a singularly difficult task: making sure that Muslim women behave. Police are required to detain and fine Muslim women covering their faces illegally in public. The French police send some of these women to citizenship classes where they can learn the appropriate way to exhibit their spirits of liberté and égalité, whilein Belgium offenders can also be jailed (sans face veils, of course)... As French President Sarkozy stated when promoting the ban, the niqab is “a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement” of women. Recent news articles indicate that, at least in France, the police force is befuddled about how to enforce this ban and ensure that Muslim women are less subservient and debased. Should they approach the veiled Saudi princesses shopping at Louis Vuitton with their security guards? Since that could lead to all kinds of trouble, not to mention antagonize the many Arabian princesses who are lovers of French fashion, perhaps they should instead focus on chasing after veiled housewives in minivans shuttling children to afterschool activities? How should the police handle those rebellious women living in the Muslim ghettos of Paris who cover their faces, particularly if they are carrying about in large numbers? Even more puzzling, how do the police determine if the women are donning the niqab by choice or have been coerced into veiling their faces by their husbands, brothers, or fathers? Being new at the task of apprehending and disciplining unruly Muslim women who refuse to follow the dress code dictated by the government, the French, and even the Belgians, need guidance from the pros. They should reach out to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the members of its Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, also referred to as the muttawas. The muttawas are a highly trained special task force of Saudi men who spend their days stalking Muslim women to make sure that they dress in accordance with the Kingdom’s rules and do not mingle with unrelated members of the opposite sex. There are few people in the world more concerned with ensuring the dignity of Muslim women than the muttawas. Unlike the French security officials feeling uneasy about their new duties, the muttawas have no qualms about personally following, interrogating, and punishing women who dare to dress as they choose. Women in Saudi Arabia, when leaving the house, must carefully tuck all stray hairs into their scarves, and ethnic Saudi women have to make sure their faces are completely concealed. If any of the thousands of muttawas patrolling the streets find these women in violation of the dress code, they often administer a swift tongue-lashing. If the women are particularly rebellious, the muttawas also give them a few good strong whacks with their switch-like canes. Many Saudi women have stories of being caned on the head, shoulder, or back because their hair, ankles, or wrists were showing. The women who prove particularly rebellious and dare to venture out without covering their hair or, even worst, talk back to the muttawas, swiftly find themselves in jail. If the Saudi muttawas cannot provide relevant guidance to the French and Belgians, perhaps they can impose upon the morality police of Iran for assistance. When not chasing after rebellious teenagers out on dates, men wearing effeminate jewelry, and the dog owners in Tehran, the morality police spend their time ensuring that Iranian women are covered up. Like the Saudi muttawas, they have years of experience controlling Muslim women and their errant desires to dress inappropriately. If, in the hundred-degree summer heat, women loosen their head covering or expose their ankles, they, like their Saudi sisters, are subjected to humiliation, fines and arrest by the hands of the morality police. Perhaps, if the French and Belgians fly the morality police from Saudi Arabia and Iran to commence their lessons, they will also learn that these are some of the most misogynistic individuals on earth. They are people who have stripped Muslim women of the basic right to choose how to express their individuality and religiosity, and believe that draconian punitive measures are justified to ensure that women dress and behave only according to the government’s dictates. Surely, their grossly paternalistic viewpoint has no place in a society such as France that prides itself on its ideals of liberté and égalité. If the French and Belgians decide to strictly enforce their bans, and if Italy and Spain carry forward with their own bans as they are currently contemplating, they will only assist fanatics such as the muttawas oppress Muslim women. This, because the muttawas already rely on the assumption that women have no real freedom anywhere in the world, explaining on their website: “There are those who say that we must leave people alone and not interfere in personal matters of virtue from which they refrain, because this conflicts with their individual freedom. [T]here is no such thing as 'personal freedom.' It is a lie. . . Have you found personal freedom in the east of the land or in its west? In Eastern or Western regimes? None whatsoever, neither here nor there.” Muslim women can only hope that the muttawas and their kin are wrong, and that the liberal secular countries of Europe will ultimately reject the notion that it is fair to harass and oppress Muslim women in the same manner they were treated in places like Saudi Araba, Iran, and Afghanistan. Uzma Mariam Ahmed is a Contributing Writer to Altmuslimah.com.

Muslim women fight burqa ban in France

Love her, Hate him!

'Burqa ban' in France: housewife vows to face jail rather than submit

Comment: Islamawareness absolutely does not consider niqab to be an obligation, however realises it is a matter of faith and sisters wish to wear it to emulate the Mothers of the Believers (there are many other ways to emulate them too ofcourse). Therefore I strongly condemn the odious Niqab ban thats comes into force in France tommorrow. This is just another way for the Islamophobic French government to marginalise and oppress its Muslim citizens. There is no Egality, Fraternity or Liberty in France, in fact when it comes to Muslims there never really was.


Kenza Drider, a respectable mother-of-four, will leave her home in Avignon's Place de la Résistance on Monday with the intention of committing a crime. If the police are waiting for her – and they have had more than enough warning – she will be cautioned, perhaps be asked to accompany officers to the local station, possibly face a fine and, perhaps, will leave with a criminal record.

It is unlikely she will end up in jail, but who knows? It is a risk she is willing to take. Drider is not only determined to become a miscreant; she sees it as her absolute duty to do so.

This 32-year-old French housewife has become the face of the country's "burqa brigade", the women in France who cover themselves from head to toe in full veils. She will fall foul of a law that comes into effect on Monday 11 April tomorrow and forbids French citizens from covering their faces in public places; despite the ban's deliberately general wording, there is no doubt that its target is very specific: Muslim women.

Drider's first offence will be to set foot inside Avignon's TGV rail station where she is due to take a train to Paris. For this she risks a €150 fine and, if she repeats the offence, being sent on a "citizenship course".

"I will be going about my business in my full veil as I have for the last 12 years and nothing and nobody is going to stop me," she declares, swathed in the material she refuses to take off even while speaking to a female journalist in her own home.

Like most of the women concerned by this law, Drider wears a niqab veil that reveals only her eyes, as opposed to a burqa, the full body covering worn by Afghan women.

For all the political energy President Nicolas Sarkozy's right-of-centre government has expended on this law, it will affect a relative tiny number of women; estimates range from 350 to a maximum 2,000 full-veil wearers out of France's population of roughly 64 million. One group of women it is unlikely to disturb unduly are the wives of visiting oil sheikhs and rich Arab businessmen: only if a luxury shop insists they remove their veils might they be challenged.

It is not the potential effectiveness – or otherwise – of the ban that bothers Drider, however. It is the principle. "This whole law makes France look ridiculous," she says. "I never thought I'd see the day when France, my France, the country I was born in and I love, the country of liberté, égalité, fraternité, would do something that so obviously violates people's freedom.

"I'll be getting on with my life and if they want to send me to prison for wearing the niqab then so be it. One thing's for sure: I'm not taking it off."

A succession of journalists have traipsed through the Drider family's modest home since the law was mooted a couple of years ago. Reporters from the BBC, CNN, CBS, Time, the Sun, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, as well as journalists from Brazil, Spain, Turkey, Indonesia and Japan, have all sat here on the sofas that line the walls of the neat but simple living room.

The Observer has been given a slot following Friday prayers, after a journalist from a local Marseille newspaper and before a television team from Al-Jazeera.

Drider admits she is "very tired", but is nothing less than polite and charming, even when she is answering questions that she has been asked a dozen times before. The publicity drive, it seems, is a question of duty.

The St Jean estate, not far from Avignon's medieval ramparts and the celebrated bridge, is not so much impoverished as uniform and unimaginative, a maze of apartment blocks painted various shades of beige. Washing hangs from open windows and satellite TV dishes sprout from buff-coloured balconies like urban fungi, but the children's playground nearby is free of litter and graffiti. There are no children playing truant; in fact, there are so few people it is like a ghost town.

Locals, many of them from France's immigrant communities, do not draw attention to themselves. A woman in a headscarf shrugs, apologises and hurries off when I ask her about the burqa law.

Drider's husband Allal, 40, who works in a soup factory ("but only in winter when people eat soup") says that, unlike other urban housing estates, the area is not "chaud" (hot) and there is little trouble.

Allal is jolly and smiling with a neatly trimmed beard. He jokes that perhaps he should grow it longer and bushier, as Islamophobes think he and his wife are extremists.

Parliamentarians and feminists in France have argued that the full veil is a symbol of male oppression and that niqab-wearing women are bullied into it by their husbands. In Drider's case, this seems unlikely. In fact, Allal describes his shock when, without any warning, his wife emerged from the bedroom to go shopping one day wearing her niqab.

"Are you really going out dressed like that?" he asked.

"I didn't even know she had bought one," he tells me.

Drider, whose parents were immigrants from Morocco, says wearing the niqab was her own personal choice. In this, according to a study by the At Home in Europe project of the Open Society Foundations, she is not unusual: nearly all of the 32 French women interviewed for the project say that they – and no one else – made the decision that they would wear the niqab.

"There was no mosque involved, no pressure from anyone. It is not a religious constraint since it is not laid down in Islam or the Qur'an that I have to wear a full veil. It is my personal choice," she says.

"I would never encourage others to do it just because I do. That is their choice. My daughters can do what they like. As I tell them, this is my choice, not theirs."

She adds: "I never covered my head when I was young. I came from a family of practising Muslims, but we were not expected to even wear a headscarf.

"Then I began looking into Islam and what it meant to be a Muslim and decided to wear a headscarf. Afterwards in my research into the wives of the Prophet I saw they wore the full veil and I liked this idea and decided to wear it. Before, I had felt something was missing. Then I put it on and I felt serene and complete. It pleased me and it has become a part of me."

Drider says it is only since Sarkozy's government began discussing the veil ban that she has been subject to insults, harassment and death threats. "When President Sarkozy said: 'The burqa is not welcome in France', the president, my president, opened the door for racism, aggression and attacks on Islam. This is an attempt to stigmatise Islam and it has created enormous racism and Islamophobia that wasn't there before."

Drider says the issue is bigger than her, bigger than a "piece of material", and laughs at the threat of "citizenship courses" and fines, which she says she will not pay. "This is about basic fundamental human rights and freedoms. I will go out in my full veil and I will fight. I'm prepared to go all the way to the European court of human rights and I will fight for my liberty.

"Fines? They don't bother me. What is the state going to do, send a policeman outside my front door to give me a ticket every time I go out? For me this is women's liberty, the liberty to wear what I wish and not be punished for it.

"If women want to walk around half-naked I don't object to them doing so. If they want to wear tight jeans where you can see their underwear or walk around with their breasts hanging out, I don't give a damn. But if they are allowed to do that, why should I not be allowed to cover up?"

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Beyond the veil: London's burka wearers go on the defensive

Last month, Tory MP Baroness Warsi withdrew from making a speech defending the burka on international TV; an independent girls school in Tower Hamlets was vilified for including it as part of its school uniform; pop star MIA turned up to a Los Angeles awards ceremony wearing one, and two high-profile public debates on its significance were staged by the Institute of Ideas in London. Yesterday, Cherie Blair, whose sister Lauren Booth recently converted to Islam, stoked debate by declaring her support for women who choose to wear the headscarf (though she does not support covering the face).

But just what is it about the burka and the niqab — two types of face veil, the terms are often used interchangeably — that has so captured public and political attention?

Statistics on the number of women who wear the niqab in Britain are difficult to verify. Belgium has reportedly recorded 215 burka wearers and France estimates the number at anywhere between 367 and 2,000 of its five million Muslims.

But, anecdotally, the burka on the streets of London has become more common. Knightsbridge is home to plenty of wealthy Arab women who wear the veil in public, while in pockets of east London, some Muslim women work and travel almost unnoticed in niqabs. But does that really mean the city is becoming more “radicalised”?

Shaista Gohir, executive director of the Muslim Women's Network UK, is unconvinced: “No. The niqab, in the first place, is a minor phenomenon. Yes, Muslims are displaying their identity more overtly since 9/11 and 7/7 but they've also come under heavier political scrutiny. The veil has almost become a spiritual and physical shield.”

Gohir is one of the few Muslim women I've met who defends the right of any woman to wear what she pleases but who also admits that “the niqab is a barrier to communication, community relations and integration”.

Belgium became the first European country to outlaw the burka and French legislation now dictates that it is a criminal offence “to conceal one's face in public”.

But a report published last month by the think-tank Civitas suggests that in Britain at least, the veil should be accepted as part of a modern British way of life and be judged by practicality, not ideology. In contrast to Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, where state bans are being considered, the Civitas report (titled Women, Islam and Western Liberalism) recommends that unless the veil physically “hinders a citizen's ability to perform their public civic duties”, women alone should determine what they wear.

It's a point made repeatedly by the scores of Muslim women in London I interviewed.
At Friday prayers in the East London Mosque, dozens of women and girls from Somalian, Bangladeshi, and Pakistani heritage arrive in a diverse array of Islamic dress.

A group of teenage Bengali-speaking girls, all wearing hijabs (headscarves), skinny jeans and high-street dresses, giggle in a collective huddle when I ask why they choose to wear the headscarf. “'Cos we're Muslims,” says 16-year-old Zainab Zaman, suppressing a “durr!”. “And you can tell that instantly. That's our identity, it's who we are.”

Mishal Akhtar, 23, a part-time hijab wearer who works for a fashion magazine, believes wearing a headscarf can “actually be a bit punk. In your teens, in London, it's fashionable and cool — it's another accessory. It also marks you out and makes you belong at the same time. So yes, the appeal is really obvious.”

Fatima Barktulla, 31, a cheery pregnant mother of three boys who was born and grew up in Hackney, elaborates: “I started with the hijab, but when I got married I wanted to wear the niqab … It isn't a rejection of society, or an attempt to be different. It's not a political statement either.”

Does she feel it might be perceived as such? “No woman I know who wears a niqab is doing it to make a huge point. It's a personal, spiritual conviction. And I know that the niqab is a virtuous option and it is not obligatory.”

Barktulla, an Arabic studies lecturer, says that taking up the veil simply allows her to feel closer to God. “It doesn't contradict my being British either,” she insists. “I love this country — it's my home. Mine and my husband's parents come from India but it's alien to us.

People ask whether we wouldn't be better off living in an Islamic country' but it's only because we're brown-skinned and not part of the indigenous population. What would you say to the white English convert whose family has been here for centuries? Where would they go?”

Modesty in Islam is key for both men and women. But most Islamic scholars agree that the adoption of the full-face veil among Muslim women is more to do with culture than religion. Its purpose is to diminish a woman's sexual allure.

Yet perversely, it is arguable that by wearing one a woman is defining herself as little more than a sexual object. While in Riyadh a burka would go unnoticed, in London, a veiled Muslim woman attracts attention. I ask Barktulla if she doesn't feel that wearing one here contradicts its purpose.

“It's a different type of attention though,” says Barktulla. “On a day to day basis, it's really not that problematic. I don't think people stare at me in London any more.”

Does she place any legitimacy in Angela Merkel's recent comments about the failure of multiculturalism? “If multiculturalism really is a genuine desire to allow people to express themselves in their different ways, then it works,” she says. “If the idea was to allow immigrants to have their traditions and hope their kids would be wholly assimilated, then it doesn't. I don't think that was the idea though. This is a liberal democracy.”

Amoola Ismail, a 26-year-old British- Somalian care worker whose beautifully made-up eyes are all I can see over our coffee in Aldgate, agrees: “The irony is that when people get hot and bothered about Islam and criticise it for oppressing women and forcing them to cover up, they forget that removing any woman's individual right to choose makes them oppressors too.”

Ismail believes it's not just patronising but chauvinistic for the debate on burkas to be conducted in the press and among politicians without involving the women who actually wear them. “We're not delicate little creatures,” she scoffs. “We don't need to be saved. We need to be heard if they want to take this debate seriously and stop using it as a weapon to attack Islam.”

Not everyone sees the issue as a “clash of civilisations”. “We are a new culture here,” says Dr Riffat Majeed, a GP from Watford. “We're very British Muslims. I don't identify as being Pakistani like my parents. Our generation is taking advantage of the fact that we're living in the information age. When you grow up in the West, you question everything. You want to find out who you are, where you fit in. Having doubts and getting answers to those questions is perhaps why we're more religious than the first generation.”

Majeed believes Muslim immigrants in the Sixties and Seventies, practised “a more cultural form of Islam”, whereas now their offspring are better-informed and more observant. Majeed has worn the hijab for 13 years and a jilbab (a full-length cloak) for almost the last decade, inspiring her mother to do the same. I ask if she ever feels restricted by her self-imposed uniform — whether she misses dressing up?

“It's not like you get locked away and you're like an old woman; I still dress up. We have a lot of family and social dos. Women are segregated outside of close family events so I get my hair done, have my nice outfit and jewellery on but I don't resent my choices. It hasn't limited me, it feels natural.”

Maryam El Hajbi, a 24-year-old British-Moroccan researcher working for the anti-extremism think-tank Quilliam, believes the bigger problem is “the way in which the debate has become politicised. The niqab has been taken out of context and is being used as an ideological tool, an excuse to talk about immigration, integration or the failure of multiculturalism.”

El Hajbi finds it difficult to understand the feminist position that many veiled women maintain on account of the niqab making them feel empowered, but respects their choice. “A state ban would be totally counter-productive. The only real issue is where women or girls — such as at the school in Tower Hamlets — are forced to wear it.”

The Madani School for Girls has so far refused to speak to the press about its policy — niqabs for pupils aged 11-18 are mandatory on the journey to and from school.

The headmistress, Mrs Amra Bone, tells me it might be time to set some facts straight: “First, this policy has been in place since 1991, when the school was set up,” she explains. “It's not new. Second, the uniform was already under review and subject to potential change before [the press attention]. The girls don't have to wear niqabs in school and lots of them don't put them on until they reach the school gates.”

Mrs Bone admits she doesn't personally agree with the niqab but she says the school will continue its review with staff, students, parents and its management committee and will not be pressured by headlines.

Even so, the controversy around the veil remains. A guest at a debate on religious tolerance at the Battle of Ideas conference last weekend, said the sight of women wearing them in London made her feel violently sick. Another questioned whether moral relativism and liberalism were acceptable excuses to ignore the so-called “threat [burkas] pose to civil society”.

Whether one agrees with the choice London Muslims make (when they do choose) to cover their faces or not is irrelevant; protecting the freedom to allow that choice is a basic tenet of British life.

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Burqa in France

Across Europe racism is becoming the law for Muslim women

A woman in Italy has become the first to be fined for covering her face. Known only as Amel, she was fined £430 under laws that ban covering your face in public places, after she was spotted by police in the Post Office.

The laws were originally brought in during the 70s to prevent political activists from hiding their faces. However, the mayor of the town of Novara, where Amel lives, now is using the law as a pretext to attack Muslim women.

Mayor Massimo Giordano is a member of the Northern League party, which takes a far right position on immigrants. Leader Umberto Bossi once called for boats containing immigrants from Africa (who he called “bingo bongos”) to be shelled, while another mayor from the party said “we should dress them up like hares and bang-bang-bang”. Party members have also been convicted of incitement to racial hatred for their part in trying to expel an encampment of Roma people.

Giordano has made sure the Italian laws, which have never been fully enforced before, are now being used against Muslim women. He’s said he wants Italian law to be amended so that it specifically outlaws wearing Muslim veils. He said:

“I signed the new regulations for reasons of security but also so that people who came to live in our city are aware and respect our traditions. The people of Novara do not want to see people walking around in the city wearing a burka. This is the only way to stop behaviour that makes the already difficult process of integration even harder.”

Meanwhile, Giordano’s ambitions have almost already been fulfilled in Belgium, where the lower house just voted through a plan for a complete ban on veils and headscarves. This is despite the fact that parties representing Belgium’s different regions have been at each other’s throats, leading to the recent collapse of the government. However, MPs put their differences aside to give near unanimous cross-party support to racist measure. Hopefully however, the political crisis will mean it is months before the Senate can meet to give the law approval.

Several Belgian towns already have similar local laws. Another knobhead Mayor, Jan Creemers, of the Belgian town of Maaseik, said: “It became a problem in our town because we had about 50 women who walked around like that, which really annoyed many other residents. They kept coming to me to ask me to do something about it. I spoke to a couple of these ladies to ask them very simply not to wear this kind of clothing. But one in particular refused point-blank so eventually the police opened legal proceedings against her.”

And in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing declining popularity, has decided pushing for a ban on veils is a good way of shoring up his right wing support, and is determined to try and push one through over the summer. The response of the opposition “Socialists” (the French equivalent of New Labour) has been to present their own bill, which would ban veils in public buildings such as hospitals or banks.

However, the most radical proposal has come from a German member of the European Parliament, who has called for Europe wide ban on veils. Silvana Koch-Mehrin, and MEP for the right wing Free Democrats (who are part of Angela Merkel’s coalition government) used an editorial in in Germany’s Bild newspaper (the German equivalent of The Sun) to make the extreme demand.

What all this shows is that after almost 10 years of the demonisation of Muslims, anti-Muslim racism has become mainstream for European governments. Many claim that the bans are aimed to protect women’s rights, but the comments by those who are enforcing these laws shows their real motivation: using the veil as a way to attack Muslim people. The fact is that racist politics across Europe finds it hard to come to terms with the fact that Muslims are Europeans too, and should be allowed to dress however they wish.

The idea that white politicians should be the ones to “save” Muslim women from oppression is itself racist. It also will make it more difficult for Muslim women who want to stand up for women’s rights within their own communities, if all Muslims feel they are subject to racist attack from outside. What women wear is not and should never be a matter for politicians to decide. It should be for women themselves to decide.

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Mosques slam politicisation of ‘burqa driver’ incident

A grouping of Mosques in the French city of Nantes, where a local woman was fined earlier this month for driving in an Islamic veil, complained on Sunday of the media hype and politicisation of the incident.

A grouping of mosques in the western French city of Nantes issued a statement condemning the political controversy and media hype surrounding a fine levyed on a local Muslim woman earlier this month for wearing a full Islamic veil while driving.

“The Association of Nantes Mosques considers that the decision to detain and fine a woman for driving in a full Islamic veil is a judicial procedure. It should in no way be turned into a political affair or a debate on Islam,” the statement said.

“Once again, Muslims and Islam are the victims of a wave of media frenzy surrounding a minor, insignificant incident which does not represent the beliefs or lifestyle of the vast majority of Muslims living in France," the statement went on to say, adding: "We are concerned about this systematic stigmatisation, which goes against the fundamental values of the Republic."

Safety risk

The 31-year-old Algerian-born French woman was fined €22 for driving in a niqab, a black veil that covers the face but not the eyes. Police said the veil posed a “safety risk” when worn while driving.

The incident reached ministerial levels on Saturday, when French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux asked Immigration Minister Eric Besson to look into whether the woman’s husband could be stripped of his French nationality after an investigation revealed that he was a polygamist who was simultaneously married to four women. The man also has 12 children.

"Each of these women benefits from single-parent benefits and ... each one wears the full veil," Hortefeux said, in a letter seen by the Reuters news agency. Hortefeux also asked authorities to look into bringing fraud charges against the family for taking advantage of French social services.

The unnamed woman has contested the fine, arguing that neither her vision nor her movements are impaired by wearing theniqab.

The controversy comes just two days after French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged parliament to pass a ban on wearing the full Islamic veil in all public places, eschewing more moderate proposals that focused on imposing limits only within state institutions such as schools and town halls.

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Quebec's witch hunt against niqabi minority

Governments intervene against the religious wishes of Jehovah's Witness families to give blood transfusions to save the lives of their kin. The Quebec government wants to intervene to deny health care to women whose religious wish is to wear the niqab.

In Saudi Arabia, Iran and parts of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, police or vigilante militias crack down on women not wearing the niqab or the burqa. In Quebec, authorities want to crack down on women who do.

Quebec officials have already chased down one niqab-wearing woman to oust her from a second French language class after she had been hounded out of her first. The bureaucrats are emulating the gendarmes of autocrats Kemal Ataturk of Turkey in the 1920s and the first Shah of Iran in the 1930s who persecuted women wearing either the niqab or the hijab.

It is scary when a state feels compelled to keep women either covered or uncovered.

It is scarier when majorities in democracies feel threatened by a minority – in this case, a tiny minority within the Muslim minority. Or feel the need to crush an isolated religious or cultural practice. Had such attitudes prevailed in an earlier era, we may not have been blessed today with Hutterites, Orthodox Jews, Sikhs and others in the rich religious tapestry of Canada.

Across Europe and now sadly in Quebec, populations and governments are in a tizzy over a few dozen niqabi women. Sadder still, Quebec is not only out of step with the rest of Canada but has taken a bigoted leap ahead of Europe, the historic home of Islamophobia.

In France – where out of 5 million Muslims, 367 wear the niqab (as counted by the domestic intelligence service, no less) – a parliamentary panel has pondered the issue for a year and suggested a ban from schools and hospitals but nowhere else.

In Denmark – where out of 100,000 Muslims, there are less than 200 niqabis (as estimated by the ministry of social affairs), the government is still mulling a ban.

In Quebec, less than 25 women are said to wear the niqab – of whom only 10 turned up last year at the Montreal office of the provincial health board out of 118,000 visitors.

Yet the obsession with the niqab continues. On the day Jean Charest tabled his anti-niqab bill, Hydro Quebec's $3.2 billion deal to take over NB Power and gain access to the lucrative U.S. market collapsed – with nary a public concern.

His bill calls not only for showing the face for the legitimate purposes of a photo ID and security. It also bans niqabis from working for, or even receiving services from, government and the broader public sector. These taxpayers may be denied all schooling, including French language instruction, and all non-emergency health care, including regular checkups.

Charest rationalized it on the basis of gender equity, the secular nature of the state, the need to integrate immigrants, and the importance of personal interaction. Except that:

The giant crucifix in the National Assembly will stay.

Property and other tax breaks given the churches will remain, including for the Catholic Church, where women must remain in the pews and not ascend to the pulpit.

Niqabi women will be driven out of the public sphere, end up with less personal interaction with others and be ghettoized. It is a strange way to advance gender equity.

It is argued, as by Nicolas Sarkozy in France, that banning the niqab is not anti-Islamic, since it may not be a religious requirement, as opined by a senior Egyptian cleric last year. We elect politicians not to propound fatwas but to implement secular, democratic laws in an equitable manner for one and all. As for those enamoured of the authoritarian ways of Egypt, they are free to move there.

We are witnessing collective hysteria, prompting even liberal governments to cave in. It was not a pretty sight to see Charest, a Liberal, competing for headlines with Ann Coulter, the Muslim-baiting neo-con from America.

That's democracy in action, it can be said. But we have seen many ugly manifestations of the popular will before. Targeting the niqabis may not be in the same league as past Canadian sins against some minorities but history should provide us with the perspective to pause.

Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Thursday and Sunday.
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Quebec body rules against right to wear niqab

Religious beliefs cannot trump gender equality, ruling says in health board cas


The tension between gender equality and religious rights has flared into political debate again with two new rulings by Quebec's human-rights commission on the right to wear the niqab and the hijab.

A woman wearing the niqab cannot demand to be served by another woman when dealing with the Quebec Health Insurance Board, the commission ruled. Concluding that religious beliefs cannot stand in the way of gender equality, the commission found that when a woman wearing the Islamic face covering is required to identify herself and proceed with the photo session needed to produce a health insurance card, the Health Insurance Board has no obligation to accommodate her request to be served by a woman.

"Since freedom of religion was not significantly undermined, there is no obligation to grant an accommodation," the order states.

The health board had previously agreed to such requests. But last fall critics argued that the health board was acceding to religious fundamentalism.

The decision was greeted with approval in Quebec's National Assembly yesterday by MNAs of all political stripes.

"I am against the veil. I don't think the veil represents anything more than a symbol of submission of women to religious authorities," said Amir Khadir, an Iranian-born Muslim and Quebec Solidaire MNA.

Immigration Minister Yolande James suggested the ruling will form the basis of new guidelines on religious accommodation for public services, following on the action taken last week to bar a woman from attending a free French language class for immigrants unless she agreed to take off her niqab.

Another decision issued yesterday by the commission involved a client who refused to be served by a health board employee wearing a hijab - a traditional headscarf that does not cover the face.

The commission ruled that the garment had no bearing on the delivery of services and should be allowed to be worn. The incident reflected more a clash of values rather than an infringement on the client's freedom of religion or conscious, the commission stated.

"It cannot be concluded that the neutrality of the public institution was called into question because the service being delivered remained neutral."

The breadth of the debate over "reasonable accommodation" was reflected in a letter signed by more than 100 Quebec intellectuals and published yesterday in the Montreal daily Le Devoir. The letter argued that secular values should be enforced with no exception throughout the public service. The group argued that the time has come for Quebec to enforce its belief in a pluralist society by banning religious symbols from the public service - including the crucifix in the National Assembly.

Parti Québécois immigration critic Louise Beaudoin repeated her party's call yesterday for a charter that would reinforce Quebec's secular values, such as gender equality.

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Tory MP call for ban on burqa and niqab

Philip Hollobone, the Tory MP who last month equated the wearing of niqab and burqa by Muslim women to ‘the religious equivalent of going around with a paper bag over your head’, took the opportunity during yesterday’s Commons’ debate on International Women’s Day to repeat his claims that a ban on the burqa and niqab should be considered.

According to Hansard, Hollobone interjected saying:

‘On this occasion of international women's day, I want to raise the difficult subject of Islamic full-face veils-specifically, the niqab and the burqa. I am sure we can all agree with the Leader of the House's remarks-we all want to empower women in being equal. In my view and that of my constituents, the niqab and the burqa are oppressive dress codes that are regressive as regards the advancement of women in our society. I want to make it clear that I am talking about the niqab and the burqa, not the hijab, the khimar or the chador.

‘I have been concerned for some time about the niqab and the burqa, but it was not until I took my children to the play area in my local park recently and saw a woman wearing a full burqa that it came home to me how inappropriate and, frankly, offensive it is for people to wear that apparel in the 21st century and especially in Britain. In my view and that of my constituents, the burqa is not an acceptable form of dress and banning it should be seriously considered.'

‘As I was sitting on the bench in the playground watching my children play on the slides, I thought to myself, "Here I am, in the middle of Kettering in the middle of England-a country that has been involved for centuries with spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world-and here's a woman who, through her dress, is effectively saying that she does not want to have any normal human dialogue or interaction with anyone else. By covering her entire face, she is effectively saying that our society is so objectionable, even in the friendly, happy environment of a children's playground, that we are not even allowed to cast a glance on her." I find that offensive and I think it is time that the country did something about it.

‘We will never have a country in which we can all rub along together and in which people of different backgrounds, different ethnicities and different religions all get along nicely if one section of our society refuses even to be looked on by anyone else. As I thought more about it, it struck me that the issue is not the clothes that someone wears but the fact that the face is covered. Lots of people wear what others might feel is inappropriate clothing. That is, of course, everyone's choice. The issue with the niqab and the burqa, however, is not that they are just another piece of clothing but that they involve covering the face either in its entirety or with just the eyes showing.

‘The simple truth is that when a woman wears the burqa, she is unable to engage in normal, everyday visual interaction with everyone else. That is indeed the point of it. It is deliberately designed to prevent others from gazing on that person's face. The problem with that is that it goes against the British way of life. Part of the joy of living in our country is that we pass people every day in the street, exchange a friendly greeting, wave, smile and say hello. Whether we recognise someone as a person we know or whether we are talking to someone for the first time, we can all see who the other person is and we interact both verbally and through those little visual facial signals that are all part of interacting with each other as human beings.

‘If we all went round wearing burqas, our country would be a sad place indeed. Indeed, if we were all to be wearing burqas in this Chamber, Mr. Deputy Speaker, how would you know who to call? I also feel very sorry for women who wear the burqa, as it cannot be very nice to go around all day with only a limited view of the outside world. Of course, many of these women are forced to wear the burqa by their husband or their family. The resulting lack of interaction with everyone else means that many are unable to speak or learn English and so will never have any chance of becoming integrated into the British way of life.

‘The other issue with the burqa is security. Of course, that problem arises with some other forms of face covering and I do not see why those wearing the burqa should be treated any differently. Bikers wear crash helmets for their own safety, but they are required to take them off in banks and shops. If one were to travel on the tube wearing a balaclava, a police officer would ask one to take it off.

‘Many of my constituents have contacted me to say that when they visit Muslim countries they respect the dress codes in those countries and wear appropriate headgear. The phrase that has been given to me time and again is, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." This is Britain; we are not a Muslim country. Covering one's face in public is strange, and to many people it is intimidating and offensive. I seriously think that a ban on wearing the niqab or the burka in public should be considered.’

And speaking to the Daily Express, what a surprise, Hollobone said:

“This is not an anti- Muslim or anti-religious thing, and it’s not about veils which cover only the head or neck.

“It’s about covering your face in public, which is something we normally associate with people attending controversial trials or motorcyclists or burglars.

“It is not a religious requirement and it is banned in some Muslim countries such as Turkey and Tunisia. Yet it is an increasingly common sight in Britain and it is making us feel like strangers in our own land."

Hollobone’s arrogance is to be marveled at. Does he presume to know what a Muslim woman who wears the niqab or burqa is thinking? Did he speak to the Muslim woman he encountered in the playground and did she tell him in no uncertain terms that she wore it to deter ‘any normal human dialogue or interaction with anyone else’?

The intimation that Muslim women who cover are somehow uniquely offensive, (he said, ‘Lots of people wear what others might feel is inappropriate clothing. That is, of course, everyone's choice. The issue with the niqab and the burqa, however, is not that they are just another piece of clothing but that they involve covering the face either in its entirety or with just the eyes showing’), is to denigrate the religious significance they attach to the act of covering. In overlooking this Hollobone widely detracts from his lofty ‘we all want to empower women in being equal’ ideal and betrays a deep rooted prejudice.

Hollobone might well be surprised to learn that ‘empowered’ Muslim women often choose of their own volition to adopt the niqab and burqa. And while they applaud the ideals of empowering women and gender equality, what they patently don’t need or want are middle aged, male politicians telling them how an empowered British Muslim woman should dress and what she should think.

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The debate of women's dress

Picture Source: France 24

From The Times Online:

France is considering passing a law that would mean women who wear the burqa or niqab in public would face a £700 fine. French MPs will vote on the proposal later this month; the fine would apply to anyone “whose face is fully covered in public”. Jean-François Copé, parliamentary leader of Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP group, told Le Figaro that the proposed law was based on sexual equality and public safety considerations, not on religious ones.

It is already illegal to wear a headscarf in French state schools (the law came into effect in 2004 — you’ll remember the furore); the French constitution specifically requires the separation of church and state. So even in a country that is nominally Catholic, there are no prayers at school, no crucifixes on state-school walls, no religious assemblies and so on.

This last bit seems perfectly sensible but the headscarf issue raised all sorts of questions — the law is opaquely worded and refers only to “ostentatious” religious symbols: would a Sikh boy in a French state school be required to remove his topknot and cut his hair, for instance? Would a Jewish child not be allowed his yarmulke? Would somebody who was vegetarian on religious grounds be offered no alternative to meaty school lunches? Or was the law just against Muslims, adherents to the second largest religion in France?

I find this whole subject uncomfortable because I don’t really know what I think; I change my mind constantly. I start off, as most people would, from the point of view that everyone should be allowed to wear what they like, regardless of how peculiar it might strike others as being, without being dictated to.

From the New Statesman Blog:

Two questions immediately come to mind:

1) In the middle of the worst economic crisis in living memory, how can France's ruling conservative party justify focusing its legislative energies on banning an item of clothing worn by 0.1 per cent of the French population of adult Muslim women (or 0.003 per cent of the French population as a whole)?

2) Why did the "French internal security services" commission a study on the burqa/niqab? Is it now deemed to be a national security risk? Do French intelligence agencies have nothing better to do with their time? No other threats to deal with, apart from 2,000 Muslim women with covered faces?

Then there is the matter of the clothing itself and distinguishing between the various types. I'm no fan of the burqa or the niqab myself, and have yet to be convinced of the Islamic legal reasoning behind either garment, but I do recognise the difference between the burqa and the niqab, on the one hand, and the hijab on the other.

From The Guardian:

It's not only in secular Europe where societies are trying to grapple with the highly emotive question of Islamic dress. Following the victory of four women in Kuwait's parliamentary elections, Islamists attempted to prevent two of them from taking their seats in the house for not wearing the hijab. After a legal battle, the country's constitutional court ruled that the women in question were not obliged to wear the Islamic attire.

Egypt has been at the centre of its own contentious debate, this time about the niqab, or face veil. The niqab, traditionally worn in parts of the Gulf and associated with Wahabi/Salafi Islam, has recently become popular in less-conservative Egypt.

The spread of religious satellite television, coupled with years of migration to the Gulf has helped import the burqa and the niqab into Arab countries where it was previously the preserve of a minority. My own sister, who grew up in Saudi Arabia, was aggressively dissuaded from wearing her niqab when she returned to live in Sudan, so alien was it to family and friends.

The niqab has become a flashpoint between Egyptian authorities and university students. In the latest episode this week, a Cairo court upheld a government decision to ban students from taking university exams while wearing the niqab. The government justified the ban by saying that it would prevent students, both male and female, from masquerading as someone else or concealing cheating aids.

The lawyer arguing the case against the ban told al-Jazeera that the decision "forces a woman to expose part of her body she doesn't want exposed. It is soul-crushing for these women."

This comes in the wake of Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, the government appointed Grand Imam of al-Azhar, sought to ban the niqab in all campuses affiliated with the university. In an earlier decision, the court overturned a ban on the niqab in female students' dormitories despite allegations that men had been sneaking in under its cover.

The increasingly heated debate is tainted with political considerations. Although religion informs the spirit of jurisprudence in the country, Egypt is subject to tensions between the government and an Islamic political and social movement which is the most potent opposition force due to the lack of a moderate secular space within which to voice concerns.

The hijab has become politicised, with some viewing the increasing number of women choosing to cover as an indication of the rising influence of religion. Businessmen and ministers became embroiled in the debate when tycoon Naguib Sawiris and culture minister Farouk Hosni expressed alarm over the popularity of the head cover.

Any law circumscribing where the niqab can be donned is viewed as one that has an agenda, administered by an uneasy government eager to stamp it out both as a symbol of extremism and implicit opposition to the regime, dressing up a witch hunt in security concerns. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights' executive director, Hossam Bahgat, certainly views it as such, stating that "choosing the most excessive measure is a continuation of a policy which clearly penalises students who wear the niqab for their beliefs".

The Egyptian government has certainly taken measures which betray this fear. Amr Khaled, a popular televangelist who is credited with converting many Egyptian and Arab women to the hijab is widely believed to have been forced into exile by the government.

I am averse to any legislation which dictates what women are allowed to wear as much as I am averse to the niqab. Although there is little consensus over its religious obligatory nature, this is a red herring that detracts from the more important question of personal liberty. However, there are situations where a full face cover poses security and identity questions. Freedom is not absolute when it encroaches upon the rights of others. Covering one's face whether that person is a man or a woman has simple practical ramifications.

In countries such as Saudi Arabia, where the majority of the female population wears the niqab in a segregated public and official space, there are few situations where women would need to take it off in the presence of men for needs of identification. At airports, there is a dedicated shielded cubicle where women unveil to female security staff, exams are invigilated by other women in women-only halls and banks have bespoke ladies' branches. In Egypt, where official gender apartheid does not exist nor is it practical that such provisions are made for a minority, the legislation must negotiate the fine line between considerations of fraud and personal freedom.

However, this process is rarely devoid of emotive and political considerations. It's never really about what women wear, but about the values that women's dress implies – whether it is the niqab in Egypt, the hijab in Kuwait, or Lubna Hussein's trousers

Burqa Ban: Italy and elsewhere

Plans by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s allies to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa, a loose outfit covering the whole body from head to toe, is infuriating the political establishment in the southern European country.

"A ban (on the burqa) would be xenophobic and discriminatory,” Mario Scialoja, the chair of the Islamic Culture Center of Italy, told Reuters late Thursday, October 8.

“The existing law should be enforced."

The far-right Northern League is pressing to amend a 1975 law to prosecute Muslim women for wearing burqa.

The law slaps hefty fines and up to two years in jail on people covering their faces with anything preventing their identification by police.

But the Northern League is now proposing to amend the law to ban “garments worn for reasons of religious affiliation”.

The far-right party also wants to remove from the law the expression “justified cause”, which has prompted courts to allow burqa on religious grounds.

Scialoja warned that a burqa ban would stigmatise Muslims, calling on Italian authorities to treat Muslim women with respect.

"We say no to a new law."

The burqa has been a hot issue in many European countries.

Last month, the Italian spa resort town of Montegrotto Terme banned the burqa.

A French MP has also proposed a ban on the wearing, sparking outcry among the Muslim minority and across the Muslim world.

Italy has a Muslim population of some 1.2 million, including 20,000 reverts, according to unofficial estimates.

France, whose five million Muslims make up Europe's largest Islamic minority, banned Muslim headscarves in state schools in 2004 and a recent proposal for a burqa ban has sparked outcry in the Muslim world.

Verily, we live in an age of miracles; thus, none other than Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, the leading religious figure of Al-Azhar, was, just the other day, “reportedly angered” when he toured a school in Cairo and saw a girl wearing “niqab” which means that her face was masked or possibly that she was wearing a full head, face, and body covering.

“Sheikh Tantawi, regarded by many as Egypt’s Imam and Sunni Islam’s foremost spiritual authority, asked the teenage girl to remove her veil saying: “The niqab is a tradition, it has no connection with religion.” The imam instructed the girl, a pupil at a secondary school in Cairo’s Madinet Nasr suburb, never to wear the niqab again and promised to issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against its use in schools. The ruling will not affect use of the hijab, the Islamic headscarf worn by most Muslim women in Egypt.

Following the imam’s lead, Egypt’s minister of higher education is to ban female undergraduates from wearing the niqab from the country’s public universities, Cairo’s Al-Masri Al-Yom newspaper reported. “

Again, don’t rejoice too soon.

Even the very influential Sheikh Tantawi has his fundamentalist detractors who have excoriated him for supporting France’s ban on hijab in public schools and for shaking hands with Israeli President Shimon Peres. And, clearly, the Egyptian government is unhappy about the gathering forces of Islamic fundamentalism which consistently manipulate women and women’s clothing as symbolic political statements. Some have even called for more severe Islamic clothing for women in which only one eye (Algerian style) can show. The Egyptian government understands that it is at risk vis a vis Islamic fundamentalists.

Now, some European politicians understand this too.

The great French Niqab Debate

Since we last last discussed, President Sarkozy has been speaking publicly against the Burqa. There seems to be a lot of confusion on what is being banned. Well, France wants to outlaw anything that covers the face (not the head). So the Burqa or Niqab would be banned. On a personal level I do not think Niqab is required by Islam but people are free to make their own choices.

How would it feel if we start banning Goths? Even though they have a weired dress sense which serves no real purpose, there would be an outcry if someone tries to ban that. Or how about banning catwalk on the fashion arena? Ex-president Chirac said that "Hijab was a sign of Agression" so not to be outdone, Sarkozy said "Burqa is not welcome here".

There have been lots of reactions worldwide about this French debate and here is a selection.

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At my health club on the campus of a Chicago university, I recently watched a young Muslim woman covered in head-to-toe religious garb -- head scarf, long-sleeve tunic and long pants -- as she played basketball with her boyfriend, a tall, black-haired youth dressed in jeans and a striped button-down shirt. All around them, shapely women in skimpy shorts and tight tank tops cavorted on treadmills and Stairmasters, but the black-haired youth had eyes only for his head scarf sweetie. Pretty and slender, the girl moved with the grace of a natural athlete. When her boyfriend missed a shot, she caught the ball on the short bounce, then, planting her sneaker clad feet firmly on the court, launched it toward the basket, where it whooshed easily through the net. Her boyfriend gave her a high five, and she grinned proudly.

Though loose fitting, the girl's clothes were far from frumpy. With delicate embroidery on the front of her tunic and a floaty elegance to the soft trousers, the outfit recalled the kind of casual, boyish chic pioneered in the Jazz Age by Coco Chanel. Her hair and flesh were hidden completely, but hints of her lovely, willowy form were suggested in the contours of her clothing. What's more, she seemed as confident in her attractiveness and as comfortable with her body as the half naked, pony-tailed coeds sweating around her.

As I watched the girl leave the club, her boyfriend trailing behind her carrying his backpack and hers, I had a startling thought. Hijab ("modest wear") doesn't have to mean female subservience and sexual repression.

...

Westerners who tsk, tsk over hajib clad women, convinced that religious dress always reflects repressive, sexist attitudes, should consider their own history. In the west, fashion has often seemed like a torture foisted on women by misogynistic men. It was a male doctor in France, after all, who during the Napoleonic Wars invented the laced, S-shaped corset that allowed generations of women to cinch themselves to near suffocation. Couturier Charles Frederick Worth followed with filth collecting skirts, seat cushion bustles and catering tray hats laden with frou- frou and dead birds. Now we have Marc Jacobs's mini-skirt rompers that look like something your toddler wears, and Christian Louboutin's disaster-in-waiting eight inch high heels.

High Fashion, Oscar Wilde once said, "is a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months."

Western women are slaves of fashion. Muslims, meanwhile, answer first to God

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Here 10 British women explain to Andrew Johnson why – to varying degrees – they choose to cover up

Saleha Islam

45, from London. Head of the NSPCC's Asian Child Protection Helpline. Wears the hijab – usually a headscarf to cover the hair and shoulders – and Western clothes

"I started wearing hijab properly about 15 years ago. I've worked in social work for over 20 years and have worked with all types of people and I've learnt what's oppression and what isn't. I'm not an oppressed woman. I head a large service in the NSPCC; I'm one of the few women trustees of a mosque. Wearing the hijab is just saying 'I'm a Muslim'. It's part of my identity. I like looking smart, I like looking good. But it's modest. I'm not going to say there aren't any problems in Muslim families. I lead the Asian Child Protection Helpline in the UK and we suffer the same sorts of issues as anybody else. It took a lot of guts for me to wear the hijab. There were few Muslims who were wearing it at the time, so I had a lot of questions from my own community."

Sarah Joseph

38, from London. Editor of Emel, the Muslim lifestyle magazine. Wears the hijab

"I wear straightforward Western clothes with it. It was very much a feminist standpoint for me. It's saying I reject beauty fascism and aspiring to bodily perfection. I was brought up in the fashion industry, where looks were predominant and I didn't want that. I became a Muslim 21 years ago. The hijab is also religious obligation and part of a spiritual journey. You try and wear clothes which are part and parcel of your spiritual life."

Sanja Bilic

33, from York. PhD student. Wears the hijab with Western clothing

"I'm European: I'm from Bosnia, but I'm British. I came to England for a two-week holiday when I was 16 in 1992. The war broke out and we couldn't go home. It was a very traumatic time. When I first put on the scarf, it was commented on for about five minutes as if I'd changed my hair. I wouldn't wear the niqab as I don't believe it is justifiable for me, but I'm not going to condone it or condemn it."

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In the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, with its busy market, fast-food joints and bargain clothes shops, Angelica Winterstein only goes out once a week – and only if she really has to.

"I feel like I'm being judged walking down the street. People tut or spit. In a smart area west of Paris, one man stopped his car and shouted: 'Why don't you go back to where you came from?' But I'm French, I couldn't be more French," said the 23-year-old, who was born and raised in bourgeois Versailles.

Once a fervent Catholic, Winterstein converted to Islam at 18. Six months ago she began wearing a loose, floor-length black jilbab, showing only her expertly made-up face from eyebrows to chin. She now wants to add the final piece, and wear full niqab, covering her face and leaving just her eyes visible.

...

Human rights groups warned this week that the row over niqabs risks exacerbating the growing problem of discrimination against women wearing standard Muslim headscarves. Five years on from the heated national debate over France's 2004 law banning headscarves and all conspicuous religious symbols from state schools, there has been an increase in general discrimination against adult women who cover their heads.

"Women in standard headscarves have been refused access to voting booths, driving lessons, barred from their own wedding ceremonies at town halls, ejected from university classes and in one case, a woman in a bank was not allowed to withdraw cash from her own account at the counter. This is clear discrimination by people who wrongly use the school law to claim that France is a secular state that doesn't allow headscarves in public places. It's utterly illegal and the courts rule in our favour," said Renee Le Mignot, co-president of the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples. "Our fear is that the current niqab debate is going to make this general discrimination worse."

Samy Debah, a history teacher who heads France's Collective against Islamophobia, said 80% of discrimination cases reported to his group involved women wearing standard headscarves.

He had rarely seen any instances of women wearing niqabs, even in the ethnically mixed north Paris suburb where he lives. "From our figures, the biggest discriminator against Muslim women is the state and state officials," he said. "What people have to understand is that the concept of French secularism is not anti-religion per se, it is supposed to be about respecting all religions."

The current initiative against full Islamic veils began in Venissieux, a leftwing area on the industrial outskirts of Lyon. Its communist mayor, André Gerin, led proposals for a clampdown, saying he saw increasing numbers of full veils in his constituency.

"I call them walking prisons, phantoms that go past us, it's that visual aspect that's an issue," Gerin said. "There's a malaise in the general population faced with the proliferation of these garments. I sense that on the part of Muslims, too."

Gerin said women in niqab posed "concrete problems" in daily life. "We had an issue in a school where a headteacher at the end of the school day didn't want to hand back two children to a phantom," he said. Gerin has refused to conduct the town-hall wedding of a woman wearing niqab. Another woman wearing a full veil was refused social housing by a landlord in the area. The mayor said that when women haven't removed their face covering, it has resulted in conflict with public officials who often felt insulted or under attack. But he denied stigmatising the wider Muslim population.

"The current situation [where women wear niqabs] is stigmatising Muslims," he said. His aim was to "establish a debate with the Muslim community, integrate Islam properly into French life" and expose fundamentalist practices.

Two previous calls for a law restricting full veils have been left to gather dust. This time, the debate is gathering force. There are divisions in the government itself – the feminist Muslim junior minister, Fadela Amara, supports a niqab ban while the immigration minister, Eric Besson, warns it would create unnecessary tension.

Horia Demiati, 30, a French financier who wears a standard headscarf with her business suits, said: "I really fear an increase in hatred." She recently won a discrimination case after she and her family, including a six-month baby, were refused access to a rural holiday apartment they had booked in the Vosges. The woman who refused them argued that she was a secular feminist and didn't want to see the headscarf, "an instrument of women's submission and oppression", in her establishment.

Demiati said: "This niqab debate is such a marginal issue, yet it risks detracting from the real issues in France."

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Increasingly, veiled young women chose to look inwards, withdraw from society and benefit from the networks of solidarity offered by salafism, rather than fighting for their choice in the political sphere. The choice to wear the niqab is often linked to the breakdown of the French social model of integration, rather than religious radicalisation stemming from disadvantaged neighbourhoods under the control of extremist or terrorist movements – which is the alarmist argument of Ni Putes Ni Soumises, the group founded by Fadela Amara, who joined the government when Sarkozy created his cabinet and whose street credibility is greater among politicians than it is in the banlieues.

The terms of the debate have changed since 2004. The feminist movements and the left, in particular, now say they reject the ghettoisation effect a ban on the burka would have on women wearing it. France's official position appears isolated when Denmark and Belgium are welcoming their first veiled elected politicians and Obama is reminding the world, in his Cairo speech, that western countries should not tell Muslim women what to wear. France's European neighbours debate the burka with more caution. In those countries, it is not the cultural or religious values of the burka that are being discussed, but legislation around security issues and identification.

What the burka crisis underlines is that the debate on Muslim women's empowerment is crucial. But it has to be conducted with the participation of those who are primarily concerned and also be useful to citizens as a whole, rather than simply reinforcing the political class and its electoral objectives.

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There are several points of contention with the arguments of those who see the banning of the burka as a desirable move.

Firstly, there is the assumption that women wear the burka because they are “forced” into it. The article mentions that if a pending government inquiry into the matter found that the burka was “forced” it would “contradict republican principles”.

In phrasing the issue as such, it creates a false dichotomy: either you are free or you are oppressed, in which republicanism is associated with unbridled liberty and social and religious practices are reduced to a stifling fundamentalism. And there is no middle ground. We are encouraged to think that the mater is completely black and white, devoid of any murky shades of grey reflect the complexities of layered identities and social expectations. Which, as any vaguely perceptive person can comprehend, is not an accurate reflection of social reality.
No individual identity comes into existence in a vacuum.

We are all products of our environments: of value systems, institutions, expectations, cultures and traditions that precede us. Through our families, we are constructed in this world through series of interactions (family, friends, authorities). Therefore, because of the fact that we are socially constructed, the notion of a completely pure choice can only ever be a fictional idea because it denies the social forces that surround us. We, as fundamentally social individuals, will always bear an element of our environment in our behaviours, decision and desires. These factors need to be borne in mind in any discussion of choice vs. imposition

Secondly, the article mentions that “Many see the burka as an infringement on women’s rights and is being increasingly imposed by fundamentalists”. It echoes the argument that says that the burka, and even the less encompassing hijab (veil) are de facto examples of gender oppression and patriarchy. It leaves no room for arguments about why the burka can be desired by women, for example in that it conveys an culturally-contingent image of an ideal femininity, one based on humility and faith.
By the same token, it also encourages us to forget about the ways in which patriarchy manifests itself in different yet comparable ways in Western secular societies. For example, the practice of cosmetic surgery, which pushes women, often young girls, to adhere to a sexualised feminine ideal that is unnatural, often ethnocentric. Or other societal and family pressures, such as the institution of marriage or heterosexuality.

No society is completely devoid of sexism, racism, homophobia or other prejudices; to pretend so is delusional. There are many examples in our own cultures of how gender values still form, even weigh upon, women. Therefore, when faced with the demonisation of Islamic forms of dress, I am compelled to ask: Why is it that western women feel more affronted by a woman who is humbly covered than one who is exposed? Why do we not repel in disgust at the way the sexualised female body is used shamelessly to sell anything: from fabric softener to metro tabloids (The Sun’s page 3 anyone?).

By signaling out the ways in which a cultural Other is perhaps experiencing injustice, we suspend criticism of the ways in which our own societies perpetuate similar injustices, but in different ways.

Thirdly, ‘cultures’ are never insular, self-contained boxes. Since the ancient days of the Silk Road trading through to European colonialism and then ultra-modern technologies, people have been in contact with different value systems and living, which in turn impact on the form that cultural manifestations take.

Accordingly, it might be useful to ask how the social, economic and political tides of our own times have impacted on the notion of identity of, say, migrant communities in Europe. Or how decades of increasing Euro-western xenophobia, including Islamaphobia, impact on the way that new generations choose to express and articulate their ethnic/religious identities.

The burka, as a type of dress and a SYMBOL like all others, has no meaning in itself. It only comes to acquire meaning when in a given context, and that meaning can change over time as context changes. A classic example is the wearing of the hijab in 20th century Iran: during the rule of the Shah, it was publicly banned. Consequently, women who were opposed to the Shah’s ruthless dictatorship deliberately chose to wear the hijab as a means of expressing their discontent with the regime, of revolting against the established order. To them, wearing the hijab was an act of resistance. Fast forward ten years: after the 1979 revolution and the hijab was forcefully imposed on women, it became the means through which a paranoid conservative government pushed the population into submission. Therefore, it became a symbol of oppression. So within 20 years, the same piece of fabric worn over the head came to mean completely different things to the people wearing it.

By conceiving of the issue in this way, we open ourselves to explanations for Islamic dress that exceed the liberated West vs. oppressed East paradigm. We can come to realise that wearing traditional Islamic dress is not necessarily the manifestation of some age-old archaic tradition of backward desert-dwellers that has no place in today’s society, but a glimpse into deeper issues about forging one’s identity in an ever-changing world. It can, for example, be conceived of as a phenomenon of 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants from ex-French colonies in reaction to their interaction with a hostile, often racist and supremacist, European culture. The burka can also be a means of rejecting what many see as the hyper-sexualisation of women in western cultures, propagated by rampant consumer capitalism, in which the body is just another item used to sell or to be sold.

Fourthly, there is a multiplicity of reasons why a woman could chose to wear the hijab or the burka. Inevitably, will also be cases where women will be encouraged to do so by family members, most often because it conveys the values of ideal femininity and womenhood in some Muslim circles: piety, humility, integrity. By the same token, there are numerous reasons why a woman can chose to diet and to undergo cosmetic surgery, because she is succumbing to western societies’ ideas about ideal femininity, in which one who controls her body, according to certain superficial, even pathological, ethnocentric beauty norms, is also in control of her life. Both are incidents of behaviours that can come about as a result of family/social pressure, and are therefore both problematic, and need do be dealt with sensitively and intelligently so as not to patronize those women involved.

Banning the burka to combat integration problems is as senseless and unproductive as banning collagen lip implants to combat gender oppression.

The most productive tactic is engagement, encouraging public debate, to try to reveal the complex community dynamics and processes of identity construction that affect us all. That cannot be acheived by prohibition. Banning things, whether types of dress, or books or music, constitutes a types of censorship in which something is deemed unacceptable, illigitimate. By doing so, it denies a voice to people who are involved in such practices for complex reasons.
Banning the burka would also marginalize people, push them to the fringes of society which will invariably lead to increased isolation, alienation and bitterness. Instead of solving problems posed in the name of ‘integration’, it will backfire heavily, and, in the heated international climate of stigma surrounding all things Muslim, make the women and families involved feel like they are being discriminated against because of their beliefs and ways of life.

Within today’s extremely fragile geoplolitical situation, to ban the wearing of the burka or the hijab in the name of secular individualism is to accentuate the injustice perpetuated by religion. In doing so, we fool ourselves into thinking that those injustices committed within liberal secular societies are somewhat less serious, less in need of public critique and ban. To ban the burka in France is to perpetuate a myth about the superiority of a secular French identity when faced with religious social paradigms.

To ban anything is to deny people the opportunity to inhabit, explore and discuss all the myriad types of identity that exist beyond narrow tropes defined by fictional, and often politically-loaded, dichotomies.
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