I would rather no one wore a niqab. I would rather that no woman had effectively to disappear, from a young age, because that is the norm in her family. I would rather that no one had to go through the discomfort and social awkwardness of dealing with a woman whose face you cannot see. I would rather that Islam be purged of the niqab and all its permutations.
But for all the controversy this piece of cloth has generated this week – from schools and hospitals to courts of law, barely has a day gone by when there has not been a story of either a woman forced to take off her veil or coerced into putting it on – I am afraid that the law does not exist to pander to personal penchants.
As someone who grew up in Muslim countries, and who was forced to wear the niqab in my late teens when I moved from Sudan to Saudi Arabia, I found it an unpleasant and initially traumatic experience.
For me, wearing a veil was at times uncomfortable, hot, stuffy, limiting and impractical. At other times it was quotidian, sometimes even reassuring. Depending on the context, it either instilled a deep sense of shame about my body, or stripped social interaction down and made it more straightforward. My peers, when they left Saudi Arabia, would sometimes still wear it for the sense of social ease it provides. Not every woman you see in a niqab is chafing in discomfort – for some, it makes life easier.
After moving to the UK in my twenties, I still wore the abaya (the black cloak that accompanies the niqab) and head scarf in appropriate social contexts, out of decorum and cultural sensitivity. It became apparent to me that, in the UK, the niqab was far more linked to assertion of identity than in other countries in which I had lived where the majority of the population was Muslim.
To give some idea of the real importance of the niqab in Islam – apart from Saudi Arabia, one of the few places where it is obligatory – the garment was, and remains, a minority phenomenon in Muslim countries. In my own country of origin, Sudan, a country under Sharia governance since 1989, the niqab is worn by very few women, and to do so is considered a choice made by those who have a very personal and very limited interpretation of Islamic dress.
It is by no means something that the majority of even conservative Muslim women agree on and I have seen, in my own family, women dissuaded from wearing the niqab.
The hijab, or head scarf, is regarded as the middle ground of modesty. Anything at either extreme of that is seen as excessively immodest or fundamentalist. Even within Islamic jurisprudence, there is a recognition that the niqab is actually a pre‑Islamic phenomenon, which was then mixed with the prevailing cultures in the Middle East.
For such a minority issue to dominate such a large space in the UK’s political discourse is ludicrous. It is also unproductive. The debate often ends up a proxy for all sorts of different agendas – politicians furthering careers, misplaced feminist solidarity, Muslims asserting an identity they feel is under assault, and some good old-fashioned prejudice. The argument over whether or not to ban the niqab is one of those questions that brings out the worst in everyone. The problem is that, in a way, both sides are wrong.
Those who defend the right of women to wear the niqab under the banner of religious freedom gloss over the fact that this “freedom” is often dictated by social pressure. Those who oppose it under the banner of secularism and the oppressive nature of the niqab are making their own assumptions about Muslim women’s motivations.
The debate about the veil is not about religious freedom. It is about civil liberty proscribed by practicality – a liberty that entails that no woman should be told what to wear, except where this choice actually infringes on someone else’s rights.
When it comes to matters of security, identification, and other legal matters it is highly reasonable that a woman be asked to show her face. All further legislation on the matter should be rooted in freedom of choice.
David Cameron’s insistence that some institutions be allowed to dictate dress code appears to have led to the silent banning of the niqab for professionals dealing with patients in hospitals, on the one hand, and Muslim schools enforcing religious dress on the other. In both cases, women have been deprived of their right to choose.
I believe the Government should be more robust in determining the guidelines. No manner of dress should be compulsory. Girls in schools should not be forced to wear religious dress when they are too young to question it. In hospitals, the concern that patients should be able to see health‑care professionals’ faces is a valid one. A lot of the arguments against the niqab are valid, but I am not sure that they call for a ban.
In France, a ban on veils in public places has done nothing but provide a state sanction for prejudice. The most visible target is women who cover their faces.
A crackdown on the niqab might be seen as the hallmark of a nation that stands up for its principles, but is in fact the opposite. As Dan Hodges wrote in the Telegraph this week: this is Britain, and in Britain you should be allowed to wear what you want.
The response to this, of course, is: but what about those woman who can’t wear what they want because they are being coerced into wearing the niqab? The answer is, unless you can look into every woman’s heart and know her motivations, this is a risk we will have to tolerate.
Nesrine Malik, a Sudanese-born writer and commentator who lives in London.