Europe and the Middle East: Reading the Questions over the Veil (Iskander)

Elizabeth Iskander writes for EA:

A week after France’s Senate voted in favour of a ban on face coverings in public, diverse reactions across the Middle East underline that this region cannot be viewed as a monolithic bloc.  It was expected that the forbidding of the niqab and burka would elicit angry reactions: there has been some anger, but reactions have not been uniform nor entirely negative. 

There is no single view on the veil that dominates in the Middle East, with many countries debating the place of the niqab even more urgently than their European counterparts. The Qur’an, the main source of Islamic teaching and law indicates that women should be modest by drawing, “their veils over their bosoms” and not displaying their beauty except “what must ordinarily appear”. (Qur'an 24:31)  This, in combination with the sayings and practices of Prophet Mohammed, are used to interpret religious teachings on the veil and women’s dress.

These interpretations are flexible, reflected in the numerous styles of veil and dress seen in Muslim countries and even whether a woman is obliged to wear a veil at all over her hair. In most cases it is the local environment, whether this is at the level of the family, the society, or the government, that dictates the customs influencing the style of dress. A woman’s clothing can become easily politicized and tied to ideological trends.

In Egypt, Hoda Sharaawi removed her face veil in public for the first time after returning from a conference on women’s suffrage in Rome in 1923. This is considered a pivotal moment in the Egyptian feminist movement, and the lifting of the veil is often still  tied to the emancipation of women, despite the efforts of Muslim feminists to reframe the assumption.  In pre-revolution Iran and Ataturk’s Turkey, banning the veil was tied to secularisation and modernisation projects.  

Tunisia, often held up as a successful example of a secular and modern Arab State, not only bans the niqab in state buildings but also the hijab, in accordance with Law no. 108 of 1981.  This prohibition was later expanded to discourage the hijab in schools and other public places. Tunisia’s first president after independence in 1956, Habib Bourguiba, referred to the hijab as an “odious rag'' and saw it as a hindrance to progress.

The debate over the right to wear the hijab was revisited in 2006 when Tunisian media quoted statements by President Zin Al-’Abidin Ben ’Ali and his ministers that the hijab was an “imported form of sectarian dress”. So while in the UK and Norway the hijab has been introduced as part of the uniform for Muslim policewomen, in Tunisia the hijab is still interpreted as a political statement that is neither authentic to Tunisian culture, nor in line with its image as a progressive society.  So there has been little reaction to France’s decision, which would affect only the face-covering niqab and not the hijab, which covers the hair and neck.

Egypt’s main Islamic institution, al-Azhar, came out immediately in support of France’s ban.  Abd al-Mu’ty al-Bayoumi, head of al-Azhar’s Islamic Research Council, announced that the niqab is not compulsory in Islam and that there is no basis for it in the Quran or the Sunnah  of Prophet Mohammad.  He added that women wearing the niqab in Europe give Islam a bad image. 

In October 2009, the former Sheikh of al-Azhar Mohammed Tantawi, announced a ban on the niqab in classes at al-Azhar’s university, schools, and female dormitories. His successor, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, has indicated his support for Tantawi’s position, and several universities in Egypt followed al-Azhar’s lead and decided to ban the niqab from campuses.   

The government has also backed efforts to convince Egyptians that the niqab is a custom and not a religious duty.The legality of such decisions remains undecided, with the courts initially upholding the ban and then overturning it. The debate will continue and not only in Egypt: Syria followed Cairo’s example and banned the niqab in public schools and universities in July.

So North African states, Egypt, and Syria in their struggles with the niqab have not widely condemned the French law. Yet this is only the beginning of a complex negotiation, for these views on the niqab are not held by a growing number of Egyptians, nor by conservative Muslim states such as Saudi Arabia, where the niqab is compulsory.

Indeed, it is that association of the niqab with the Gulf style of Islam, often labelled as Wahhabi or Salafi Islam, that concerns governments in Egypt and Tunisia and others in the Europe-Mediterranean region.  The Egyptian state, media, and al-Azhar have used the niqab debate to symbolise the general struggle over the character of modern society, increasingly being framed as a battle between moderate and radical Islam. 

Thus, the subjection of a woman's clothing to politics, to the point where its style is described by law, continues. The place of veiling in Islam is a debate that needs to take place within Islam, but now the niqab has become a symbol of the problem of how to manage national identity and trans-national ideology in our era.

Whether the hijab or niqab is proscribed or made compulsory, this is only a short-cut to making a statement on what is acceptable or authentic in a country. The wider issues of managing multiculturalism and the politics of identity will remain.