To Wear Or Not To Wear – The War On Niqab

Women wearing the niqab

She walked into the doors for her dorm feeling like a new person. She felt as though hundreds of eyes were fixed on her.

She runs outside her residence hiding behind big structures thinking everyone is going to see her. She made it to a safe alleyway. She hid behind the trees, her eyes underneath her niqab darting about madly, trying to make sure there is no one around.

She puts her hands over her niqab trying desperately to cover her exposed face by the wind. She closes her eyes and races blindly through the streets to the only safe place she knows – her house.

“I was so scared,” Roua Farzoon said. “People were looking at me as if I came from the space.”

The 23-year-old woman is now worried that she has to give up wearing her own niqab after hearing the news about a Canadian Muslim group who are calling on Ottawa to ban the wearing of the niqab in public, arguing that the right to wear it is not protected by the Charter’s guarantee of religion.

“I came to Canada looking for democracy, tolerance, and the freedom to do whatever I want. These rights I think are protected here in Canada,” Farzoon said.

The question of the niqab, the conservative Islamic veil that covers the face, has once again entered public debate in the Middle East following the decisions in the past week to ban or restrict its use at Egyptian educational institutions.

The niqab

And it has also reached Canada.

“The niqab has absolutely no place in Canada,” said Farzana Hassan, of the Muslim Canadian Congress in an interview with the National Post. “In Canada we recognize the equality of men and women. We want to recognize gender equality as an absolute. The niqab marginalizes women.”

Dr. Michael McGowan, a professor of Human Rights at St. Thomas University said a question needs to be raised before we impose a ban on the niqab. Why is the niqab worn? Is it a customary practice, or a religious one?

“There are laws in various countries where people can’t have their faces covered, but that’s the question that we have to raise, what is the significance of the niqab?” he said.

Many Muslims in Ottawa feel that the tradition of Muslim women covering their faces in public is rooted in Middle Eastern culture and it has nothing to do with the religion of Islam.

“There is nothing in any of the primary Islamic religious texts, including the Qur’an, that requires women to cover their faces, not even in the controversial, ultra-conservative tenets of Sharia law,” said Hassan in an interview with the National Post.

In Egypt, the highest Muslim authority, Sheikh Mohamed Tantawi, said he will issue an edict against the full women’s veil. This move has not only angered Egyptian women, but it also jeopardized their chances of completing their study.

“The decision to ban the niqab is to protect the students because the niqab has been used by many men in order to enter female accommodations,” Tantawi said.

The decision to ban the niqab in Canada has not been reached. But MacGowan said the government has the right to ban it if it feels that it would pose a threat to Canada.

“The State does have the right to restrict persons or limit a person’s freedoms and liberties,” he said.

When a person comes to a new country he or she is obliged by the customs and the laws that are applicable to that particular country, said McGowan.

A woman Wearing the niqab

For Farzoon, banning the niqab means stealing her identity.

“I am proud to be a Muslim,” she said. “It is who I am and I want everyone to accept me for who I am regardless of my skin color, my religion, or the clothes that am wearing.”

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Posted by Ayat Abu Hantash (Originally published Oct. 2009) on May 15, 2011. Filed under Best of the Beacon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.