Niqab

Young Muslim women are coming under an increasing influence of globalisation processes and follow global trends, which also includes fashion. This entails a certain balancing act between being modern and being religious. The author of the present paper attempts to address the question whether the hijab may be considered a Muslim answer to globalisation through its presence within the so-called “hijab fashion,” or that perhaps, to the contrary, it constitutes a symbol of a growing isolation and separation of Muslim minorities inhabiting the countries of western Europe.

The face is pivotal in our cultural practices and language, as well as a central topic of debate in the realm of society: the early 2010s were marked by a diatribe around Islamic facial covering, both in Arabo-Persian countries and in the West and, today, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemics all over the globe brought another facial supplement to the discussion—the surgical mask. Niqabs and surgical masks have more in common than their function of covering the face: they are united by their image of Otherness, related to Middle- and Far-Asian countries, but also to a project of transcendence of our natural condition. Saniotis analyses the matter of Transhumanism and Islam as problems of body techniques which, like the two systems, meet at their roots: our analysis adds to his investigation by examining face veiling and facial covering as transhuman praxes, both concerning the discursive and narrative levels of the Greimasian theory reaching beyond their cultural meanings, while also debating the matters of Otherness and Alterity emerging from those supplements, utilising the Socio-semiotic works of Oliveira and Landowski as our framework of analysis. The article reflects on the manners in which both objects, the niqab and the surgical mask, operate through similar enunciative mechanisms and construct similar narrative utterances and, yet, culture invests polemic contracts in those objects, creating a “false binary” around them which is largely emerging from their plastic. Through our analysis, a series of “false binaries”—such as religion and technology—are explored with the goal of reflecting on the assimilation and rejection of cultural customs and the manners in which the many goals of transcendence, divine or scientific, are centred around the control of bodies and the emergence of authoritative orders that fix subjects in thematic roles.

Le corps de la femme est un champ fertile, un champ où se jouent des batailles idéologiques, des querelles politiques et des luttes de pouvoir. Dès les premiers mois de la transition tunisienne, la question de la condition féminine s’est inscrite au cœur des débats publics sur la refonte de la nouvelle Tunisie, et ce souvent à travers la problématique du corps de la femme. Ce travail de recherche étudie l’impulsion de la mise à l’agenda de la question féminine à travers trois corps : le corps voilé des munaqabas de la Manouba qui revendiquent la liberté d’habillement ; le corps outragé de Meriem Ben Mohamed, violée par deux policiers puis traînée en justice pour atteinte aux mœurs ; et enfin le corps exhibé d’Amina – emprisonnée pour atteinte au sacré – qui arborait ses seins nus sur lesquels étaient écrites des revendications féministes. Á partir de ces trois cas d’étude, nous avons constaté que la corporalité féminine agit comme un catalyseur pour la construction des problèmes publics dans un contexte transitionnel et postcolonial, compris comme une forme précise de fenêtre d’opportunité politique au sens de Kingdon. Ce contexte est traversé par la bipolarisation politico-sociale du pays – entre islamistes et progressistes – et par l’influence du néocolonialisme, plus précisément à travers la colonialité du pouvoir, du genre et des médias.

This paper uses Queer theory, specifically literature on Bowers v. Hardwick, to analyze debates over legislation proposed in Quebec regarding covered faces. Queer theory sheds light on legal responses to the veil. Parliamentary debates in Quebec reconstitute the polity, notably as secular and united. The paper highlights the contradictory and unstable character of four binaries: legislative text versus social practice, act versus status, majority versus minority, and knowable versus unknowable. As with contradictory propositions about homosexuality, contradiction does not undermine discourse but makes it stronger and more agile.

Este artículo utiliza la teoría Queer, más concretamente la literatura sobre Bowers vs. Hardwick, para analizar los debates sobre la legislación propuesta en Quebec en relación al velo. La teoría Queer arroja luz sobre las respuestas legales al velo. Los debates parlamentarios en Quebec reconstituyen la forma de gobierno, especialmente como secular y unido. El documento pone de relieve el carácter contradictorio e inestable de cuatro binarios: texto legislativo frente a las prácticas sociales; legislación frente a estado; mayoría versus minoría; y conocible frente a incognoscible. Al igual que con las proposiciones contradictorias acerca de la homosexualidad, la contradicción no socava el discurso, sino que lo hace más fuerte y más ágil.

Young Muslim women are coming under an increasing influence of globalisation processes and follow global trends, which also includes fashion. This entails a certain balancing act between being modern and being religious. The author of the present paper attempts to address the question whether the hijab may be considered a Muslim answer to globalisation through its presence within the so-called "hijab fashion," or that perhaps, to the contrary, it constitutes a symbol of a growing isolation and separation of Muslim minorities inhabiting the countries of western Europe. Hijab – the symbol of Islam Hijab is a theological term. However, it seems that the contemporary approach reduces it to a concept from the domain of needlework, while at the same time confusing its meaning. In order to understand what hijab is, one must clearly distinguish it from the niqab and the burqa.

Most academic literature about religious women’s head covering is concerned with Muslim women, contributing to the overwhelming (albeit incorrect) perception that the wearing of head scarves is exclusively found in Islam and absent from the other Abrahamic traditions: Judaism and Christianity . In fact, the first written reference to women’s head covering is to be found in a thirteenth century B.C. E. Assyrian legal text which regulated who was allowed to cover (elite women) and who was prohibited from it (slaves and sex workers) . This practice of veiling predominantly among wealthy women also characterised the Greco-Roman world that provided cultural frameworks for the development of Christian thought.  This literature review intends to show that the political and media evocation of apparent civilisation and value clashes symbolised on the Islamic head covering is a reflection of colonial attitudes to Islam, but also a ignorance of Greco-Roman and Christian attitudes to the body as well as visual cultures.  In order to provide a more complex and exhaustive view on veiling, we suggest that it is more helpful to situate perspectives on female head covering in the Abrahamic traditions in conversation with each other.

This is a draft of the article. To cite, please use the following details:
Piela, Anna (2015) Online Islamic Spaces as Communities of Practice for Female Muslim Converts Who Wear the Niqab. Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, Volume 13, Issue 3, pp. 363 –382.

This article focuses on online narratives of female converts to Islam who wear or plan to wear the niqab. There is little discussion in research literature about motivations leading to adoption of the niqab or experiences of women who wear it. Instead, the discourse on niqab has been sensationalised by tabloid media which construct it as a symbol of otherness and separation from the host culture and, recently, one of radicalisation. This begs the question: why are some converts drawn to it despite negative reactions to the niqab by some Muslims and non-Muslims. Using a mix of narrative analysis and grounded theorising, I examine online discussions in which converted women argue why they wish to wear the niqab, often in contradiction to other Muslims’ views. I draw from Rambo’s conversion model (1993) and Lave and Wenger’s concept of communities of practice to illuminate the process whereby participants learn about Islam and the niqab through social interaction.
Keywords: niqab, conversion, Internet, online forums, gender

The article claims that the specific dress codes, common for certain Islamic countries, are the consequence of the pre-Islamic traditions and patriarchic interpretations of the Qur’an and hence are not in accordance with one of the basic goals of every religion – correcting erroneous social structures. Even though we can conclude from the Qur’an regulations, presented in the first part of the article, that the strict dress code was not set in order to give women a subordinate position, nevertheless some of the practices of covering which are common today and which are presented in the second part of the article, are set by the Qur’an. Therefore the article in its third part emphasizes the need for re-reading of the Qur’an and for re-establishing the primary aims of the Islamic religion.

This paper argues that international human rights law is inadequate in understanding the complexities of Muslim women’s headcoverings and that it has failed to protect Muslim women from prohibitive and punitive measures of the liberal State. Through a review of the relevant cases from the European Court of Human Rights as well as a review of prohibitive laws from Muslim-majority Turkey, the paper argues that international human rights law is prejudiced to say the least, and, heeding Janet Halley’s advice, needs to take a break from feminism in order to fully protect Muslim women’s dignity as defined by Muslim women themselves.

Islam has had a long and, recently, very contested history in Canada. Studies after 9/11 show an increasingly negative view towards Islam and Muslims in Canada.  The presence of Canadian Muslim diaspora, supposed clashes between Islam and the West, and the rise of Islamophobia and counter anti-Islamophobia movements have strained Muslim integration efforts and challenged Islam’s place in Canadian society, testing long-standing Canadian values and beliefs about multiculturalism, democracy and pluralism. This paper addresses the question of Canadian-Muslim integration, looking briefly at the history of Muslims in Canada, the issues they face today, and current events regarding Islam’s place in Canadian society, including Bill 94 and the niqab debate during the 2015 Canadian election. The paper also proposes a process where Muslim communities, the Canadian government and the public can work together to build understanding and resolve differences in order to move forward as a country.

This article proposes a conception of freedom understood as practices. Based on Michel Foucault’s work on the ethics of the self, I develop a conception of freedom that exceeds liberation and distinguishes between genuine practices of freedom and practices of the self that are unreflective responses to systems of government. I develop and illustrate this conception through an engagement with the recent French ban on full veils in public spaces and the ethnographic literature on European Muslim revival movements. I reconstruct how Muslim women relate to alternative discourses through specific practices of the self. These practices reveal that French Muslim women actively contest discourses of secularism and liberation that construct them as inherently passive and in need of tutelage. The conception I develop sheds light some shortcomings of the notion of freedom as non-domination. I argue that the proposed account is useful to, first, criticize the opposition between arbitrary and non-arbitrary power in the definition of freedom. Second, show that the predominant engagement with the external dimension of freedom by Pettit makes it difficult to capture the particular subjective practices that make up freedom and its development in the presence of power and/or attempts at domination.

KEYWORDS: Freedom, France, Veil, Niqab, Foucault, Non-domination, Secularism, Laïcité, Pettit

There has been recently a surge of methodological interest in videoconferencing, commonly referred to as Skype, although there are other software brands which provide a similar service. This chapter analyses ethical issues which arose during a research project based on interviews with Muslim women who wear the niqab. I consider these issues in the context of key questions related to ethical dimensions of feminist qualitative research. By describing the process of videoconference interview in detail, I draw attention to issues that Oakley (1981) described as outside the traditional research protocol, and which today still largely remain in the domain of feminist accounts of research. These include setting up of the interview to accommodate the participant’s individual needs, providing advice to participants as reciprocation, and managing the relationships with the participants upon completion of the interview.

This ICCT Research Paper examines the current extent of Italy's Sunni jihadists in Syria. Italy presents interesting particularities, including a relatively small number of foreign fighters compared to other European countries (around one hundred, and only a small minority with Italian passports, according to recent estimates), the scant presence of domestic recruitment networks operating within the country and the prevalence of individual pathways of radicalisation over group mechanisms. However, the Italian case has not been extensively investigated. This exploratory paper, based on a case study-driven approach, first examines the scale of the problem and then focuses on the individual cases of four Italian nationals who differ in terms of both sex and origin. It also takes into account the different reactions of their families.

Článek se zabývá požadavky „vzájemného soužití“ jakožto možným důvodem pro omezení náboženské svobody dle Evropské úmluvy o lidských právech. Vzhledem k tomu, že s tímto pojmem přišel Velký senát Evropského soudu pro lidská práva ve věci S.A.S. proti Francii, analyzuje tento článek odůvodnění tohoto rozhodnutí, stejně jako proces uzákonění zákazu zahalování tváře na veřejnosti, který stížnost francouzské muslimky vyvolal. Autor dospívá k závěru, že pojem požadavků vzájemného soužití je značně neurčitý a jen těžko obsahově odlišitelný od pojmů jako jsou dobré mravy, morálka nebo veřejný pořádek. Zavedení tohoto
pojmu do judikatury Evropského soudu pro lidská práva proto představuje značné riziko pro rozsah náboženské svobody v zemích Rady Evropy, neboť se ho lehce mohou dovolávat vlády potlačující náboženskou praxi nepohodlných náboženských menšin.

Émilie König, née en décembre 1984 et devenue «égérie» de Daesh, aurait été arrêtée en Syrie, où elle résidait depuis l’été 2012. Je l’avais rencontrée juste avant son départ dans le cadre de mes recherches sur le voile intégral. Retour sur sa personnalité.

In 2008, a woman entered an Ontario courtroom to give evidence at a preliminary inquiry involving childhood sexual assault charges against her uncle and cousin. She sought to testify while wearing a niqab, a garment that conceals the entire head and face, leaving only an opening for the eyes. The court was asked to decide the novel question whether it could accommodate the Muslim veil in a system of justice that provided the accused with a right to face his accuser. The Supreme Court of Canada divided three ways, with justices disagreeing deeply both about the analysis for determining whether to permit a witness to wear the niqab, and the values and interests at play in this analysis.

Bringing niqab wearers' voices to the fore, discussing their narratives on religious agency, identity, social interaction, community, and urban spaces, Anna Piela situates women's accounts firmly within UK and US socio-political contexts as well as within media discourses on Islam.

The niqab has recently emerged as one of the most ubiquitous symbols of everything that is perceived to be wrong with Islam: barbarity, backwardness, exploitation of women, and political radicalization. Yet all these notions are assigned to women who wear the niqab without their consultation; “niqab debates” are held without their voices being heard, and, when they do speak, their views are dismissed.

However, the picture painted by the stories told here demonstrates that, for these women, religious symbols such as the niqab are deeply personal, freely chosen, multilayered, and socially situated. Wearing the Niqab gives voice to these women and their stories, and sets the record straight, enhancing understanding of the complex picture around niqab and religious identity and agency.

In a series of earlier articles, we deplored the Western European ignorance and immorality as regards the current political crisis of Turkey, and the existing political options. The pathetic and criminal Western European attitude risks generating an Islamist chain reaction that will cause a Kurdish genocide in Turkey, a war in the Balkans, and riots-turned-rebellion in Western Europe.

Acting in a way that brings closer their end, the bogus-democratic, highly manipulated from unelected centers of power, and deeply corrupt Western European elites contribute – because of their blindness - to Islamic Terrorism proliferation, by comically supporting the bogus-Islamic headscarf fanatics in Turkey.

Or is it all well calculated, and in full concordance with societal developments in Europe and America?

Bogus-Islamic Headscarf: the Embodiment of Gender Discrimination
First published in AfroArticles, American Chronicle, and Buzzle on 7th May 2007
Republished in Aram Nahrin on 7th May 2007

The debate on whether to prohibit the burqa and niqab in Spain has been reopened after the recent decision of the Spanish Supreme Court on 14 February 2013. The Spanish Supreme Court held that a municipality could not pass a local law prohibiting the right to wear the full-face veil in public spaces. This article analyzes a conceptual and theoretical framework to establish that the full-face veil qualifies as an external manifestation of the right to religious freedom. Moreover, the pertinence of a burqa-ban in all Spanish public spaces is analyzed and a general prohibition is not found to be a suitable, necessary, and proportional measure to achieve gender equality, public order or “respect for the minimum requirements of life in society”.

Writing from 1985 until 2021: Occident, Orient, Christianity, Islam, China and my Permanent Stance toward the World and the Man
First published on 23rd July 2021 here:
https://profmegalommatistextsingreek.wordpress.com/2021/07/23/γράφοντας-από-το-1985-μέχρι-το-2021-δύση-ανατο/

The reason for the Western biases against the modern, western, and democratic part of the Turkish establishment is to be found in the strengths of Turkey, a vast country with great periphery (from the Balkans to Central Asia and from the Middle East to Africa) and even greater potentialities.
Originally published in AfroArticles, American Chronicle, and Buzzle on 23rd May 2007
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/western-biases-against-non-extremist-muslims-and-the-west-sinister-end.html

Republished in:
http://womensapparelhub.blogspot.com/2007/08/western-biases-against-non-extremist.html

Boris Johnson has become the latest in a long line of right-wing politicians to criticise Muslim women who wear the niqab or burqa. Writing in his column for The Telegraph, Johnson mocked such women as looking “like letter boxes,” “bank robbers” and “absolutely ridiculous.” Despite calls for an apology from opponents and colleagues, at the time of writing Johnson remains unrepentant. This article addresses several reasons why this incursion is alarming, referring to an ill-informed tendency to assume face-veiling is an indicator of oppression; a presumption of entitlement that reflects class and gender based bias; intolerance of religious identities that represent a cultural 'other'; and a peculiar exploitation of British norms of social hierarchy, not least in Johnson's attempt to position himself as the voice of reason and moderate good sense.

With heinous acts being carried out in the name of Islam, it is understandable that questions will be asked about the nature of the faith itself. In such a combustible climate of fear and suspicion, there is a need for a better understanding about this major world religion. By drawing on three recent examples from the news, the editorial argues that certain underlying assumptions about Islam are false, and that it is ignorance about Islam every bit as much as the threat from extremists that we need to overcome.

«Je veux être une femme voilée, parce qu'il n'y a rien ni personne de plus influent aujourd'hui. Quel prodige pour cette femme voilée d'être tout et son contraire, à la fois l'ombre et la lumière, le zéro et l'infini, le juste et l'injuste, le bien et...» [LIRE LA SUITE dans le texte]

Bringing niqab wearers' voices to the fore, discussing their narratives on religious agency, identity, social interaction, community, and urban spaces, Anna Piela situates women's accounts firmly within UK and US socio-political contexts as well as within media discourses on Islam. The niqab has recently emerged as one of the most ubiquitous symbols of everything that is perceived to be wrong with Islam: barbarity, backwardness, exploitation of women, and political radicalization. Yet all these notions are assigned to women who wear the niqab without their consultation; “niqab debates” are held without their voices being heard, and, when they do speak, their views are dismissed. However, the picture painted by the stories told here demonstrates that, for these women, religious symbols such as the niqab are deeply personal, freely chosen, multilayered, and socially situated. Wearing the Niqab gives voice to these women and their stories, and sets the record straight, enhancing understanding of the complex picture around niqab and religious identity and agency.