The Islamic debate over the veil

religion — By Bob Riel on November 10, 2006 at 7:05 am

It’s commonly assumed among Westerners that residents of Islamic countries uniformly support the veiling of women. However, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, some of the most vigorous debates on this issue occur not between the West and Islam, but between different factions inside Islamic countries. Interestingly, the debate over the veil is as intense within Islam as it is outside the faith.

When former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw insisted last month that female Muslim constituents show their faces when meeting with him, he set off a fiery debate about whether the face-covering niqab should be allowed in Britain’s multicultural society.

But often forgotten amid such controversies in Europe – which tend to center on allegations of “Islamophobia” or the desire of Western nations to control a minority community – is the fact that nowhere is the debate over the Islamic veil older or more heated than in Muslim societies themselves.

From Morocco and Tunisia, to Turkey and Iran, majority Muslim states have at various times restricted, and in some cases banned, women’s head coverings. To varying degrees, such restrictions stem from a view that public exhibitions of religious commitment are a political, not a personal, act – and hence a potential threat to the government.