In Context: 5 Web Perspectives On A Story In The News

To ban full-face veil or not

(The Australian) An official at the University of Manouba in Tunisia says a weeks-long sit-in following a ban on wearing full-face Muslim veil has ended. The dean of the university's arts department, Habib Kazdaghli, said the campaigners for the overturning of the ban left quietly. He stressed the veil would remain prohibited in the classroom but refused to say what helped end the deadlock. A group of students who, for the most part, are not enrolled at the university had occupied the faculty to demand the right for students to wear full veil, known as the niqab, since Nov. 28. The university had banned the garment over security concerns if students were concealed from head to toe.

1.

Syria bans full-face veil at universities

The Telegragh
Published July 10, 2010, the article reports on  what it says is a "a rare point of agreement between Syria's secular, authoritarian government and the democracies of Europe." By this it means that Europe agrees with Syria that the niqab is a destabilizing threat. The article was written after authorities in Syria announced they had issued directives to all public and private universities to ban face-veiled women from registering, a decision they said was made to protect the country's secular identity.  Syria, the article says, is the latest in countries in Europe and the Middle East to weigh in on the issue of the veil, which many people have come to views as, somewhat, the most visible symbol of conservative Islam.

2.

Turkey quietly unbans headscarves in schools

BBC
Published on Dec. 31, 2010, reporter Jonathan Head wrote about how the exact status of whether to wear the headscarf or not in universities in Turkey, a country that prides itself as a secular state, was mired in confusion. In September of 2010, the Turkish government stated that it would support students disciplined or expelled for covering their heads. He wrote that the statement was construed as the official lifting of the ban on covering of heads in Turkish universities, which dated back to the 1980s but was never properly enforced until 1998 when the military forced an overtly Islamic prime minister to do it. The founding father of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk rejected headscarves as backward-looking as he campaigned for a secularized nation.

3.

Why France banned headscarves in schools

Washington University in St. Louis
John R. Bowen, a professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, was in France when the law to ban clothing that indicates students' religious affiliations from public schools was passed. Bowen's book, entitled "Why the French Don't Like Headscarves: Islam, the State and Public Space" attempts to examine the religious history of France, as well as the media coverage of events leading up to the passage of the law.

4.

British schools forge their own dress code

BBC
Although there is no law forbidding Islamic dress in the U.K, a 2007 directive that followed several high-profile court cases allowed individual schools to forge their own dress code. In response to a call by the U.K. Independent Party for a total ban on face-covering veils, Ed Balls, then secretary of schools, said in 2010 that it was not British to tell people what to wear in the street. That was after the British National Party had already called for the veil to be banned in schools all across the U.K.

5.

Italian committee approves draft law against face-covering

BBC
An Italian parliamentary committee approved a draft law that would ban women from wearing face-covering veils in August 2011. The bill was expected to go to the full house of parliament a month later. The article says that following the passing of a bylaw in January 2010, the north-western town of Novara was one of several local authorities that had already brought in rules to deter public use of the Islamic veil. It said local politicians in northern Italy in 2004 resurrected old public order laws against the wearing of masks so as to stop women from wearing the burka. It added that some mayors from the anti-immigrant Northern League have also banned the use of Islamic swimsuits.