Across Europe, Veil Dispute Mirrors Unease Over Islam

c. 2006 Religion News Service PARIS _ Two years ago, the French government handed Noura Jaballah a difficult decision: Send her daughter to school without a head scarf, or school her at home. The 45-year-old French Tunisian reluctantly opted to comply with new legislation banning the wearing of head scarves, or hijabs, and other religious […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

PARIS _ Two years ago, the French government handed Noura Jaballah a difficult decision: Send her daughter to school without a head scarf, or school her at home.

The 45-year-old French Tunisian reluctantly opted to comply with new legislation banning the wearing of head scarves, or hijabs, and other religious symbols in public schools. Today, daughter Sara, now 12, removes her veil before attending classes _ but puts it on when she leaves.


“I decided it was important for her to integrate into society,” said Jaballah, who lives in the Paris suburb of Torcy. “But you’re seeing many Muslim girls who no longer go to school.”

Long and short, sober black and brightly hued, the Islamic veil is drawing growing skepticism if not downright hostility in parts of Europe. The tensions over the veils in many ways reflect the general unease among many Europeans about Islam and the proper place for Muslims in public life.

The veil has been chased from public schools in France and parts of Belgium. Its strictest, face-conceiling variation, the niqab, has been outlawed in a smattering of European regions.

Even in multicultural Britain, the niqab has sparked ferocious debate following the suspension of a Muslim teaching assistant and remarks by Labor leaders, including Prime Minister Tony Blair, that the Islamic covering reflects an unsettling social rift.

Feeding the controversy are a series of issues casting an unsettling spotlight on Europe’s Muslim population: Last year’s riots and renewed violence in France; the Mohammed cartoons from Denmark; the slaying of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh; terrorist attacks in Britain and Spain; and widespread concerns about illegal immigration largely from North- and sub-Saharan Africa.

“There is mounting tension (against Muslims) and I don’t think it bodes well for the future,” said Franck Fregosi, an expert on Islam at France’s National Center of Scientific Research.

The tensions are percolating despite the fact that many European Muslims have adopted the largely secular creeds of the societies they live in. The majority of Muslim women here do not veil; in France, for one, surveys indicate _ and experts agree _ that most do not practice their faith on a daily basis.


“The question of the veil today is really over for many of them,” Fregosi said. “But they feel threatened by the tone they hear regarding all forms of Islamic expression today.”

In interviews with veiled women around Europe, all said they braced themselves before going out in public. Several cited the veil as a barrier to employment.

“I don’t have a problem wearing the head scarf in the town where I live,” said Zainab al-Touraihi, a Dutch-Iraqi university student living in the small town of Beyerland, in the Netherlands. “But people who have never been in touch with Muslims have this idea from the media and from books that we Muslims are bad. We’re associated with terrorism. When people get to know me, their first reaction is, `you’re really nice.”’

To be sure, sentiments about Muslims vary widely in Europe. Polls offer a fractured snapshot about how the region’s Islamic community is viewed _ and how it views itself.

A July survey by the Pew Research Center found many European Muslims did not sense hostility from non-Muslims. But a significant chunk of Muslims _ including 39 percent in France, 42 percent in Britain and 51 percent in Germany _ reported otherwise.

European politicians critical of the veil, particularly in its more conservative forms, cite the importance of integrating ethnic African, Arab and Turkish immigrant populations.


That was one reason why Belgian mayor Jan Creemers outlawed women from wearing the face-conceiling niqab in his small town of Maaseik this year. Several other towns have followed suit.

“We have many old people and they were very afraid when they saw these women wearing the veil,” Creemers said. “It’s very important in our town and in our Western culture that people see each other face to face.”

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Of the six women wearing the niqab in Maaseik, five removed the veil in public, Creemers said. The sixth backed down after police filed charges when she initially refused to remove it.

“There is a very good relationship between the community and the Muslim inhabitants,” Creemers said of Maaseik’s mostly Moroccan Islamic community, numbering about 700. “I was in contact with that community and they support my opinion on this.”

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Public wearing of the niqab is similarly banned in Italy, under antiterrorist laws that criminalize hiding one’s features. And in Germany, four states have outlawed public school teachers from wearing head scarves _ a ban that applies to all civil servants in the German state of Hesse.

The legislation has drawn widespread support _ including from more liberal Muslims.

“If you’re in Europe, you need to live according to European customs. Either you adapt or, if you want to wear Middle eastern clothing, you leave,” said Khadija Khali, who heads a French Muslim women’s group but does not wear a veil.


Even many conservative Muslims, like Jaballah, oppose the wearing of the full-face niqab. “I completely support having women show their faces, with everything going on these days,” Jaballah says.

“If a woman’s completely veiled, how do I know she’s really a woman?”

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But as in the Middle East, the veil is fraught with symbolism in Europe, adopted not only because of tradition or submission, but out of rebellion and religious conviction. Muslims like Jaballah argue it need not alienate.

“Muslims like other Europeans must live according to national laws,” she said. “But people should also be free to express themselves. That’s the question.”

KRE/JL END BRYANT

Editors: To obtain photos of Muslim women wearing veils in Paris, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.

See related stories, RNS-VEILS-FASHION and RNS-VEILS-EGYPT, both transmitted Nov. 7.

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