Headscarf and burqa controversies at the crossroad of politics, society and law

In recent years, discourses around the Islamic ‘burqa’ have proliferated in Western Europe and in Canada. France and Belgium have been the epicentres of significant ‘burqa’ political storms, which have resulted in the passing of laws that prohibit full-face veiling in all public spaces. Other countries have witnessed similar debates, with the Netherlands coming close to adopting a law banning the burqa (Associated Press, 2012) and some Spanish municipal ‘burqa bans’ being struck down by Spain’s Supreme Court in the name of freedom of religion (Di Leonardo, 2013). Canada has seen similar developments. While the Supreme Court rendered a decision giving great importance to the religious freedom to wear the niqab in the case of R. v. N.S., other Canadian debates echo the European anxieties over the Islamic veil. The government of the province of Quebec has put forward Bill 94, which is designed to set guidelines for public officials who receive accommodation requests. Article 6 of the Bill specifically states that public servants and persons receiving services should follow the ‘general practice’ of ‘showing their face’. While a change in government prevented the Bill from becoming law, persisting rumours at the time of sending this introduction to print hinted at a more radical prohibition of the wearing of religious symbols by employees of the Quebec public service, in the form of a legislative ‘Charter of Quebec Values’ (Canadian Press, 2013). On the one hand, these recent discussions illustrate the reinvigoration of a secularist rhetoric that posits the Western modern ‘invention’ of face-to-face interaction as a universal indicium of civilization, excluding and stigmatizing those who derogate from these cultural constructs. In this context, we have seen the emergence of several political alliances between feminists, neo-conservatives and secularists, all engaging in forms of ‘governance feminism’ which place gender equality at the centre of a fictitious Western historiography opposed to barbaric ‘invented traditions’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1992) of the Muslim world. On the other hand, the most common strategy of opponents to the banning of the veil has been to frame their arguments in the rhetoric of freedom of religion and constitutional (civil rights) law. Thus, a Muslim woman is currently contesting the French burqa ban before the European Court of Human Rights, relying heavily on freedom of religion. In the wake of the adoption of the burqa ban in Belgium, Human Rights Watch (2010) adopted a similar position, arguing that the ban violated freedom of religion, thought and conscience, as well as the right to personal autonomy. Quebec’s Bill 94 was criticized by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA,