All excellent points, and Mona's discussion of the symbolic tug of war over her hijab is great. But here's something that I still can't quite swallow even while being irritated at the saviour-mentality of anti-hijab crusaders - must we insist that there's nothing oppressive or problematic about hijab-wearing at all, even as we recognise parallels to Parisian fashion-slavery? The sexism component can even out between hijabis and Western fashion addicts, because the burden is disproportionately on women, as can the identity/tribalism component (wear hijab/Jimmy Choos to show you are Muslim/hipster) but the intense social and religious pressure on women to cover up is not quite the same as a fashion choice about wearing a mini-jupe or not. (Ironically, women's fashion choices are something the fundies like to point to as an area in which Muslim women are more "liberated" because they aren't caught in the evil web of fashion pimps who want to tart them up and sell them)

Of course the liberal thing to do, as Mona suggests, is to simply leave women to decide. But how can we ignore the deeply social and religious causes and symbolism of the decision? It's one thing to ignore the peer pressure component, which is part of all fashion decisions, quite another to ignore the "you're going to hell if you don't" component that so many women have to struggle with.

Well, I already said I don't particularly like it, nor agree in any way it is a requirement of the religion. But that is an individual choice to make, and so long as the individual is reasonably free to do so (leaving aside neo-Marxist feminist clap trap), well that is that.

But aside from that, frankly I am not convinced the choice is all that different, it's merely reversed (cover up rather than expose). Well, that's going to far, but I do have the instinct that there is something to that.

Regardless, I would go further and differentiate - as I think I hinted at - between hidjab and the entire neo-Salafi ninja/nun outfit. There is a vast gulf in my experience between merely wrapping a scarf around one's hair to follow what used to be a pan-Abrahamic injunction and wearing the nun outfit.

As for the you're going to hell component, well, society is imperfect. As I hope I implied, if one has concerns, focus on the rather more problematic things like trying to return to purdah and the like.

But then, again, I am a liberal of the classic school and have a horror of busy bodying around.

I don't find the argument that covering one's head is a religious requirement convincing, but what matters is that millions of people do. The extent to which religion can be voluntaristic is very debatable of course, with varying degrees of personal choice possible - I see lots of women from upper middle class backgrounds wearing the scarf really as a fashion choice or identity statement, and then I see some who do it even if they don't want to because their families expect it. I don't see these women as particularly oppressed. And yet the way in which puritanical pressure just seems to converge on women and the way they dress in Egypt (even pointed remarks and tuggings if one's back, heaven forbid, should show ever so slightly above lowrise jeans) is pretty sickening. It gets to the point where if you aren't wearing a scarf, people assume you're either non-Muslim or a slut. I think women (like me) who have faced that sort of pressure in other contexts are going to be, naturally, more sceptical of the whole argument that it's about free choice (even while recognising that there are no completely free choices in any society).

Other than the obvious visual distinction, why is the ninja-niqab so different, in your view, from the headscarf-hijab? Both are based on a belief that a woman must cover up to be a good Muslim - it's a question of degree and not kind. I feel instinctively more OK with hijab but am not sure this preference would stand up to reasoned philosophical argument.

As for pressure to be a Good Girl vs pressure to be a Show-all Babe, the punishment for not being a Babe (in the West, broadly speaking) is that you don't get laid (more of a market-mechanism there); the punishment for not being a Good Girl can be pretty serious social stigmatisation backed up with coercion - in many societies. I suppose it comes down to the social context.

Lounsbury, your link to CinR is broken - http://catinrabat.blogspot.com/2007/07/eye-witness-to-unveiling.html .

I broadly agree with what you've written. The amount of drivel said and written about the headscarf tends to pile up a bit, nice to see someone trying to reduce the rubble...

As you say, what is striking is the many different ways to wear a hijab, and the many different personalities of the girls wearing it. I have quite a few relatives who have taken to it in recent years, and have noticed no change whatsoever in their outlook - true, few of them were pot-smoking, beer-drinking militant lesbians to begin with, so the change was very gradual.

The reaction towards the hijab is however irrational, especially with the natives who've turned "French" (in the case of Morocco) - their belligerency against has few matches even in Europe, and yet they don't mind their mother, aunt or grandmother wearing it, as very few Moroccan families (except for Jewish ones) are hijab-free...

SP: as for the difference between hijab and niqab, the most convincing I can think of is this one. While covering your hair is quite a common thing to do, covering your face is only done in a very few and specific cases - skiing or climbing the Everest, taking part in a carnival, robbing a bank. The same normality-based approach could be taken in religious terms: while wearing the hijab is a normal (I'm not saying it's the only one) part of practising islam, wearing a niqab is certainly a fringe activity, except in very marginal regions (parts of Saudi arabia & Afghanistan, and even there it is dependent on state control). Context is everything.

As for social pressure, if you take the professional circles alluded to by Lounsbury, the social pressure is indeed intense NOT to wear the veil, in Morocco, Tunisia and probably Algeria as well. To say nothing about wearing the veil in a country where muslims are about 1-5% of the total population, like France for example. I am a bit disturbed by the tendency to view the wearing of western dress as the normal thing to do - it is a much a reflection of personal belief and social context as wearing the hijab, and it will be the normal thing to do in Sweden and less so in Pakistan.

I'm a pragmatist, so reasoned abstractions I have little use for as such.

But let me get back to the core:

First, I would make a differentiation between not just Hidjab and the Niqab-Hidjab ninja outfits the Khalijis have foisted off, but also the more severe non-niqab Nun type habits, and the relaxed hidjab.

As to the why, well, it is a matter of degree. The either or expressed here: Other than the obvious visual distinction, why is the ninja-niqab so different, in your view, from the headscarf-hijab? Both are based on a belief that a woman must cover up to be a good Muslim - it's a question of degree and not kind. strikes me as excessive. Women have to cover their breasts in all the civilised world now.... Covering up to be civilised. What's the real difference, eh?

A relaxed hidjab coupled with more or less ordinary (for whatever the context) clothes and comfort, well, it's not much worse than a bra in the end. The more severe outfits, gloved or not, to me send a rather different message - a message of rigidity and indeed the kind of "constraint" I believe you're getting at.

Well, it might be easier to illustrate visually, but I am sure that those readers based in the region understand.

Egypt is, I am well aware, a place where in the broiler of Cairo free choice strikes me as rather more restricted. But then everyone knows the deep love I hold for Cairo and Egypt....

Okay, this might be dangerously close to that neo-Marxist feminist claptrap, so I'll put in a few reservations before embarking on a long and arduous rant:

- First of all, I could not agree more about how disturbing the non-Muslim obsession with the veil is. Whatever legitimate debate there is -- and, as I write below, I think there is such an argument to be had -- the context distorts it so badly, it's often better to just avoid the subject.

- Second, let's keep the niqab out of the debate, since I think most of us here agree that it is a freak deviation, and all agree that it is in any case separate from the basic question of hidjab or no hidjab, and of what it represents.

- Third, let's all agree that no one wants to ban anything, and that everyone should wear whatever clothes they want and be respected for it (well, as long as they deserve it).

- And fourth, yes, there will be a million exceptions to every statement about what the hidjab means in society, so let's not get mired in whose aunt or sister or wife or self is not like this or that.

L - I never quite understood how wearing a headscarf (rather than the niqab - the face veil) as such showed a particular oppression, nor indeed how being a slave to the fashion whims of Paris is particularly liberating as a matter of theory.

I'd rather say that both are oppressive, or rather symbols of an oppressive conformity -- even if of different kinds and, probably, different degrees. That's exactly the point of the feminist argument, as opposed to one that is merely concerned with getting the Muslimas to show more skin or being more like rich Christian westerners ("everyone else", to most speakers of that variety). But past that, and if one doesn't believe the hidjab is a religious requirement (in which case the debate ends here), then I think one must recognize it as a very important symbol and reinforcer of sexual oppression. It's not just separate clothing, it is separate clothing with a social and political message, namely one concerning gender segregation (literal and ideological), chastity and male-female relations. (Not to be confused with the increasingly heard idiot argument that says the hidjab has an Islamist message.) That there are many women who use the hidjab more as a fashion accessory than for religious reasons today doesn't change this, anymore than the fact that some people have fun with handcuffs in bed change the meaning of chaining people; that change will occur only should this become the norm, as arguably it has in some elite or Westernized communities. (Hidjab, not handcuffs.)

Social mores that reinforce gender roles are objectionable per se -- although not always avoidable, or important enough to bother fighting --, but even more so when they act to reinforce a society where women are not just separate, but also distinctly unequal. That is unfortunately the case with most, or in fact all, Muslim countries today, and it of course lingers among many Muslim emigrants too. Not that any Christian/Western/etc countries are innocent of that -- far from it, and not just in conservative societies -- but now we're talking hidjab, so that's beside the point.

One could say the exact same thing about eg. orthodox Jewish customs, from side curls to women wearing wigs and so on (another worthwile debate where history & politics gets in the way, and therefore also one that will have to be settled within the community). And perhaps a parallell could be drawn with, say, how suffragettes wore pants as a deliberate challenge to gender roles and male society in the 19th century? There's nothing wrong with pants, nothing wrong with skirts, but there was a definite need to pick a hole in the gender structures they represented, because those structures were vital in upholding male supremacy. As with the question of gender violence: when women are beaten in relationships not simply because they are weaker physically, but in some ways because they are women, because that's a (warped) expression of gender relations -- then those particular gender relations need to be adjusted, and that's done by destroying or altering what supports them in law or tradition. In a Western fifties-sixties context, that might mean cutting your hair and burning the bra, or simply getting an education, starting a career, or fighting for equal pay, depending on where you're at in society. In a Muslim context -- well, the diversity is so great (far greater than in what's referred to as the "West", which is a discussion worth having in itself) that there hardly is a Muslim context, but still -- it will no doubt involve challenging the most visual expressions of female subordination, including the veil. Which, of course, doesn't exclude other and more important battles: the vast increase in female university graduates right across the Muslim world comes to mind, and the hidjab doesn't factor in that. (Or maybe it even plays a supporting role to women's education: I've seen several authors make the point that increased veiling and a more formalized Muslimness has made it easier for eg. Egyptian women to enter society in a way their mothers never could, providing the basis for far more important modernization and social change than just bashing religious dress code.)

So, in sum, my point is that anyone who doesn't feel the hidjab is worn on God's urging, and wants gender equality, should realize that the hidjab in its present role functionally works against this. Although, I repeat, unfortunately another set of relations (namely Western-Muslim, or what passes for it) have intruded on that debate so heavily as to make it nearly impossible to wage on its merit. Same thing with eg. secular law: sure you should be legally allowed to draw cartoons of the Prophet, and press freedom is an important principle to uphold -- but right now, that debate just isn't playing out as it should, and people need to realize that before engaging in it.

The Lounsbury -- Well, it might be easier to illustrate visually...

Funnier too.

Social mores that reinforce gender roles are objectionable per se

Afraid I am unable to sign up to that. Gender roles are part of humanity, nothing "per se" objectionable in my view, only to the extent it gets in the way of efficiency.

The link, however, is bloody brilliant. (Although the Qubeisya reference escapes me, the type is clear enough)

But as for the merit, well, and the debate playing out:
I am approach all this from the point of view that the pure secular route already lost. If you want to deal with these issues, fight a battle that is no a loser from the get go (or perhaps pick your terrain better, as it were).

I'm well aware of the visual distinction between scary all-covered munaqabah and average scarf-wearing muhajabah, as I see them all the time around me, and agree that the scarf is more harmless and easily absorbed into the realm of accessorizing. But the religious reasons given for why women should wear both are the same. If you grant someone the argument that the scarf should be worn because it is a religious obligation (as many of the young Amr Khaled-influenced girls still believe), what's to stop someone from insisting the niqab is required too? Yes, the hijab bleeds into the territory of 'covering up to be civilized' and certainly in some circles women do it to be "decent" and because it's the done thing, but for lots of women and their families it's not just about common decency but rather about religion and making sure their daughters are "pure." There's a lot of virgin vs slut labelling implicated in whether or not women cover that's deeply sexist (I agree with many of Alle's points on this count, actually).

I think this is one of those questions, for liberals, where what you think someone else should have the right to do is not at all what you'd do, and it's difficult to avoid ethical judgements about why that is, even if you're trying to be pragmatic.

Well, it's really easy.

I don't give a bleeding fuck about ethics

So the bloody hell what about the bloody rationales. Religious reasons for wearing bloody clothing are the same. I have no use for arch philosophising and useless whanking on.

In reality, one makes short-cuts.

I know, it's hilarious... Qubaysiyya is a sect in Syria (or just Damascus?), for women only, led by a stern Islamist matriarch whose name escapes me. Well, Qubaysi something. Maybe they're some sort of oddball Sufis, I don't know.

For me there is a qualitative distinction between the hijab and the niqab. Each send a message, but a different one. The hijab, especially as worn by Iranians, says, "I wear this as a sign of my religion but my religion is a philosophical framework that I adapt to modern life rather than an endless list of detailed prescriptions that must be mindlessly applied."

The niqab or the burqa carry the opposite message. Wearing them suggests rigidity and an inability to think critically.

As in so many things, Muslims could learn a lot from the Jews. As mentioned above, hard-core orthodox Jewish women also believe in covering their hair in public. They have, however, adopted a number of flexible strategies that allow them to reconcile their religious beliefs with the norms modern society, such as using wigs.

Of course, all of this must be applied in context. Collounsbury remarks that, " Women have to cover their breasts in all the civilised world now." I'm sure he would be the first to agree that he has not spent enough time on French beaches. Who has?

The point is that all clothing sends a message and the message it sends depends on the context in which it is worn. Collounsbury wouldn't go to the beach in a business suit and he wouldn't go to a business meeting in a bathing suit. By the same token the hijab or even, I'm forced to admit, the burqa, are not, per se, symbols of repression. The real issue is what happens to you if you choose not to wear them.

Well, I remember once beaches.... a vague memory, something about leisure.

As for wearing suits on a beach, ahem, it all depends on the reason you're at the beach.

Personally, I don't know if the politico-social symbolic nature of hidjab necessarily changes anything.

The Chinese queue was symbolic of multitude of things at the beginning of the 20th century. It was a symbol of oppression imposed on the Chinese by Manchu overlords, yet, when Westerners made it a point of attack, so to speak, the Chinese resisted (or, I suppose, more accurately, Chinese Americans in California, where attack on the queue was a common anti-Chinese practie), but, when the Manchu emperor abdicated in 1911, the Chinese largely cut off their queue's voluntarily.

One might argue that this isn't exactly the most accurate history (which it isn't), but the story is largely true, and there is something rather remarkably analogous to the whole hidjab thing. Whatever the meaning of hidjab "really" is, it's not for the Westerners to make an issue of it--it becomes an assault on the people and their identity by foreigners and they'll resist it, naturally. However well meaning, the Westerners would probably be best off butting out...and maybe the Muslim women will take off hidjabs themselves...maybe.

Dear all-

Just to heat up the debate a bit:

How many women have been assaulted in the West for not wearing mini-skirts and how many women have been assaulted in Muslim societies for not wearing "respectable" clothing, like hijab - by families, neighbors, strangers, state authorities, etc.?

From personal experience, I find the peer-pressure in the West to conform to "revealing" fashion trends much, much less coercive than the social pressure on women in Muslim societies to "cover up" - case in point is Cairo, where the percentage of muhajabaat rose from under 30% in the early 90s to over 90% today.

If we are doing an "East/West" comparison, I think the Western example more fitting would be social ostracism of young people wearing jeans, short skirts, and (in the case of men) long hair in the 50s and 60s by vast parts of socially very conservative societies, mainly outside the big cities.

--MSK*

People should also recall that it was very much the standard for italian women in a recently bygone era to cover their heads with a scarf when out in public. I don't recall there being much outcry over that in the west. Presumably there must've been some matter of debate in europe amoung the older generation and the 'newer' generation, or even in the US between the immigrant generation and their children's generation. Seems like the italian headscarf and muslim headscarf are similar enough situations. Indeed, house keys, so the story goes, were invented in old (very old) Italy so that men could lock up their women in the houses to keep them inside, which isn't too much of a divergence from what I take to be the islamic rationale behind things like headscarves.

As far as women being assaulted over skirts, well, they have been assaulted for not dressing "modestly" in the west, which is exactly what a person in the east is attacking a woman for not wearing a 'hijab' (which apparently is derived from the word for 'modest'). Clearly attacking people over clothing is a non-starter.

And I just have to say that I love the phrase "neo-Salafi glove wearing ninjas"!!

I dunno. How many have been raped while wearing provocative clothing in "The West" or more strictly in analogy, how many women wearing "alien clothing" have been assualted.

And why don't we stop being Eurocentric and look at non-Islamic South America, or southern Africa....

In any case, competitive whinging on about clothing and women's oppression seems rather sterile. Human beings suck, generally, and find culturally specific ways to express their nastiness.

In a liberal society, one tries not to overly regulate ordinary suckiness. And regardless, my key point is a hidjab as such - whatever ever bloody caveats one may want to add - doesn't say very bloody much about the actual operational "liberatedness" of the wearer. At least in my experience in MENA. Perhaps yours differs.

Whatever the meaning of hidjab "really" is, it's not for the Westerners to make an issue of it--it becomes an assault on the people and their identity by foreigners and they'll resist it, naturally. However well meaning, the Westerners would probably be best off butting out...and maybe the Muslim women will take off hidjabs themselves...maybe.

But the real debate isn't "Westerner v. Muslim." The real debate is among Muslims or in Western countries. (Parenthetically, I'm not comfortable with the Muslim/Western divide. Muslims are perfectly capable of being "Western." That is itself part of the debate.)

Hijab is an issue in Turkey. Surely you don't question the propriety of the Turks debating the issue in their own country? Ditto with France. Freedom of speech/relgion issues aside, the French have every right to debate the norms of their society. As do the British with respect to their recent discussion regarding the niqab.

The reason that hijab has become such a hot button topic in the West is that some extremely vocal elements in the Muslim world have made it so. Once again, context is everything. But, regardless of what it might mean to the individual wearing it, it is hardly surprising that many Westerners are uncomfortable with hijab after being exposed to so many reports of women in Muslim countries being jailed, beaten or even killed for not wearing it.

If, by way of a ridiculous illustration, you were to wear a button saying, "Osama is just alright with me!" because you had a favorite cousin named Osama, you can hardly blame people for taking offense. By the same token, you shouldn't be surprised that people in secular countries -- or even in secular segments of ostensibly Islamic countries -- are uncomfortable if you choose to wear what they consider to be a symbol of oppression and backwardness.

And why don't we stop being Eurocentric and look at non-Islamic South America, or southern Africa....

This is a very important point. Comparing "The Muslim World" with "The West" is an exercise rigged to turn out in Islam's disfavor, since "Western" really only means one thing: the most successful and modern parts of the Christian world. Of course, there are still many reasons to compare, but no excuse for being surprised by the result. And the conclusions one can draw are really more about developed vs. non-developed than about West/Christianity vs. East/Islam.

"And the conclusions one can draw are really more about developed vs. non-developed than about West/Christianity vs. East/Islam."

Yup.

And no, Anonymous, it's stupid to get upset cause some gal's wearing a friggin' scarf on her head.

It's stupid. S T U P I D. It's stupid to care, to comment, or be concerned, and even stupider to legislate.

STU-FRIGGIN-PID. Waste of a finite human life span.

(I'm starting to channel Lounsbury-style almost. Been here too long.)

MH-

It's NOT stupid to get upset about parents forcing 10-year old girls to wear hijab.

It's NOT stupid to get upset about traditionalists - of any stripe, culture, geographical location - to enforce their own sartorial rules onto everybody else, often even regardless of the other person's religion/culture. That goes for "liberally clad" women being treated like whores in parts of the MidEast (and, increasingly, in MidEast immigrant neighborhoods in Europe) just as it goes for France forbidding hijab in public schools.

--MSK*

I'm with MSK here. And forget ten year olds, how about the four and five year olds wearing scarves that one sees these days? (watch the Hossam Hagg song video "Ithaggibti, bravo aleik" on YouTube for a sickening version of this).

KH has a very good point on the different meanings of hijab for different people, and in the Muslim communities that I know, it's definitely about purity, pressure on women to be more religious, and fear of their sexuality. In Europe or in more Westernized contexts it may well be an identity statement and an expression of personal religiosity (or, in the case of some young Cairenes, a talisman that lets them date and get varying levels of action without anyone thinking they'd be capable of it).

I think there's a big difference between legislating against hijab or seeing it as a political problem/necessary symbol of Oppressed Womanhood/the coming of Eurabia (which I think we can all agree is silly) and opposing the religious and patriarchal reasons why women often wear it or feel pressured to.

It's a bit ironic that liberals who are wary of state regulation and pressure should feel perfectly comfortable with and defend equally unpleasant social and familial regulation and pressure. But that's an old dilemma.

Well, evidently Liberalism is not well understood.

There is nothing ironic at all about being wary of State intervention and not attacking societal mores. It goes to the heart of choice.

Leaving aside useless airy idealism, in the real world people live with constraints. Social constraints, familial constraints. As humans are social animals, the fiction of the free agent is not going to be realised. For the pragmatic liberal, it is enough of a fight to keep the dead hand of state intervention out of it.

But evidently the Moralisers (in this case modernist Moralisers) see it otherwise.

L-

So you would be happy about the complete cessation of state intervention and let families, clans, religious leaders, etc. dictate what women (& sometimes men) have to wear, quite possibly even physically force them to abide by those "private" rules, and at times killing them for acts of transgression?

I wonder: Who is to protect those too weak to protect themselves, if not the state?

--MSK*

Whether or not it's the state's job to protect "the weak," the role of coercion in social mores and constraints is important.

Your version of liberalism would keep new forms of (mainly state) coercion at bay, L, while protecting those that have become socially entrenched and enforced in a more decentralised way.

Not saying that social coercion can be dismantled or replaced with the stroke of a pen or state action (e.g. Hirsi Ali's idiotic suggestion that all Muslim girls undergo vaginal exams to ensure they haven't been FGMed), or that the state can or should rush in to "liberate" those who are seen to suffer from social coercion, but the problem remains. Much as I agree with the pragmatic as opposed to modernist-moraliser route to addressing it.

Leaving aside useless airy idealism, in the real world people live with constraints. Social constraints, familial constraints. As humans are social animals, the fiction of the free agent is not going to be realised. For the pragmatic liberal, it is enough of a fight to keep the dead hand of state intervention out of it.

When you try to straddle the fence between pragmatism and philosophy, you're going to get some very uncomfortable splinters.

First, it's all very well to decry state intervention in such matters when there is some approximation of freedom of choice. But this does not apply in some cases, e.g., female circumcision. While I'm not directly comparing wearing hijab to female circumcision, there are, unfortunately, some societies where women have been beaten or even killed for breaking hijab. These are, unfortunately, also the societies where the government is least likely to intervene to stop such things. These states are not, I hardly need add, models of liberal democracy.

Second, you are not a state actor. You are, therefore, free to discriminate -- or not -- against those wearing hijab as you choose. You are just another "social constraint" that people must contend with.

In fact, there is a very good liberal argument to be made that maybe you should discriminate against those who wear hijab. Your reluctance to discriminate based on religious beliefs, while comendable, may be out of place. If, hypothetically, there is great social/familial pressure to wear hijab or not to mix with men or whatever, you create a countervailing pressure by rewarding those who don't wear hijab or are willing to mix with men, etc. " Hey, Fatima doesn't wear hijab and she has a great career. I want to be like her!"

Context, as Collounsbury might say, motherfucking context.

People don't trust you to work on financial issues unless the right image is projected. There is, however, a margin around which the image analysis is legitimate, and areas where it is not. Rather like in prior decades being too dark skinned was an immediate image problem and a no-hire...

Wearing hijab and having dark skin are qualitatively different things. One is a matter of choice, the other is a matter of biology. Strictly speaking, there is no philosophical bar to discriminating against someone based on their religion, especially if you're a private actor. While the West has discovered that disallowing religious discrimination is a generally a very good idea, it's a purely pragmatic idea rooted in the realization that fighting over religion is way more trouble than it's worth.

You would not, of course, hire an assistant who had religious objections to interest. Nor would you hire an assistant who refused to wear shoes for religious reasons. As you observe, image is important. If hijab projects the wrong image, then that counts against the wearers of hijab. By giving them a pass because they wear it for religious reasons, you are transfering the cost of their choices to you -- externalization is never a good idea. Wearing hijab is a choice. If someone is forced to choose between some particular mode of religious expression and getting the job they want, well, that's life in the big city.

Once again, in many societies, there may be excellent pragmatic reasons to force even private actors to tolerate a wide range of religious expression. But this is a purely utilitarian analysis.

MSK

your answer to L. is a classical argument of "so you're for anarchy" thrown at libertarians.

First, I would certainly hire an assistant with philosophical refusal to take interest, so long as said assistant was willing to work hard at our work, understood what we do, and was competent.

Her private reflexions on interest have no bearing otherwise. I in fact know some excellent financial people in region who try to avoid interest, but are damned good bankers. The personal philosophical reflexions mean nothing to me.

As to this argument:
In fact, there is a very good liberal argument to be made that maybe you should discriminate against those who wear hijab. Your reluctance to discriminate based on religious beliefs, while comendable, may be out of place. If, hypothetically, there is great social/familial pressure to wear hijab or not to mix with men or whatever, you create a countervailing pressure by rewarding those who don't wear hijab or are willing to mix with men, etc. " Hey, Fatima doesn't wear hijab and she has a great career. I want to be like her!"

Well, that is precisely what I have no interest in engaging in as
(i) to my observation the hidjab is not a strong indicator of women's personality or competence as such (although some specific forms of the hidjab are),
(ii) private lives I don't really give a fuck about, so long as it does not impact business directly,
(iii) to the extent I am interested in womens liberation, I see rather larger problems, more fundamental problems than the hidjab, and in my personal experience a certain type of hidjab wearing woman [not the ninja gear or nun gear types] may make stronger arguments for most of the fundamentals for women - rights to speak, occupy public positions, etc, that echo deeper than those Westernised.

As such, so long as said professional has the right character, skills and personality to do the job, then I refuse to hold the hidjab as such as an issue. Nota bene, Hidjab as such. Like the difference between wearing sandals and wearing proper shoes, there are forms of Hidjab dress compatible with what my office does, and there are forms that are not. And of course depending on function.

And yes, there are places where physical violence and violent non-physical intimidation impose the hidjab, and the State does not protect reasonble freedom of choice. That's of course not what I was discussing at all in my reflexions supra. I would also observe that across most of the Muslim world, the violent intimidation strikes me as the minority experience.

Social pressures, well, not my affaire.

The whole thing comes down to bullying. In certain places and societies, girls and women are bullied into wearing a hijab, by social pressure and out and out threats and acts of force. In places I know on this side of the Atlantic, the bullying is the other way.

I get a nice sweet gal I corresponded with, a sincere and thoughtful Muslim girl telling me "she goes through ordeals for wearing my hijab every day"; it was not because of her family's pressure she was going through ordeals.

Or perhaps the little Texas boy, son of a family friend, who while showing me a school yearbook pointed to the one girl who wore a hijab in his school and said "Look at this freak!". In fairness, I don't think he ever said that to her directly, but others would.

One could argue anything about religion-tinged symbols. A yarmulke is a symbol of religious superstition (or gasp Zionism!!!!!) and ban it. And on and on.

A hijab is a FRIGGIN' HEADSCARF. It "means" nothing, except a cloth around the head, which itself can mean whatever you want. It symbolizes and communicates nothing except "I have a cloth on my head". And it doesnt have the extreme, near-universal, or unique symbolic association of a yellow star of David cloth-badge.

As Shakespeare said "There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so."

Parents dress up their kids in clothes that are stupid, precociously slutty (you remember the Jon-Benet Ramsey case in America), or hypermodest. Parents DO have a right to tell their kids what to wear, most especially a simple cloth on the head.

Anyway, the problem with sexist social standards is the sexism not the fabric.

The core of liberalism is not merely "freedom" but INDIVIDUALISM. Freedom without INDIVIDUALISM is nothing much. Freedom is the right to control your own meaning for what you do and purposes with what you do. In all the rip-her-hijab-off to liberate her, or put-it-on-for-her-purity, there is no accounting for the fact that individuals may have their own reason, mediated by a hundred rational and irrational inputs, social, traditional, defiant, esthetic, personal comfort, for wearing it, liking it, disliking it.

The most important reason is the person's own.

Of course, there is another issue of social standards of modesty. In more underdeveloped societies, for reasons related to various things including religion, more covering is usually demanded, usually of women more than men, but often of both, and enforced with a double standard against the women more. (In a medium sized town in Jordan a male teenager griped to me about how standards of modesty and public presure prevented him from wearing shorts outside, comfortable on a hot day; but I doubt he'd experience the same level of retribution, tangible or intangible as a girl might.)

Well,let's rationalize and equalize the gender standard, but one is not going to increase what freedom is all about -- individual choices -- by taking away individual choices, by law.

It's a good exercise in liberalism to develop the reflexes of respecting individual choices.

Finally, even if an hijab is a symbol of oppression, waging war on symbols is what superstitious people do.

But again, it's a flippi' headscarf, not a niqab or that other stuff. It's a relatively modest symbol of rather strong modesty. It's a cloth on the head, not a mask, a gag, a handcuff, or a burlap sack.

And in my experience with Muslim hijab wearers and Christian ones (nuns), the cloth on the head didn't make them afraid to be quite bossy and opinionated.

I in fact know some excellent financial people in region who try to avoid interest, but are damned good bankers.

Interesting. I would have thought that people with religious objections to interest would have been reluctant to structure deals that, well, involved paying interest. I'd imagined it would be sort of like someone opposed to abortion working at Planned Parenthood. Their attitude smacks of a thoroughly enlightned combination of deeply held religious belief and toleration for the beliefs of others that I wish could be transplanted to a number of people I know. I don't suppose these people give lessons?

As for the rest, as I say, context is all. I believe you are in a pretty relaxed place where there is, indeed, great latitude for individual choice. And, as I noted, I have no per se objection to hijab and find the Iranian approach to strike an interesting balance between social conformity and individual expression that is equally at home on the streets of Paris as it is in Tehran.

I merely point out that whether you choose to make an issue of it at the office is entirely a matter of pragmatism. You generally choose to treat the hijab as a non-issue and I, personally, would probably come to the same conclusion. If I were working in an office in Kabul, my latent egalitarian leanings might harass me enough to encourage those were trying to break -- or at least crack -- the mold.

To Hijab or not? This question is going around the Muslim world thanks to our moderate and enlightened leaders. While western media is busy in creating anti-hijab opinions, the "liberals" in our ranks are busy nodding their heads in affirmation.

I wonder why they don't ask their nuns to take off the head scarves?

It is not about being Liberal or Modern or not. Anyone who can CHANGE their opinion is a moderate. Anyone who can question his beliefs & the beliefs of others around him is open minded & liberal (regardless of which ends of the spectrum you are)

Kashif- no one asks nuns to do that because nuns have chosen that life (along with celibacy & marrying God & other imaginary things) That's like their jobs... and the job comes with a uniform.
But in the Muslim world, that's not the case. Doctors & lawyers and housewives (who actually LIKE MEN) are required to take a stand with or against the issue (depending on where in the Muslim world you live)

Arabs have worn hijab for thousands of years before Islam. Have u seen a picture or a statue of the Virgin Mary without one?
So, it's just something we inherited along with alot of other TRADITIONS, which are backwards. And not to raise another argument, but they are IN FACT backwards... meaning BEHIND us time wise... because they were established thousands of years before we were born. U can't argue that.
Arabs often confuse tradition with religion.
I will leave it to Muslim sheikhs to argue if religiously Muslim women are required to wear the hijab (and i say that not because i think they are an "authority" but because it's so much fun to watch them fight over something they will never have to use and are clueless about) But hay in the end, that's their job... ahhh... religion... what a waist of energy and man hours. (or famele hours for that matter)