Countries from Italy to Sweden are debating the right of women to
wear the niqab. Canada is the latest country to enter the fray,
with the Muslim Canadian Congress desiring to ban it. Is such a
ban possible in the U.S., where its prevalence is evident in
certain urban centers, like Philadelphia?
Muslim women's wearing of niqab, the
veil covering everything but the eyes, and, by extension, the
face-concealing mesh that is combined with a long garment to form
the burqa in South Asia, has been
introduced into the West as a purported religious obligation, and
therefore, is put forward by ideological Islamists as a
prospective civil right.
Niqab has become a matter of
controversy in almost every Western country, most recently when
the French government opened an inquiry into its prohibition –
with the support, perhaps counter-intuitive, of that country's
leading Muslim figure, Dr. Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand
Mosque of Paris. France had already banned all forms of religious
dress and symbolism from its state schools. In 2008, Dutch State
Secretary for Education Ronald Plasterk, representing the
immigrant-friendly Labor Party, called for banning
niqab, as well as the burqa
and abaya, from the country's primary
and secondary schools, both for pupils and for visiting mothers.
The burqa, with its
niqab-like eyescreen, is barred from
British and some Belgian public schools. Earlier controversies
include Quebec's 2007 decision that women must remove
niqab if they vote, and a demand in 2006 by
British Labour politician Jack Straw that women take off
niqab before visiting his constituency
office.
The U.S. has seen a number of bizarre attempts to establish
niqab as a right. In 2001, Sultaana Freeman
obtained a Florida driver's license while wearing
niqab, but the license was then
canceled.
Niqab is not the same as other
practices often referred to generally as "veils" or
"veiling":
• hijab, or head-covering,
• the abaya, a loose full-body
covering imposed on women in Saudi Arabia , although it is
required in that kingdom than it be supplemented by
niqab,
• the chador, an Iranian
cloak,
• or jilbab, a loose garment covering
the body except for the head, face, and hands.
Distinctions between these and various Western styles for
women are difficult to make, especially in a civil-liberties
environment. Head scarves and long coats or cloaks are worn by
many women in cultures around the world, non-Muslim as well as
Muslim. But since a hijab or head-covering
may resemble a hat, it may be prohibited for all women in certain
settings. Also in 2007, a Georgia judge barred a Muslim woman
from entering court unless she removed her
hijab, just as men and women are required
to take off hats and caps when a judge is present. The radical
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) unsuccessfully
challenged the judge's decision on the false claim of religious
freedom. But religious claims do not override judicial practice,
at least in the U.S., any more than they would justify carrying a
driver's license that conceals the bearer's identity.
Niqab as a security problem
encourages non-Muslim suspicion of Muslims, since it encourages
Muslims toward separatism from their non-Muslim neighbors. And
the security issue is real. Male terrorists in such varied
countries as Pakistan, Britain, Afghanistan, and Israel have
donned female coverings in attempting to escape police. Ordinary
criminals have put on niqab as a disguise
while committing robberies in the U.S., Britain, Canada, India,
and Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Niqab is not Islamic. Covering of the
face by women is nowhere mentioned in Qur'an, and the opinions of
Islamic legal scholars on it are not unanimous. The Hanafi school
of Islamic law, which is most widespread among Muslims,
specifically rules out face covering, on the basis of women's
needs while dealing normally with men, in commerce and elsewhere.
In traditional Islam, men are called on to act modestly, and
women are not ordered to disfigure and subordinate themselves by
masking their features. The Prophet Muhammad is reported to have
said that women making the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca should not
cover their faces or wear gloves, although in their typically
perverse manner, Saudi Wahhabi clerics now seek to impose it upon
them even then.
Millions of Muslim women around the world do not wear
so-called Islamic dress, but have retained local customary
garments, which do not distort their form or personality. Many
have adopted the same fashions as Western or Far-Eastern women.
Women in Hejaz, the Western Arabian region in which the holy
cities of Mecca and Medina are located, did not, in the past,
cover their faces, and increasingly protest against the
imposition of this practice.
The radicals who promote niqab try to
pretend that a woman becomes a "better Muslim" by covering her
face. This concept is no more Islamic than niqab
itself. In traditional Islam, division of Muslims between
the good and the bad, aside from those who have committed
terrorist or criminal acts, will be decided by God, not by men or
women.
According to established Islamic guidance, Muslims who
migrate to non-Muslim societies are required to accept and obey
the laws and customs of the countries to which they move.
Attempts to introduce niqab into Western
countries represent an obvious violation of this
principle.
Western nations have developed a doctrine of "reasonable
accommodation" of religious beliefs and practices. But acceptance
of niqab in the West would embody
"unreasonable accommodation."
Appeals for an immediate ban on
niqab or face-coverings in Western
countries are, in the view of many moderate Muslims, correct. To
rid the Muslim world of niqab will require
a sustained debate and social development in each country where
it is presently found, based on a pluralistic discussion leading
to its recognition as a non-Islamic, and dehumanizing,
practice.
