On April 11, 2011, Kenza Drider, a thirty-two-year-old mother of four, broke the law in Paris: she wore the niqab in public. She had traveled by train from her home in Avignon to protest a new law banning the full-face Muslim veil in all public spaces throughout France. In June 2010 twenty-five-year-old Louiza (not her real name) was shot at close range with a paintball gun as she walked down the street in Grozny because she wasn’t wearing a headscarf. That summer many women in the Russian republic of Chechnya fell victim to attacks and harassment during a “virtue campaign” to force women to cover themselves.
What these two incidents have in common is interference—sometimes brutal, always wrong—with the fundamental human rights of women in the name of religion, tradition, or misguided protectionism. In Indonesia’s Aceh province, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Afghanistan under the Taliban, as well as parts of Somalia, Gaza, and Chechnya, women are forced to cover up. At the same time, local and national governments in Europe have moved to prohibit women and girls from wearing the veil in schools and public service. In April 2011, France enacted a national law banning the wearing of full-face veils anywhere in public; Belgium is poised to adopt a similar law, and comparable nationwide bans have been proposed in a number of other European countries. Several cities in Belgium, Spain, and Italy already have local bans in place.
The sad irony is that whether they are being forced to cover up or to uncover, these women are being discriminated against. Banned from wearing the hijab—a traditional Muslim headscarf—or forced to veil themselves, women around the world are being stripped of their basic rights to personal autonomy; to freedom of expression; and to freedom of religion, thought, and conscience.
Though men are also subject to religious and traditional practices, including dress codes that impinge on their freedoms, women around the world are far more likely to see their decisions dictated, their options curtailed, even their physical integrity and lives threatened, by official and societal norms about propriety.
Women’s rights activists, both within and outside Muslim communities, have long argued that veiling, and full veiling of the face and body in particular, is a powerful symbol of the oppression and subjugation of women. The burqa, a full face and body covering, is commonly associated with the Taliban, who systematically violate the fundamental rights and freedoms of women in Afghanistan, a country with the lowest life expectancy in the region and some of the highest rates of maternal death.
Authorities often justify enforcement of dress codes on grounds of tradition, virtue, or decency. In Gaza, for example, Hamas officials administering this Palestinian territory initiated in July 2009 their own “virtue” campaign. When the school year began in August of that year, we heard about schools turning away girls for not wearing the headscarf and traditional gown called the jilbab, on the basis of unofficial orders from Hamas authorities.1 The paintball attacks against women in Chechnya came several years into a quasi-official, though extralegal “virtue campaign” initiated by Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov in 2006.2 As part of this campaign, local authorities prohibit women from working in the public sector if they do not wear headscarves, and female students are required to wear headscarves in schools and universities. Gradually, throughout 2009 and 2010, the authorities broadened their enforcement of this de facto “headscarf rule” to other public places, including entertainment venues, cinemas, and even outdoor areas. In addition to the pelting with paintball guns, Chechen women told us they are threatened with more “persuasive” measures if they do not cover their hair. Though such measures do not have any basis in the written laws applicable in the Chechen Republic, they are strictly enforced.
Promoters of such codes argue that policies of forced veiling are expressions of a shared societal concept of decency analogous to laws prohibiting public nudity. But decency laws prohibiting public nudity are virtually universal, are not associated with and do not lead to other limitations on rights, and are not the subject of significant dissent. In contrast, forced veiling—and in particular, forced wearing of the niqab and the burqa—are associated with serious human rights violations. And, of course, the purpose, meaning, and nature of veils vary widely among communities and nations, and are hotly contested issues within Muslim communities. Many of the rules requiring certain kinds of dress for women, as in Gaza and Chechnya, are relatively new.
Forced veiling and other dress codes often have dire consequences for women’s physical integrity, freedom of movement, and economic opportunities. In areas of Somalia controlled by the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab, authorities have imposed strict dress codes for women, requiring they wear an abaya made of particularly thick cloth that touches the ground and hides all physical contours.3 Women who wouldn’t comply shared with us their stories of being beaten, whipped, and jailed. The abaya decrees have severely hampered freedom of movement for women who simply cannot afford these expensive, imported garments. Many poor women have had to share one abaya across an entire family or group of households, meaning that only one of them can leave the home at any time. These dress codes have been accompanied by rules barring women from working in public and strict segregation between men and women, even family members, in public places.
Given the evidence that forced veiling constitutes a serious women’s rights issue in so many parts of the world, it is perhaps not surprising that proponents of bans on veils in Europe see them as a way to liberate women and protect women and girls from societal pressure to veil themselves. Bans on students and teachers wearing headscarves in schools, on civil servants wearing any kind of religious symbol, and on full-face coverings are also variously justified by the need to ensure secularism in state institutions, as well as on security grounds. Though some (but not all) bans are crafted in neutral terms, the political debate around them in Europe is infused with discomfort with an increasingly visible Muslim minority population, and concerns about integrating newer Europeans while preserving so-called European values.
Pro-ban arguments relating to women’s rights have the greatest resonance. Yet denying women the right to cover themselves is as wrong as forcing them to do so. Muslim women, like all women, should have the right to dress as they choose, and to make decisions about their lives and how to express their faith, identity, and moral values. And they should not be forced to choose between their beliefs and their chosen profession.
Generalizations about women’s oppression do a disservice to one of the basic tenets of gender equality: the right to self-determination and autonomy, the right a woman has to make decisions about her life and her body without interference from the state or others. There are undoubtedly women who are forced to wear the veil or feel tremendous pressure to do so against their own convictions. But there are also Muslim women in Europe, some of them converts, who have spoken out to say that veiling was their own decision, citing motivations such as an expression of their faith and a desire to assert their identity. As alien as it may to seem to some Europeans, veiling can be a choice, in the same way that other convictions or conduct that have been shaped by societal, family, or religious influences are experienced by the individual as an expression of their identity.
The right to autonomy, a core principle of women’s rights, is a part of the right to a private life guaranteed under international human rights law. The right to autonomy encompasses the right to make decisions freely in accordance with one’s values, beliefs, personal circumstances, and needs. Exercise of this right presupposes freedom from coercion and from illegitimate restrictions. It also includes the right to adopt a lifestyle of which others in society disapprove, or deem harmful to the person who pursues it.
At a practical level, it is hard to see how proscriptive laws targeting women wearing veils serve the cause of women’s equality. Local laws and the nationwide French ban enacted in April 2011 banning the full-face veil provide for a variety of sanctions on women who violate the terms of the ban, including fines, “good citizenship” courses, and community social work. The law also makes it a crime to coerce women and girls into wearing such veils, punishable by up to one year in prison and a £30,000 fine. A similar ban soon to enter into effect in Belgium envisions up to seven days in prison. In essence, bans like these are a lose-lose proposition: they violate the rights of those who choose to wear the veil, and do nothing to help those who are forced to do so.
For those who cover themselves by choice, such bans force them to choose between the ability to participate fully in society and the manifestation of their religious faith. They make commonplace activities—taking the bus, attending a parent-teacher conference in a public school, filing documents at a municipal office, even getting medical attention in a hospital—impossible while following their religious beliefs.
For those women who are compelled by family members to cover themselves, a ban on full-face covering veils in all public spaces may mean they trade what critics call an “ambulatory prison” for one made of brick and mortar: their homes. The women themselves or their male relatives may decide they cannot go out of the house without their veils, or at least severely restrict how much they go out in public. Many of the women interviewed by the Open Society Foundation in the lead-up to the ban imposed in France on full-face veils said they would avoid going outside once the ban entered into force. As Karima, a twenty-one-year-old living in Rennes, put it, “They say that it’s our husbands who are locking us away but it’s actually they who are locking us away.… We shouldn’t delude ourselves.… I would end up taking it off. But what is clear is that I’m really going to restrict the number of times I go out to the bare minimum. I’ll go out only when I need to do necessary things.”4
Strong social censure within Muslim communities against the wearing of full-face veils, and against forced veiling generally, will likely do more to empower women than laws and fines. State coercion and punishing the victims will not uproot oppression. What is needed is further education on these issues, access to support and economic possibilities, as well as effective means to seek justice against those who are oppressing them.
Restrictions on teachers and other public servants wearing the headscarf are for the most part unjustifiable and harmful. While it may be legitimate to prohibit teachers from wearing the full-face veil when that impedes communication, it’s hard to see how wearing the headscarf interferes with essential requirements of a teacher’s job. The ban on teachers wearing headscarves in parts of Germany has led observant Muslim women to abandon their chosen career, resulting in a loss of independence, social standing, and financial well-being. For women who are coerced by family members into wearing a headscarf, blocking access to these professions will not protect them from oppression. Moreover, this type of state regulation appears to aggravate discrimination against women who wear the headscarf in the private employment sector. Far from empowering them, the bans may lead to a deterioration in their social position. A woman in Cologne remarked to a colleague of mine, “As long as we were cleaning in schools, nobody had a problem with the headscarf.”
Observant Muslim women in Belgium also face obstacles in pursuing their chosen careers. Several cities, including Antwerp and Brussels, have introduced bans on civil servants in contact with the public wearing religious (or political or ideological) symbols, and semipublic hospitals and caring institutions are increasingly copying this example. Students who wear the headscarf are discouraged from pursuing careers as teachers, nurses, or doctors.
Both forced veiling and bans on veils raise questions about the appropriate role of the state in matters of religion and traditional practices, including how, when, and where the state can legitimately impose or restrict the wearing of religious dress and the display of religious symbols. From a human rights perspective, less is more. Human rights law requires the state and state authorities to refrain from discriminating on the basis of religious beliefs. This means the state should be neutral in matters of religion—an important guarantor of religious freedom. Human rights law also guarantees the right to a private life, including the right to autonomy—for example, the freedom to choose what to wear, in private and in public. These are not absolute rights; governments can impose limits, but only when they can demonstrate convincingly that restrictions are necessary to protect public safety, public order, health, or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. This is a high threshold.
That’s why Asma Jahangir, former United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and her predecessor, Abdelfattah Amor, have both criticized rules that require the wearing of religious dress in public. In particular, Amor has urged that dress should not be the subject of political regulation. Jahangir has said that the “use of coercive methods and sanctions applied to individuals who do not wish to wear religious dress or a specific symbol seen as sanctioned by religion” indicates “legislative and administrative actions which typically are incompatible with international human rights law.”5 Thomas Hammarberg, the human rights commissioner for the Council of Europe, has expressed concerns that bans violate the rights to privacy and to freedom of religion and belief guaranteed in the European Convention on Human Rights. He warned that prohibiting the burqa and the niqab in Europe could alienate the women who wear them in European societies.6
Colleagues at Human Rights Watch and I have been criticized as anti-Muslim when we denounce forced veiling, and as anti-women when we denounce bans on the veil. Of course, we are neither. We believe that Muslim women, like all women, should enjoy the right to dress as they choose, and to make decisions about their lives and how to express their faith, identity, and moral values. No woman should be forced to cover her hair or her face. Victims of coercion and violence in the name of religion, tradition, or “virtue” deserve protection and assistance, not censure. No woman should be forced to remove her veil without a legitimate reason. The convictions of those who choose to wear the veil deserve consideration.
Judith Sunderland is a senior researcher on Western Europe in Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division, covering issues including counterterrorist measures, immigration policy, and religious freedom. Before joining Human Rights Watch, she worked as a human rights observer for the United Nations Mission in Guatemala, and as a journalist covering Central America. In this chapter she argues why rules on religious dress for women violate their rights to freedom from discrimination, religious expression, and personal autonomy.