This article was downloaded by: [Taha, Maisa] On: 22 December 2010 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 931482982] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 3741 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK The Journal of North African Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713677623 The hijab north of Gibraltar: Moroccan women as objects of civic and social transformation Maisa C. Tahaa a School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Online publication date: 22 December 2010 To cite this Article Taha, Maisa C.(2010) 'The hijab north of Gibraltar: Moroccan women as objects of civic and social transformation', The Journal of North African Studies, 15: 4, 465 — 480 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13629387.2010.505769 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2010.505769 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. The Journal of North African Studies Vol. 15, No. 4, December 2010, 465 – 480 The hijab north of Gibraltar: Moroccan women as objects of civic and social transformation Maisa C. Taha∗ Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA As the number of North African Muslim immigrants in Europe grows, questions of cultural assimilation have moved to the forefront of discussion. Treated as the quintessential Other, Maghribines’ long-term presence in France prompted a 2004 ban on religious symbols in public schools; it went without saying that the hijab was the primary target of this restriction. Politicians and public figures in Britain have called Muslim women’s veiling practices antithetical to democratic citizenship, while Dutch conservatives have promised a ban on veiling in all public places (Anon 2006a, 2006b; Morris 2006). Spain, however, has developed a more ambivalent cultural and ideological relationship with the Muslim world and with North Africa in particular. Approximately 10% of all immigrants to Spain are from the Maghrib, and about 90% of those are from Morocco (Instituto Nacional de Estadı́stica). The proximity of Spain has made it an appealing entry point to the rest of Europe, as well as an accessible destination for work. This paper argues that Moroccans’ vulnerability in Spain must be understood in terms of the unique ties between the two nations, as well as the specific brand of modern liberalism that has developed in Spain since 1975, the start of that nation’s democracy. Key to Spanish liberalism is the defense of women’s freedom, which finds voice in teleological narratives of liberation and self-actualisation. Concern over Moroccan women’s subjugation to Islam and to male relatives has crystallised in discussions around the hijab, in particular. In this article, I analyse media coverage of hijab controversies in Spain, drawing also on my own fieldwork with Moroccan women and Spanish social service providers in Madrid. I argue for careful consideration of North African othering as a foil for Spanish discourses of progress and modernity – themselves historically situated and contestable variations upon wider European ideologies of liberalism. Keywords: hijab; immigration; liberalism; modernity; Morocco; multiculturalism; Spain; women; veil Introduction Coverage of the 2007 election of a hijab-wearing parliamentarian in Ceuta, one of two Spanish protectorate cities on Morocco’s northern coast, headlined her promise to ‘faithfully serve Spain’ and to uphold the Spanish Constitution. On the front page of El Paı́s, one of Spain’s ∗ Email: mct@email.arizona.edu ISSN 1362-9387 print/ISSN 1743-9345 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13629387.2010.505769 http://www.informaworld.com Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 466 M.C. Taha most widely circulated daily newspapers, Fátima Hamed Hossein appeared in a crisp white jacket, with a bright red scarf covering her hair and tied like a billowy cravat under her chin (El Paı́s 2007). The caption under her photograph noted that she ‘makes a special effort to “separate religion from other attitudes”’ (ibid.).1 When I saw this photograph, I was in Madrid conducting research on the social services available to Moroccan women there, and several questions sprang to mind. For instance, why would wearing the hijab and pledging allegiance to the Spanish Constitution be seen as non-sequiturs? What makes them so unlike one another that they become categorical opposites? And why, in the end, do Muslim women’s head coverings remain such a very big deal? My feeling for some time had been that the issue begged for a more thorough examination than it had generally received: one that considered the influence of global security measures and Islamophobia on Muslim identity politics; one that grounded the liberal appeal to women’s freedom in specific national histories; and one that recognised in the practice of veiling stakes beyond those involved in individual choice or collective resistance. Spain is today a non-confessional state that holds no ban on the display of religious symbols. Secularism in Spain has never enjoyed consistent popular approval or legal protection, however. Though the current president has pursued secular reforms, it is important to recognise that Spain’s identity is historically and ideologically rooted in the Catholic faith. This is an identity born of the fifteenth-century ouster and outlaw of Islam and Judaism under the united rule of the Catholic Kings. In short, Muslims (and Jews, of course) were supposed to have disappeared from Spain by the early seventeenth century. The reappearance of Muslims as immigrants revives questions about the identity of the Spanish national community. Who belongs, why, and how? I will show how these questions operate at both individual and collective levels as they are filtered through concern over the hijab. Specifically, I argue that the headscarf challenges norms of public and private behaviour – and therefore liberal gender politics – in Spain, which has itself been overlooked in studies of Muslim immigration to Europe even though it holds a unique position as an historical host to, and more recent coloniser of, North African Muslims. I place this discussion at the nexus of religious faith, identity politics and competing articulations of womanhood, as these point to variable modes of inhabiting the Spanish state. I use the case of Spain to examine expressions of discomfort with veiling as motivated by concern over female subjugation. Public discourse around the headscarf, or hijab, in particular, has established a process of liberal personal transformation as necessary to turning Muslim women into modern Spanish subjects. By virtue of Muslim women’s presumed subjection to patriarchal control, such transformation is generally deemed incomplete and points to limited trajectories for inclusion within Spanish society. Literature review Concern for women who wear the headscarf is nurtured through what Elizabeth Povinelli (2002) describes as liberal ‘repugnance’ toward unfamiliar practices, even as well-intentioned people may try to rationally accept such practices as moral alternatives. Her argument helps frame how the headscarf (as well as the burqa, the niqab and so on) has been treated as an icon of irreconcilable cultural and religious differences between Islam and the West, writ large. These are differences that constitute an affront to liberal values – ‘key among them “women’s freedom,”’ as Saba Mahmood (2005, p. 1) has noted. The politicisation of veiling within modern secular regimes therefore raises questions of foundational importance to liberal citizenship. Joan Wallach Scott (2007) has argued that, in Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 The Journal of North African Studies 467 the paradigmatic case of France, opposition to Muslim headscarves is based not only on a defense of secularism, but also on a normative ideology of sexual liberation. Opponents find in the headscarf a symbol of sexual repression and an affront to modern sexual freedom, which constitutes an implicit part of belonging in mind and body to the mainstream French collective. Thus, ‘liberated’ sexual expression is subsumed within the criteria for French citizenship writ large, while the headscarf becomes a symbol of constrictive tradition and a challenge to the nation’s idealised homogeneity. Unlike France, Spain has no official restrictions on religion in public life but constitutionally protects Catholicism as ‘a sociological fact’ of national identity (Casanova 1994, p. 88). Also unlike France, Spanish identity is largely based upon cultural and linguistic heterogeneity, including rivalries that have at different times threatened the viability of the unified Spanish state. Thus, polls often report that regional loyalties outstrip national ones and that citizens feel more Catalonian, Basque or Galician than Spanish (AlSayyad and Castells 2002). At the outset, this steadfast pluralism would seem to make Spain a welcoming destination for immigrants, where they might find their way smoothly within the larger society. Nonetheless, growing numbers of Moroccans in cities and towns across the country have prompted increasingly conspicuous defenses of Spanish cultural values. As articulated in everyday conversations and published in newspapers, such discourses highlight perceived differences between Spanish and North African gender norms and emphasise Spaniards’ triumph over outdated forms of patriarchy. Meanwhile, recent cultural analyses have explored Spain’s ambivalent relationship with North Africa whereby the legacy of the Muslim kingdoms of Al-Andalus is both celebrated through tourism and relegated to a history of foreign invasion (Flesler 2008; Fuchs 2009; González Alcantud 2002). Despite those nearly eight centuries of Arab rule and the resulting linguistic, technological and cultural assimilation of Muslim and Christian communities, the notion of a Moorish ‘re-invasion’ has been marshaled in Spanish popular discourse to describe the contemporary influx of Maghribine migrants. As Flesler (2008) argues, the Orientalist image of the invading Moor has long been codified in Spanish culture, to the extent that it appears in common idioms such as ‘Hay moros en la costa’ [‘There are Moors on the coast’], i.e., be careful, watch out (p. 3)! Flesler argues that such turns of phrase contribute to ideologies that erase similarities between Moroccans and Spaniards, overlook their shared cultural histories, and equate all current immigrants with fearsome Muslim invaders. The ostensibly intractable gap between Moroccans and Spaniards augurs a tense coexistence, at best, and Flesler suggests it is the persistence of such ideologically loaded language and images that contribute to Moroccan immigrants’ marginalisation within Spanish society. I argue, however, that a closer look at Moroccan experiences in Spain reveals gradations in that marginalisation. Certain Muslim immigrants are described as more suited to integration than others, and women who wear the hijab are not excluded from that promise, at least in theory. My analysis below will show how the image of the desirable Muslim immigrantcitizen has been constructed against the backdrop of Spain’s own struggle to establish the liberal ideals of freedom, equality and self-determination among its populace. I will further show that the main trope of Muslim integration is a personal transformation that parallels in the individual’s acquisition of voice and emotional confidence, the idealised social and civic instantiations of freedom, equality and self-determination. I argue that the presence of Moroccan women who wear the hijab is challenging Spaniards to examine and redefine their relationship with liberalism. In so doing, I draw on Najmabadi’s (2000) critique of the Iranian feminist movement, which fractured over the question of Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 468 M.C. Taha veiling. Insofar as secular Iranian feminists rejected Islamic practices as backward, they drove a wedge between themselves and their pious sisters. Najmabadi suggests that this did not have to be the case and that the ideological force of discourses that linked secularism to modern liberalism, and religion to unenlightened tradition, created a social rift that could have been avoided. In Spain, as elsewhere in Europe, the transnational movements and practices of Maghribine citizens forces recognition of the specificities and limitations of liberalism itself, encouraging scholarly appreciations that ‘provincialise’ grand narratives of European enlightenment (Chakrabarty 2000) – contextualising their histories in particular times and places; detailing how they are used, resisted and reconfigured in power-laden relationships; and ultimately questioning their application as universal standards for the good life. If feminism is not productively operationalised as a secular universal, then proponents of an idealised liberalism must also take account of its inconsistencies. As Scott (2007) points out in her discussion of France, for example, the rigid defense of secularism has done more to embitter Muslim identity politics than to alleviate them. And as Najmabadi (2000) concludes, the teasing apart of religious, national, ethnic and gendered identities as separate but complementary entities makes combining them into new and truly inclusive citizenships possible. Spanish womanhood in historical context The promise of Spanish inclusion is a gendered issue, and to appreciate it, a review of the gender politics of Spanish democracy and modernity is paramount. The development of Spanish feminism was closely triangulated with struggles over political and social liberalism and the role of the Catholic Church (Smith 2006, pp. 3 – 6). Texts circulating among eighteenth-century Spanish women as etiquette guides became canonical manuals under the dictatorial rule of General Francisco Franco, helping promote his programme for Catholic Nationalism 200 years later (1939– 1975). Among them, Fray Luis de León’s 1583 booklet entitled La perfecta casada [The perfect wife] emphasised male superiority and recommended female modesty and confinement to private spaces (Morcillo 2000, p. 63): ‘[a]s men are made for public, women are made for enclosure; and as men are made to speak and go outside, women are made to enclose and cover themselves’ (cited in Smith 2006, p. 24). Franco’s project co-opted women into his nationalist agenda, making their duties as mothers and wives essential to the stability of the nation (ibid., p. 162). While emphasising divinely ordained female modesty, male superiority and the primacy of the family, legal reforms in the late 1950s and early 1960s finally granted women rights to child custody, to serve as legal witnesses and to work outside the marital home (ibid., p. 66). The consumer explosion of this mid-century expansionist period introduced a second discursive line that encouraged women to cultivate acquisitive powers and sex appeal. As one historian notes, ‘The new ads in the press urged Spanish women to remake themselves. They could now purchase a new identity, a sense of self-worth based on physical appearance rather than spiritual value’ (Morcillo 2000, p. 56). The newer discourse circulated along with the older one, boosting female participation in the secularised marketplace while preserving the means for their moral sanction and control. The end of Franco’s strongman rule, however, prompted a swift and radical feminist movement that has propelled Spanish women into the workplace, made birth rates plunge, and revamped sexual politics. Without overstating the success of the Spanish feminist movement, which is a topic for a different paper, I want to point out that it created changes still keenly felt by the population. After all, women in their fifties today were just moving into adulthood Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 The Journal of North African Studies 469 when Franco died. The transition out of a time when women were not allowed to have personal bank accounts or travel unaccompanied also constituted part of their coming of age.2 Present notions of liberated Spanish womanhood use authoritarian Francoist patriarchy as a foil against which to define resistance to traditional gender roles, while the headscarf worn by Moroccan immigrant women is perceived as a symbol of Muslim counter-resistance to these hard-won gains. The following discussion focuses on the case of Fátima Elidrisi, a Moroccan teenager who wanted to attend a Spanish school wearing the hijab, as the cornerstone of public debate over the headscarf in Spain in recent years. The portrayal of her ordeal, her father’s involvement and her personal transformation provide a framework for understanding other headscarf cases covered in the Spanish press, as well as the experiences of the Moroccan women I interviewed in Madrid. My textual analysis is based on articles published in the three major Spanish daily newspapers, ABC, El Paı́s, and El Mundo, between 2001 and 2007. These papers’ political leanings range from conservative to moderate to leftist, respectively, but their coverage of Fátima’s case highlighted consistent suspicions of her father’s motives. Journalistic discourse has specifically questioned the suitability of Muslim men for Spanish citizenship, while urging veiling girls and women to enact personal transformations that mitigate their imputed positioning as premodern subjects. Fátima According to news reports, when Fátima Elidrisi arrived in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, just outside Madrid, in October 2001, her father had been there for over a decade working in construction. At that time, Spain was already host to the largest population of Moroccan immigrants in the European Union outside of France (López Garcı́a and Berriane 2004). Local education officials enrolled Fátima in a Catholic school, but the nuns barred her entering with the hijab, saying she had to wear the school uniform with no modifications (Peregil 2002a). Her father refused to send her back without the headscarf, and the public school to which she was reassigned likewise refused to let her attend while wearing it. Her father filed a complaint with regional authorities and withdrew his daughter from school. About four months later, the Education Councilor of Madrid ruled that Fátima’s education took precedence over all else and mandated that the public school allow her to attend classes wearing the hijab (Peregil 2002b). So in February 2002, Fátima returned to school amid intense media attention. Photos from that time showed her led by her father through a crush of school officials, reporters and onlookers. One image was especially striking (see Asenjo 2002a): it showed Fátima as a diminutive figure surrounded by men who towered over her. Her head, in a snug white hijab, was tucked under father’s right arm, and he covered her eyes with his hand. Ostensibly an attempt to protect her privacy, this gesture can be read as iconic of his control over her. The placid smile on his face might be considered contradictory, given the hubbub all around them. I argue that the highlighting of such contradictions was pervasive in newspaper accounts of the case and portrayed Ali Elidrisi as a suspicious character. The resolution of Fátima’s case was followed a month later by a case involving two Moroccan sisters and the same Catholic school. Their father, in turn, refused to let them attend, citing the length of the uniform skirts and the requirement to remove their headscarves as nonnegotiable obstacles. A headline in ABC read, ‘Another Moroccan father refuses to send his daughters to school in Madrid’ (Asenjo 2002a).3 The sisters’ case was resolved in a similar fashion to Fátima’s, but they have largely remained out of the media spotlight. Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 470 M.C. Taha Fátima’s story serves as an emblem for debate around the headscarf in Spain, and her personal transformation, as described in the major Spanish newspapers, provides a narrative arc for projecting modes of gendered, enterprising citizenship among Muslim immigrants. Key in Fátima’s story is her acquisition of voice. In the year between initial reports on her ordeal and the followup interviews, she learned to speak Spanish. It was to her that El Paı́s turned in October 2007 for insight on the most recent controversy, regarding eight-year-old Shaima, in the northeastern city of Girona. Fátima’s opinion, expressed smoothly in Spanish, helps position her as a rational young woman who can put the patriarchal character of her religion in perspective: ‘At eight years old, one doesn’t wear the veil. [Shaima] is very small; even at 14 one is small’4 (Galán 2007). Her indirect commentary on her own experience – even at 14 one is small – points to the issue central to all three of these cases: freedom. In newspaper accounts of Fátima’s ordeal, it became apparent that concern for her situation had everything to do with the suspicion that she lived according to the whims of a dictatorial father. An article in El Paı́s from 17 February 2002, described her as a timid girl who dreamt of becoming a teacher. Still, she relied on her father to be her translator. ‘What I most like about Spain is that I’m finally by my father’s side,’5 she was quoted as saying, but the journalist qualified this by adding, ‘Ali Elidrisi always translates for her’6 (Peregil 2002b). Within the context of this article, Ali’s necessary linguistic intervention provided grounds for questioning his motives, the veracity of his statements and Fátima’s exercise of free will. As reported in ABC, both Ali Elidrisi and his counterpart, Ahmed Aharram, refused the Catholic school’s free uniforms, as well as the nuns’ proposal that the girls wear the hijab with street clothes, rather than the skirts that were part of the uniform. The fathers are thus construed as unappreciative of the nuns’ goodwill, while ‘the [nuns . . .] show themselves to be entirely willing to facilitate the girls’ attendance’7 (Asenjo 2002b). That the fathers opposed letting their daughters attend a school in which Catholic doctrine formed part of the curriculum may furthermore be considered an uncommon challenge to Spanish Catholic identity. Meanwhile, that Ali kept Fátima out of school for months and Ahmed Aharram kept his daughters home for over a year points to the fathers’ illiberal stances, in detriment to their daughters’ social and civic educations. In a report five months after Fátima’s re-enrollment, school officials stated that even with improved linguistic skills, she tended to socialise with other Moroccan kids and that her participation in extracurricular activities was limited since her father did not want her going to and from school on her own (Asenjo 2002c). Her curtailed movements outside the home must be understood in contrast to an implicit ideal: that of a young woman learning to make her way autonomously through the city. Within this framework, state sponsored education can be considered a crucial means to inculcating liberal subjecthood among girls, but Fátima’s father allegedly kept her from participating fully in the experiences that would make her ‘more’ Spanish and thus, more free. Ali Elidrisi described himself during his interview with El Paı́s as a ‘very religious person’8 but claimed that this had nothing to do with Fátima’s decision to wear the hijab: ‘She felt like wearing it, and no one forced her. [. . .] I studied the Qur’an till I was 20 years old, but that hasn’t influenced my daughter’s decision’9 (Peregil 2002b). The published article included four translated quotes from Fátima, who stated that the decision to veil was indeed hers: ‘I want to wear headscarf, no one makes me [do it]’10 (ibid.). These appeals to autonomous decision-making and the freedom to make of oneself what one will, failed to disarm the journalistic interrogation. Fátima, after all, could not speak for herself. The confessional framing of Ali Elidrisi’s interview placed him under suspicion of guilt. He revealed that he had studied the Qur’an in his hometown of Alhucemas then made his way to Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 The Journal of North African Studies 471 Spain to work as an undocumented labourer before getting residency and sending for his family. In the meantime, he bought a car and made yearly visits to Morocco. He also admitted to drinking, even though he claimed to have dropped the habit long ago. I argue that his admissions have the effect of de-legitimising his claims to responsible fatherhood. His unorthodox entry effectively stains his Spanish residence with illegality, and his personal inconsistencies throw his claim to be an observant Muslim into doubt. Thus, the writer went on to pepper him with questions meant to provoke an emotional response. For example, ‘If in the future, a possible Spanish boyfriend asked Fátima to wear a skirt from time to time, how would Ali Elidrisi react?’11 (Peregil 2002b). Despite what is intended as a bold query, Fátima’s father remained unruffled. ‘The father [. . .] never loses his smile, no matter what he is asked,’12 (ibid.). I suggest that the writer’s portrayal of Ali’s unexpectedly even temper had an unsettling quality that threw the father’s character further into question. What was he trying to hide? And how could he be exposed as the tyrannical Muslim father he was suspected of being? One answer appeared in an opinion piece published days later in reaction to Ali’s statement that he was a champion neither of the burqa nor of nudity on Spanish beaches. After seeing images of beach-goers on television, he declared he would never go to one: ‘I don’t like that people go around without clothes on, as if they were animals’13 (Peregil 2002b). In response, writer César Gavela (2002) argued that he had gone too far. His words bear quoting in full: Without further ado, I disagree with [Ali Elidrisi’s] repulsion toward Spanish beaches, full, according to him, of ‘naked bodies, like animals.’ Fátima’s father forgets that at the end of the day, we are indeed animals [. . .]. Rational animals who live in democracy in this part of the world, which does not happen in others. Animals with memory, understanding and willpower who work, create, educate themselves, live together and progress. Human animals peacefully nude on the beaches. Free citizens on asphalt as on sand.14 According to Gavela’s formulation, Spanish citizens are fundamentally free, allowing the Eden of non-fetishised bodies on the sand to become an urb of productive citizenry. Spaniards are both peaceful and industrious by his account. I argue that this is an example of how Spanish – and generally Western – anxiety over the hijab gains force from a concatenation of elements linking the Islamic revival to non-liberal values, including strict gender norms and the invocation of the divine in everyday life, both of which alter the liberal separation between public and private space. Bruno Latour (1993) has argued that the ‘crossed-out God’ has been an essential mechanism of modernity whereby the seat of the divine was removed from public space and resituated within the individual hearts of believers. In this way, he has argued, the divine enabled liberated personal enterprise without dictating action from above. What is obscured by current media discourse, however, is a good explanation of why women’s place in Spanish society might be challenged by veiling Muslim girls, and why women’s roles remain a matter of contentious debate. Writing for El Paı́s days after Fátima returned to school, editorial commentator Marı́a Esperanza Sánchez (2002) stated: This is the freedom that we women want: the freedom to choose, the sacred and undeniable freedom to choose. [. . .] And there’s something more: one must recognize Fátima’s right to use the headscarf, if, when she is older and can think for herself, she decides to continue wearing it, because that headscarf, once it has been freely chosen, is a sign of cultural identity, a symbol of the difference between her and us, a difference that nobody, under any excuse, should attempt to make Fátima forget, because her past, her origin, her culture, are the values that will sustain the new woman born of the fusion in freedom of everything she will receive here.15 472 M.C. Taha In other words, Fátima’s choice to veil becomes the condition by which Spaniards might accept her head covering. When veiling is not seen as a free expression of identity, the onus for its imposition falls upon Muslim fathers, brothers and husbands, who stand in as objects of fear associated with Islamist radicalism and terrorist activity worldwide, including the Madrid train bombings of 2004. Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 Fátima’s transformation As a means of comparison, and to complete the redemptive arc of Fátima’s story, it is useful to consider an article published in El Mundo one year after she had returned to school. Here, a transformed Fátima has fully adjusted to life in Spain and has become a dedicated advocate for other new Muslim students at her school. She mentions her father only in passing. In the words of the author, the hijab has become ‘a simple scarf’ and ‘a piece of cloth’ (Serna 2003), and most notably, Fátima can speak for herself. ‘Since I didn’t know Spanish [before],’ she is quoted as saying, ‘everyone said things for me and no one asked me. Now, I can speak for myself and say that I wear the headscarf because I want to and not because my father tells me to’16 (ibid.). Fátima’s narrative, combined with her mentorship of new Arabic-speaking students, displays her positioning as a subject who, through her own experience, gained the capacity for deep empathy with others: ‘I would have liked when I came here for the first time for a student who also spoke Spanish to help me study it and to meet the rest of classmates [sic]’17 (ibid.). In effect, she not only recognised a gap in the school’s processes of social reproduction, but she also stepped in to fill it. According to Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000, p. 121), it is just such capacity for rational reflection and heartfelt action that constitutes ‘the transcendental position of the modern subject.’ Foucault (1984, p. 30) ascribes modern, heartfelt action to the cultivation of a particular ethic, or behaviour. Part of developing this ethic, premised on self-care – practicing thought and conduct that effectively govern the self – involves caring for others, as well, which ‘enables one to occupy his rightful position in the city, the community, or interpersonal relationships.’ In these newspaper articles, Fátima becomes a decidedly ethical subject by virtue of her new role as mediator and tutor. She animates values neatly aligned to the goals of her school and the Spanish state. The role she has spontaneously adopted is increasingly institutionalised in twenty first century Spain, as a growing cadre of state-trained Intercultural Mediators take their places in hospitals, social service agencies and courts. Among them are a significant number of first- and second-generation Moroccan immigrants, particularly women. I believe it is important that Fátima’s consideration for others contrasts so sharply with her father’s imputed lack of emotion. (Shouldn’t a pious father defend his young daughter’s honour when asked to speculate on boyfriends and short skirts?) According to this article, she had indeed found her rightful position. And unlike her father, her access to Spanish modernisation was by socially sanctioned routes, making her moral standing more secure than his own. As depicted in the Spanish press, Ali was an interloper who emerged on the political stage without, as Chakrabarty (2000, p. 11) writes, any ‘preparatory’ work in order to qualify as the ‘bourgeoiscitizen.’ Fátima, on the other hand, shadows the insightful work of the nineteenth-century flanêur, who described a budding modern Spanish society (see, for example, Mariano José de Larra 1998). She explains the emerging landscape of a pluralist society to her peers, and she is particularly well qualified to do so, having learned what is required to negotiate between the Spanish and Moroccan worlds. The Journal of North African Studies 473 In what follows, I turn to ethnographic and interview data from Moroccan women and Spanish social service providers to examine discourses of liberal womanhood in everyday contexts. Despite the success described in press accounts of Fátima’s transformation, such experiences are no guarantee of social inclusion. The hijab, moreover, remains a powerful marker of Moroccan women’s increasingly entrenched identity politics and their unfortunate exclusion from the Spanish mainstream. Even as social service agencies and women’s centres promote an ethos of interculturalism, personal anecdotes make clear that wearing the hijab in Spain can mean limiting one’s social and economic horizons. What remains consistent across these accounts is an appreciation for the power of liberal transformation at both the societal and individual levels. The promise of autonomy and self-actualisation drive these women’s narratives of progress, while the fulfillment of that promise may never be completely satisfied. Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 Narratives of Moroccan transformation in Madrid I found the narrative of Fatima’s transformation – from silent to voiced, from passive to agentive – echoed in the stories of the women I interviewed in Madrid. I present them here as a way to address personal transformation, or ‘self-care’ as Foucault (1984, pp. 26 – 29) describes it. This is transformation as a trope of movement toward modern, if normative, existence: ‘an [. . .] exercise of the self on the self by which one attempts to develop and transform oneself, [. . .] knowledge of a number of rules of acceptable conduct or of principles that are both truths and prescriptions.’ Such movement helps align immigrant women to a progressive subjectivity deemed desirable in Spanish public discourse. This alignment, in turn, entails negotiating the disjuncture between pre-modernity and modernity, between patriarchy and liberation. The tales of transformation recounted by my interviewees often involved a move toward personal and economic independence. An Intercultural Mediator at a women’s social service agency characterised her Moroccan clients’ experiences this way: ‘[In Morocco,] women depend upon men [. . .]. Here, they’re independent, and they don’t have to answer to anyone.’18 Transformations frequently included changes in speech, modes of expression, and levels of self-awareness. Lutfiya19, a 25-year-old Moroccan immigrant, laughed when I asked about her arrival to Spain. ‘When I came here,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t even say hola!’20 Mona, another Intercultural Mediator, described the change she had observed in one of her clients thus: ‘She got out of a very difficult situation [and now] she’s different; she’s not the same as before. She couldn’t talk. Now she’s a different [woman].’21 These changes – rooted in linguistic proficiency and psychological empowerment – invoke parallel frameworks of progress through personal change. Meanwhile, proof of these women’s positive transformations, like Fatima’s, lies in the articulation of a triumphant narrative of modern liberation (Keane 2007). Lutfiya noted, for example, that in Morocco, she never worked or paid bills, but that living in Spain and having those responsibilities had made her a stronger person: ‘Here, I feel I’m better than before. I see a totally different world from in my country – totally different.’22 Her positive self-assessment, accompanied by a reflection on how much she had changed, speaks to the triumph of her story. The work she did on herself had become a key part of her personal narrative, while her methods of self-care were both agentive and reflective. Driven by the need to find work, she told me she had attended several language classes a day and gained conversational proficiency in Spanish in only four months. Moreover, in an effort to overcome her shyness, she participated in social activities at a women’s centre. ‘If you had come here before, I Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 474 M.C. Taha couldn’t have talked to you,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know how to talk to people, how to say things, how to explain things [. . .]. I felt like I was dumb. [. . .] [Now I know] that I’m saying something important and they should listen.’23 In this way, Lutfiya’s personal transformation had put her on the pathway to liberal Spanish subjecthood – a task left incomplete by simply obtaining legal residency or steady employment, both of which she had. Migration to Spain emerged in more than one of my interviews as the first step in a liberating trajectory. With Spain in the position of a desired European destination, the discursive distance between itself and Morocco grows. I argue that these are morally laden expressions that reinforce the association of Islam and North Africa with backwardness. A psychologist at a women’s centre noted, for example, that the challenges facing Moroccan women today were very similar ‘to those that the Spanish woman has or has had. Because the Spanish woman has also had to emigrate, has also had to shatter so many prejudices – a very, very, very, very patriarchal society, the weight of society, of wagging tongues!’24 Since North African immigrant women’s experiences coincide with those of Spanish women in the past, the psychologist’s comments evoke a constrained, teleological progress whereby perceived obstacles must be overcome for Moroccan women to realise their true potential. According to such discourses, Moroccan women may attain the good life as long as they shed the remnants of tradition and patriarchy that seem to beset them. Fátima Elidrisi was ostensibly able to do just that. Nonetheless, the ideological force of her story and other triumphant transformations has the effect of excluding women from certain public roles if the do not fully embrace Spanish gender norms. Ideally, this would mean removing the hijab and relinquishing ties to controlling male kin. As such, treating Moroccan women as objects of (or projects for) transformation becomes a politically biased endeavour. I want to stress that the politicisation of women’s lives in Spain is rooted in the legacies of the oppressive Franco regime. Spanish women who today remember growing up under strict sexist laws connect Muslim immigrants’ patriarchal practices to memories of life under the dictatorship. To a certain extent, then, Spanish reactions to the hijab must be understood as growing from embodied experiences under patriarchy. The fact that Muslim women may be seen as bringing arcane values of domesticity, subservience and piety into the public sphere rankles Spanish feminist sensibilities. During my research, one woman commented to me, ‘When I see a woman with a headscarf, I feel attacked as a Spanish woman.’25 I found her statement echoed in those of other Spanish women, including some who work in agencies that provide social services to immigrants. Such visceral reactions appear in public forums, as well. A spokesperson for the Violence Prevention Area of the Women’s Foundation in Madrid was quoted in El Mundo saying, ‘The State has the obligation to guarantee the freedom of all individuals and the obligation to protect public space. Behind the imposition of the veil there is violence’26 (Agencias 2002). Ironically, such broad pronouncements help sideline Spaniards’ own battle with domestic violence. Deaths from domestic violence are announced almost daily in the media, and El Paı́s periodically posts a running total on its front page. I believe that because Spain still struggles with the worst kinds of machismo, Moroccan immigrants’ gender relations often serve as a foil for, and distraction from, endemic Spanish sexism. Meanwhile, the government contracts social service providers to establish centres for counselling, language instruction and legal advice to immigrants. Centres like the ones at which I did my research are sponsored by the Women’s Ministry to serve the Moroccan female population specifically. The guidance and support women receive there can make significant positive differences in their lives, as attested by the interviews discussed above. At the same time, Moroccan Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 The Journal of North African Studies 475 women come to be associated with the need to change, to modernise and to empower themselves according to Spanish liberal values. An important component of the modernising trajectories referenced by interviewees involved the ability to express self-awareness in the process of discarding outmoded beliefs and solving personal problems. Learning this skill meant, first and foremost, acquiring a vocabulary that effectively described inner states. Luz, a psychologist who worked primarily with Moroccan women, noted that they would describe states of physical discomfort or pain in lieu of emotions or feelings: ‘Why? Because culturally, when there are no words to describe emotions, when something is not named, it doesn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad.’27 The sublimation of emotions to physical symptoms presented for Luz the opportunity to help her clients redirect – and thus, expiate – difficult experiences through the use of language. Once her clients had learned to express themselves, they would also monitor and cultivate feelings of self-worth such that positive action would become possible in their lives. As I suggested in contrasting Fátima Elidrisi to her father, the cultivation of rational self-knowledge and a balanced emotional core signals the development of an autonomous subject whose centre lies within the self, accessible through language but not beholden to forces such as faith or tradition. Woolard (1998), among others, has argued that the resulting ideology of ‘personalism’ is a key component of Western liberalism. The catch is that pathways to transformational wholeness can also fall short of their mark. For example, some interviewees reported that wearing the hijab would keep one out of most any job that dealt directly with the public. Certain employers required women to remove their headscarves upon entering their workplaces. Those who refused were refused positions; and within a logic that rendered veiling a matter of free choice, there were no protections for them. The case of a young woman I will call Yumna is illustrative of how this systemic discrimination is emerging in Spain. When I spoke with her on an August evening in a coffee shop on the north side of the city, Yumna told me she had been looking for work unsuccessfully for five years. She was 26 years old and a political science graduate student. Her Spanish was impeccable, spoken with a native madrileño accent. She had grown up spending summers in Spain, where her parents had moved to find work when she was young. Her charge from them throughout her childhood was to study hard and attend college, which she did once she had moved to Madrid permanently. Her professors assured her a bright professional future, but her job search had all but stopped since getting her undergraduate degree. She was unsure whether she wanted to continue in the doctoral programme she had begun. She told me that in the first months after graduation, she sent out hundreds of résumés and landed at least one new phone interview everyday. Those would go well, and she landed many invitations for follow-up, face-to-face meetings. As soon as her interviewers would see her wearing the hijab, however, they would lose interest and invariably say they had nothing to offer her. The only job offers she did receive did not make use of her training and, pointedly, involved no interaction with the public. The single exception was a temporary position as a tax advisor to Arabic speakers. Meanwhile, she had grown tired of justifying herself to her peers in the political science department and found their constant questions about her headscarf distracting, if not alienating: ‘[They would ask], does your father make you wear that? What am I supposed to say? My father was the one who insisted I stay in school, who insisted that I study!’28 The outline of Yumna’s story was consistent with those of other women I talked to. Those who sought hourly jobs at restaurants or shops were often asked to remove their headscarves or forego employment. Women with advanced degrees had been denied positions that put them in contact 476 M.C. Taha Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 with the public, or they were given the least desirable schedules, like the pharmacist who finally accepted the night shift at a 24-hour pharmacy. I argue that the injustices experienced by Yumna and her peers are intensified by a logic that holds them accountable to liberal ideals but excludes them from its benefits. As individuals who choose to work outside the home, seek educational opportunities and therefore increased autonomy, these women exemplify rational agency and animate liberal freedoms. The symbolic weight of the hijab, however, turns them into representatives of a stereotyped, anti-liberal Muslim society. In the end, Spanish public discourse illuminates womanhood itself as a position problematically wrought through allegiances to men. In the case of discourses around Muslim women, these allegiances are seen as threatening all Spanish women’s freedom and shuttling the country back in history, to a time of systematised patriarchy: an experience all too fresh in the collective memory. The promise of the transformation of veiling women helps hold this threat at bay, even though women like Yumna, who in many respects was as ‘transformed’ as they come, still meet a brick wall when trying to participate fully in Spanish society29. Conclusion I have argued that, despite the promise of liberalism to instate freedom and equality universally, liberal discourses mask the exclusions enacted upon the marginalised by emphasising personal choice and transformation. By making (normative) liberating choices and changes seem commonsensical, Spanish popular discourse holds Moroccans accountable as bearers of outdated traditions should they do otherwise. The equation of Islam with pre-modernity and ignorance, and secularism (or Christianity) with modernity and enlightenment is continually reinforced. A 2004 interview with the President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid provides an example. When asked how the region might better integrate immigrants, Esperanza Aguirre’s response included the following: [. . .] There are people whose integration is easier than others, like the Latin Americans and the Eastern Europeans. What’s going on with the Muslims? Well, it’s harder to integrate them. Many want to maintain their traditions and customs, and it worries me because some cultures and religious interpretations are absolutely incompatible with the fundamental rights that the Constitution guarantees, for example, of women. We must make this clear from the very first moment: everyone who comes here must respect the fundamental rights recognised in the Constitution, especially with respect to women.30 (Beata and Sanz 2004, p. 3, emphasis added) Aguirre then turned from dismissing Muslims as inassimilable to wondering aloud why schools in Asturias and Catalonia would want to ban the singing of Christmas carols. She argued, ‘[. . .] Christianity today defends unquestionable values, such as the equality of all human beings. That’s why I don’t understand why they want to erase all of that’ (ibid.).31 That the president of one of the most influential Spanish regions should declare her fondness for Christian tradition is perhaps less significant than how she triangulates it with women’s rights and the Spanish Constitution. Aguirre equates Christianity with values she calls universal, values that include human equality and respect for women, as provided in the Constitution. Thus, even as she avoids commenting further on Muslim integration; she makes clear that the ‘traditions and customs’ she ascribes to them make them repugnant, at least to official Madrilène sensibilities. In other words, Aguirre’s own universally inclusive value system still affords no place to Muslim Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 The Journal of North African Studies 477 immigrants. She places women at the centre of this issue, but her implicit addressees are Muslim men, the same ones feared as terrorists and tormentors of their wives and daughters. Mahmood (2005) has argued that Western feminists, of whom Aguirre is certainly one, have not properly engaged with the stories of women seen to be participating in their own subjugation. She suggests that liberalism, understood as a universal ideal for free, rational, agentive living, has clouded the ways in which Muslim women enact agency without renouncing faith. In this paper, I have examined media and everyday discourses concerning Moroccan women and the hijab to argue that liberalism itself is made of particular histories masquerading as a timeless universal truth. Thus, I see in the trials and successes of Moroccan immigrant women the opportunity for Spaniards to reassess their social norms as constructions, not givens; and to recognise the limitations of their liberal ideology of inclusion as choice. The idealised transformations of Fátima Elidrisi and her counterparts need not obviate the redressing of systemic wrongs visited upon women like Yumna. To the contrary, the disentanglement of national, religious, social and civic identities as non-exclusive categories might, as Najmabadi (2000) urges, open doors to more collaborative action and community-based cohesion. Ostensibly, these are the very elements Spanish authorities fret over when considering how to integrate Moroccan immigrants. If the so-called ‘return’ of Moroccans to the Iberian Peninsula is seen as an invasion of threatening Others, then Spaniards effectively renounce their own Muslim heritage. This, of course, is the ideological work of modern Western liberalism, as worked into the construction of the Spanish nation-state. Still, I believe that Spain’s unique connection to North Africa and the questions raised by Moroccan immigration offer the potential for more equitable, less exclusionary relationships. As one woman told me, speaking of suspicions shared by both groups, ‘They’re not so very different from us.’32 It is undoubtedly more productive to promote an expansion of the possible identities legitimately inhabitable in Spain that to seek refuge in nostalgic pasts. In this sense, the Moroccans who have settled in Spain, and the women who wear their hijabs daily, have forced a reckoning of the divide between Islam and the West. This is a divide both reinforced and contested through everyday talk and personal interactions. Acknowledgements For their generous time and openness, I express sincerest thanks to the Moroccan and Spanish women who shared their thoughts and experiences with me in 2007. Thanks to David Ortiz, who first alerted me to the Elidrisi controversy and whose encouragement is ongoing; and Idoia Elola shared insights that turned this paper into a deeper and livelier discussion than it otherwise would have been. Adam Geary, Rudolph Gaudio and Brian Silverstein offered invaluable feedback on early drafts of this paper, though shortcomings in the shape of its final argument are my responsibility alone. Appreciation goes also to César Gavela and Marı́a Esperanza Sánchez for allowing me to include excerpts from their opinion columns. A version of this study was presented at the 2007 meetings of the American Anthropological Association; and Aomar Boum kindly arranged an extended presentation and discussion during the University of Arizona’s 2009 Near Eastern Studies Colloquium Series. Travel and research were made possible with grants from the Tinker Foundation and the Riecker Research Fund. Notes 1. All translations from the Spanish are my own. 2. The older sister of a personal friend in the Basque Country has said she remembers that their mother had to have formal permission from their father in order to withdraw money from the bank. 3. ‘Otro padre marroquı́ se niega a escolarizar a sus hijas en Madrid.’ Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 478 M.C. Taha 4. ‘A los ocho años no se lleva el velo. [Shaima] es muy pequeña, incluso a los 14 se es pequeña.’ 5. ‘Lo que más me ha gustado de España es que por fin estoy al lado de mi padre.’ All quotes from Peregil (2002b) are #EL PAIS, SL/ + FRANCISCO PEREGIL. 6. ‘traducida siempre por Ali Elidrisi’ 7. ‘Las Concepcionistas [. . .] se muestran dispuestas a todo tipo de facilidades para que las niñas estudien en su centro.’ 8. ‘una persona muy religiosa’ 9. ‘A ella le apetecı́a y nadie le obligó. [. . .] Estudié el Corán hasta los 20 años, pero eso no ha influido en la decisión de mi hija.’ 10. ‘Yo quiero llevar pañuelo, nadie me obliga.’ 11. ‘Si en un futuro próximo un posible novio español de Fátima le pidiera que se pusiera alguna falda de vez en cuando, ¿cómo reaccionarı́a Ali Elidrisi?’ 12. ‘El padre [. . .] nunca pierde la sonrisa, le pregunten lo que le pregunten [. . .].’ 13. ‘No me gusta que la gente vaya sin ropa como si fueran animales.’ 14. Sin ir más lejos, discrepo de su repulsión hacia las playas españolas, atestadas, según él, de ‘cuerpos desnudos, como animales’. Olvida el padre de Fátima que a fin de cuentas animales somos [. . .]. Animales racionales que viven en democracia en esta parte del mundo, lo que no sucede en otras. Animales con memoria, entendimiento y voluntad que trabajan, crean, se forman, conviven y progresan. Animales humanos pacı́ficamente desnudos en la playa. Ciudadanos libres sobre el asfalto y sobre la arena. 15. Esa es la libertad que queremos las mujeres: la libertad de elegir, la sagrada e irrenunciable libertad de elegir. [. . .] Y todavı́a hay un más allá: hay que reconocer el derecho de Fátima a usar su pañuelo, si, cuando sea mayor y piense por si misma, ella decide continuar con él, porque ese pañuelo, una vez que sea una prenda elegida libremente, es un signo de identificación cultural, un sı́mbolo de la diferencia entre ella y nosotros, una diferencia que nadie, con ninguna excusa, deberı́a intentar que Fátima olvidara, porque su pasado, su procedencia, su cultura, son los valores en los que se sustentará siempre la nueva mujer que nacerá de la fusión en libertad de todo eso con lo que aquı́ va a recibir. 16. ‘Como yo no sabı́a hablar español, todo el mundo decı́a cosas por mı́ y nadie me preguntaba. Ahora puedo hablar por mı́ misma y decir que llevo el pañuelo porque yo quiero y no porque me lo diga mi padre.’ 17. ‘A mı́ me hubiera gustado que cuando vine por primera vez aquı́, algún alumno que hablara también español me hubiera ayudado a estudiarlo y a conocer al resto de compañeros.’ 18. ‘[En Marruecos,] as mujeres dependen de los varones [. . .]. Aquı́ son independientes y nadie les pide explicaciones.’ 19. All names are pseudonyms. 20. ‘Cuando vine aquı́, ni ‘hola!’’ 21. ‘Salió de una situación muy difı́cil [y ahora] es distinta; no es la anterior. No podı́a hablar. Ahora es otra.’ 22. ‘Aquı́, siento que estoy mejor que antes. Yo veo un mundo totalmente diferente de mi paı́s – totalmente diferente.’ 23. ‘Si tú venı́as antes, no podı́a hablar contigo. No sabı́a como hablar con la gente, como digo las cosas, como explico las cosas. [. . .] Yo sentı́a que estoy como una tonta. [. . .] [Ahora sé] que yo estoy diciendo una cosa importante, que escuchen.’ 24. ‘[Los desafı́os de la mujer inmigrante son semejantes] a los que tiene o los que ha tenido la mujer española, porque la mujer española también ha tenido que emigrar, también ha tenido que romper muchı́simos prejuicios – una cultura muy, muy, muy, muy patriarcal, un peso de la sociedad, ¡el qué dirán!’ 25. ‘Cuando veo a una mujer con pañuelo, me siento agredida como mujer española.’ 26. ‘El Estado tiene la obligación de garantizar la libertad de todos los individuos y la obligación de preservar el espacio público. Detrás de la imposición del velo hay violencia.’ 27. ‘¿Por qué? Porque culturalmente, al no tener palabras que describan emociones, cuando algo no es nombrado, no existe. Pero eso no significa que yo no me encuentre mal.’ 28. ‘¿Tu padre te obliga a llevarlo? ¿Qué deberı́a decir? Si era mi padre quien insistı́a que asistiera a la escuela, ¡quien insistı́a que estudiara!’ 29. The case of parliamentarian Fatima Hamed Hossein, mentioned at the beginning of this paper, presents an obvious and important exception to such de facto rules of exclusion. However, the fact that she is a native of Ceuta helps explain why she has been able to hold public office wearing the hijab. The majority of the Ceutan population is of Moroccan Muslim background. 30. ‘[. . .] Hay procedencias cuya integración es más fácil que otras, como ocurre con los latinoamericanos y los europeos del este. The Journal of North African Studies 479 ¿Qué pasa con los musulmanes? Qué es más difı́cil que se integren. Muchos quieren mantener sus tradiciones y costumbres y me preocupa porque algunas culturas e interpretaciones religiosas son absolutamente incompatibles con los derechos fundamentales que la Constitución garantiza, por ejemplo, a las mujeres. Eso hay que dejarlo claro desde el primer momento: todos los que vengan tienen que respetar los derechos fundamentales que reconoce la Constitución, especialmente con respecto a la mujer.’ 31. ‘Además, el cristianismo, hoy, defiende valores incuestionables, como la igualdad entre todos los seres humanos. Por eso, no entiendo por qué hay quien quiere borrar todo eso’ 32. ‘O sea, que no nos hacen muy lejanas.’ Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 References Agencias (Madrid), 2002. Las asociaciones de mujeres piden que se regule el ‘burka’ si se extiende su uso en España. El Mundo, 19 February, p. 20. AlSayyad, N. and Castells, M., 2002. Introduction: Islam and the changing identity of Europe. In: N. AlSayyad and M. Castells, eds. Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam: Politics, culture, and citizenship in the age of globalization. Lanham: Lexington Books, 1 –8. Anon, 2006a. Dutch Christian Democrats win vote. CNN, 23 November [online]. Available from: http://www.cnn.com/ 2006/POLITICS/11/23/netherlands.election.reut/index.html [Accessed 8 December 2006]. Anon., 2006b. Deconstructing the veil; British Muslims. The Economist, 14 October [online]. Available from: LexisNexis Academic Universe database [Accessed 25 November 2006]. Asenjo, M., 2002a. Otro padre marroquı́ se niega a escolarizar a sus hijas en Madrid. ABC, 5 March [online]. Available from: http://hemeroteca.abc.es/nav/Navigate.exe/hemeroteca/madrid/abc/2002/03/05/044.html [Accessed 17 August 2010]. Asenjo, M., 2002b. El padre marroquı́ no escolarizará a su hija si debe llevar uniforme. ABC, 7 March [online]. Available from: http://hemeroteca.abc.es/nav/Navigate.exe/hemeroteca/sevilla/abc.sevilla/2002/03/07/053.html [Accessed 17 August 2010]. Asenjo, M., 2002c. Fátima, ‘la niña del chador’ escolarizada en El Escorial, está ya plenamente integrada. ABC, 2 July [online]. Available from: http://hemeroteca.abc.es/nav/Navigate.exe/hemeroteca/madrid/abc/2002/07/03/043.html [Accessed 17 August 2010]. Beata, F. and Sanz, L.A., 2004. Entrevista: Esperanza Aguirre dice – tras serlo casi todo, desde ministra a presidenta del Senado – que su ambición acaba en la Presidencia de Madrid y que no quiere permanecer en el puesto más de dos mandatos. El Mundo, 20 December, pp. 2– 4. Casanova, J., 1994. Public religions in the modern world. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Chakrabarty, D., 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. El Paı́s, 2007. Con el ‘hiyab’ y la Constitución. El Paı́s, 17 June, p. 1. Flesler, D., 2008. The return of the Moor: Spanish responses to contemporary Moroccan immigration. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. Foucault, M., 1984. The ethics of the concern of the self as a practice of freedom. In: P. Rabinow and N. Rose, eds. The essential Foucault: Selections from Essential works of Foucault, 1954– 1984. New York and London: The New Press, 25–42. Fuchs, B., 2009. Exotic nation: Maurophilia and the construction of early modern Spain. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Galán, L., 2007. ‘Lo pasé fatal en la escuela.’. El Paı́s, 7 October, p. 41. Gavela, C., 2002. Hijab y top less. El Paı́s, 19 February, p. 16. González Alcantud, J.A., 2002. Lo moro: Las lógicas de la derrota y la formación del estereotipo islámico. Rubı́ (Barcelona): Anthropos Editorial del Hombre. Instituto Nacional de Estadı́stica (National Statistics Institute). 2009. Madrid, Spain. Available from: http://www.ine.es/ buscar/searchResults.do?searchType=DEF_SEARCH&tipoDocumento=&searchString=immigration& SearchButton=Search [Accessed 30 December 2009]. Keane, W., 2007. Christian moderns: Freedom and fetish in the mission encounter. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. de Larra, M.J., 1998. Artı́culos de costumbres. Madrid: Espasa Calpe. Latour, B., 1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. López Garcı́a, B. and Berriane, M., eds., 2004. Atlas de la inmigración marroquı́ en España. Madrid: Taller de Estudios Internacionales Mediterráneos, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Downloaded By: [Taha, Maisa] At: 15:16 22 December 2010 480 M.C. Taha Mahmood, S., 2005. The politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Morcillo, A.G., 2000. True Catholic womanhood: Gender ideology in Franco’s Spain. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. Morris, N., 2006. Straw says he feels uncomfortable talking to women who wear veils. The Independent, 6 October, p. 6. Najmabadi, A., 2000. (Un)Veiling feminism. Social text, 64. 18 (3), 29– 45. Peregil, F., 2002a. ‘De mayor me gustarı́a ser maestro’ Fátima Elidrisi dice que se pone el pañuelo porque es lo que hacen las mujeres de su familia. El Paı́s, 17 February, p. 20. Peregil, F., 2002b. Fátima: ‘Quiero llevar el pañuelo a clase; nadie me oblige a hacerlo’ La Comunidad de Madrid acepta escolarizar a la niña marroquı́ ‘sin condiciones.’. El Paı́s, 17 February, p. 1. Povinelli, E., 2002. The cunning of recognition: Indigenous alterities and the making of Australian multiculturalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Sánchez, M.A., 2002. A propósito del velo de Fátima, derecho a la diferencia El Paı́s, 8 March, p. 8. Scott, J.W., 2007. The politics of the veil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Serna, C., 2003. ‘Ahora puedo hablar por mı́; llevo pañuelo porque yo quiero.’ Fátima, la niña a la que se prohibió ir a un colegio de monjas con el ‘hiyab,’ ayuda ahora a integrarse a otros alumnus inmigrantes. El Mundo, 6 February, p. 24. Smith, T.A., 2006. The emerging female citizen: Gender and enlightenment in Spain. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Woolard, K.A., 1998. Introduction: Language ideology as a field of inquiry. In: B.B. Schieffelin, K.A. Woolard and P.V. Kroskrity, eds. Language ideologies: Practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 3–50.