Abstract
Susan S. M. Edwards expounds upon the need to recognise that the habituated vilification of ‘the Muslim’ in the media, the public monolithic discourse that essentialises and demonises them, the refusal to recognise verbal attacks on Muslims as race hatred and the condonation of insult as satire in the context of rising xenophobia, all demonstrate the necessity for a ‘real time’ analysis. Marked out by their clothing women, especially, have become identifiable targets for right-wing extremism and violent assault whose hurt and disposal is rendered no more than ‘collateral damage’ and in whose victimisation public discourse and media representation in promoting orientalised and racialised tropes of Muslims must bear some responsibility. Edwards notes with irony that the Western world, in a self-professed secular crusade against the niqab, has positioned itself thereby as the saviour of womankind. She notes how, in very recent times, the once recognised polysemicity of the niqab (Young 2003) with its several and contradictory meanings, are understandings that have become displaced and subjugated in the Foucauldian sense (Foucault 1980), whilst a highly orientalised trope of the niqab and its wearer (and to a lesser extent the hijab) becomes fetishised at national and governmental level. There is now little inclination to understand why women wear the niqab, even less to give them a voice from their subject position. What emerges, Edwards posits, is that the niqab has become central to the project of Western nation states’ condemnation of the Muslim ‘other’.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
See ‘La vidéo du Vlaams Belang contre l’immigration et l’islamisation’, http://vimeo.com/49146085 (accessed 2 April 2016).
- 2.
See also Unveiling the truth, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/a-unveiling-the-truth-20100510_0.pdf (accessed 2 April 2016).
- 3.
Fanon film Black Skin White Mask 1995 Director Issac Julien http://newsreel.org/video/FRANTZ-FANON (accessed 6 June 2016).
- 4.
Kundnani (2014) The Muslims…, 17 (Speech in House of Commons, Hansard, June 3, 2013 col. 1245).
- 5.
See The Independent, October 23, 1997.
- 6.
See The Daily Express, February 25, 1991.
- 7.
An Overview of Hate Crime in England and Wales (Home Office, Office for National Statistics and Ministry of Justice December 2013) https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/266358/hate-crime-2013.pdf (accessed 12 August 2014) (see Table 1.01 Overview of Hate Crime).
- 8.
See Table 1.14 Overview of Hate Crime. Ref: ISBN 978 1 78246 516 4, Home Office Statistical Bulletin 02/14PDF, https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2014-to-2015 (accessed 2 April 2016), https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crimes-england-and-wales-2013-to-2014 (accessed 2 April 2016); also https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/467366/hosb0515.pdf (accessed 2 April 2016); Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2014/15 Hannah Corcoran, Deborah Lader and Kevin Smith, Statistical Bulletin 05/15.
- 9.
‘ “Maybe we are Hated”: The Experience and Impact of Anti-Muslim Hate on British Muslim Women’. University of Birmingham, 2013. See http://tellmamauk.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/maybewearehated.pdf.
- 10.
Tell Mama helpline. Published time: 21 December 2015, 17:22, see http://tellmamauk.org/. See We Fear for Our Lives: Offline and Online Experiences of Anti-Muslim Hostility, October 2015. See also http://tellmamauk.org/wp-content/uploads/resources/We%20Fear%20For%20Our%20Lives.pdf.
Bibliography
Abu-Lughod, L. (2015). Do muslim women really need saving? Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and gender in Islam. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ahmed, N. (2015). Muslim Women. Films for action. http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/david-camerons-illiterate-proposal-to-counterradicalisation-by-targeting-muslim-women/ Accessed 2 April 2016.
Amis, M. (2013). The second plane: September 11, 2001–2007. London: Vintage.
Asad, T. (2006). Powers of the secular modern. Stanford, USA: Stanford University Press.
Aziz, S. (2012). The Muslim veil post 9/11 rethinking women’s rights and leadership. London, UK: Institute for social policy and understanding and the British Council.
Barbibay, Y. (2010). Citizenship privilege or the right to religious freedom: the blackmailing of France’s Islamic Women. Cardoza Journal of International and Comparative Law, 18(1), 159–206.
BBC Radio 4. (2016, January 18). Muslim women’s segregation in UK communities must end—Cameron. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35338413. Accessed 2 April 2016.
Bourke, J. (2004, May 7). Torture as pornography. The Guardian.
Bouteldja, N. (2014). France v. England. In E. Brems (Ed.), The experiences of face veil wearers in Europe and the law (pp. 115–160). Cambridge, UK: CUP.
Bremner, C. (2016, April 14). Extend headscarf ban to universities urges French PM. Times, p. 27.
Brems, E. (Ed.) (2014). The experiences of face veil wearers in Europe and the law. Cambridge, UK: CUP.
Calgary Reuters. (2015). Canada to press for ban on Islamic veil at citizenship ceremonies. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/16/canada-government-islamic-veil-niqab-ban-citizenship. Accessed 2 June 2016.
Child, B. (2015, June 12). ‘Women-only’ film screening pulled after cinema decides to admit men. Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/12/women-only-screening-pulled-london-israeli-film-festival-rechy-elias. Accessed 2 April 2016.
Ciancio, A. (2010, May 4). Italian police fine Muslim woman for wearing veil. Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/04/italian-police-fine-muslim-woman. Accessed 3 April 2016.
Conseil d’Etat, 27 juin 2008, Mme Maacdhbour, no. 286798.
Coppock, V. (2014). Can you spot a terrorist in your classroom? Problematizing the recruitment of schools to the ‘war on terror’ in the United Kingdom. Global Studies of Childhood, 4(2), 115–126.
Cooke, Rachel. (2015). Interview: ‘Do you feel liberated? I feel I am not.’ Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/11/nawal-el-saadawi-interview-do-you-feel-you-are-liberated-not?cmp=share-btn-fb. Accessed 11 October 2015.
De Saussure, F. (1995). Course in general linguistics. London: Duckworth.
Dubuis, A. (2014, September 23). Camden school bans Muslim teenager.… London Evening Standard. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/camden-school-bans-muslim-teenager-from-taking-alevels-because-she-wears-the-niqab-9750269.html. Accessed 2 April 2016.
Edwards, P. (2016). Closure through resilience: the case of prevent. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 39(4), 292–307.
Edwards, S. (2010). Defacing Muslim women—dialectical meanings of dress in the body politic. In R. Banakar (Ed.), Rights in context. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
Edwards, S. (2012). For her own good! Criming the niqab. International Family Law, 2, 203–209.
Edwards, S.S.M. (2014). Proscribing Unveiling - Law a chimera and an instrument in the political agenda. In Brems, E. (Ed.). The experience of face veil wearers in Europe and the law. Cambridge, UK: CUP.
Eisenman, S. F. (2007a). Waterboarding: political and sacred torture. In J. A. Carlson and E. Weber (Eds.), Speaking about torture (pp. 129–139). New York: Fordham University Press.
Eisenman, S. F. (2007b). Abu Ghraib effect. London, UK: Reaktion Books.
El-Guindi, F. (1999). Veil: modesty, privacy and resistance. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Espinoza, J. (2016, March 28). ‘Teaching children fundamental British values is act of ‘cultural supremacism’. Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/28/teaching-children-fundamental-british-values-is-act-of-cultural/ Accessed 2 April 2016.
Fanon, F. (1965). Studies in a dying colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge selected interviews and other writings 1972–1977, C. Gordon (Ed.). New York: Pantheon.
Fussey, P. (2013). Contested topologies of UK counterterrorist surveillance: the rise and fall of project champion. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 6(3), 351–370.
Gerin Report. (2010). Parliamentary Commission to study the wearing of the Full Veil in France. http://www.assemble-nationale.fr/13/pdf/rap-info/i2262.pdf. Accessed 11 October 2016.
Guardian. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015. Accessed 16 April 2016.
Hernton, C. (1992). Sex and racism in America 1968. New York: Anchor.
Iglesias, D. (2014, December 9). Shock and anal probe: Reading between the redactions in the CIA torture report. Guardian.
Ishaq v. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. (2015, February 6). http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/decisions/en/108049/1/document.do. Accessed 2 April 2016.
Khalid, M. (2011). Gender, orientalism and representations of the ‘other’ in the war on terror. Global Change, Peace & Security, 23(1), 15–29.
Kundnani, A. (2007). The age of intolerance. London: Pluto.
Kundnani, A. (2014). The Muslims are coming. London: Verso.
Lewis, B. (1990). The roots of Muslim rage. Atlantic, 266, 3.
Luban, D. (2007). The torture lawyers of Washington. In D. Luban (Ed.), Legal ethics and human dignity (pp. 162–206). Cambridge, UK: CUP.
Lynch, O. (2013). British Muslim youth: radicalisation, terrorism and the construction of the ‘other’. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 6(2), 241–261.
Mancini, S. (2012). Patriarchy as the exclusive domain of the other: the veil controversy, false projection and cultural racism. International Journal of Constitutional Law, 10(2), 411–412.
Martin, T. (2014). Governing an unknowable future: the politics of Britain’s prevent policy. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 7(1), 62–78.
McClintock, A. (1995). Imperial leather: race, gender, and sexuality in the colonial contest. London: Routledge.
Moors, A. (2014). Face veiling in the Netherlands: public debates and women’s narratives. In E. Brems (Ed.), The experiences of face veil wearers in Europe and the law (pp. 19–42). Cambridge, UK: CUP.
Nussbaum, M. (2012). The new religious intolerance: overcoming the politics of fear in an anxious age. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
Okin, S. M. (1999). Is multiculturalism bad for women? In J. Cohen, M. Howard, M. Nussbaum (Eds.), Is multi culturalism bad for women (Part 1). Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press.
Oral Evidence. (2016, January 19). Home Affairs Committee: Countering extremism, HC 428, Home Affairs Select Committee on Countering Extremism. http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/home-affairs-committee/news-parliament-2015/160115-countering-extremism-evidence/ Accessed 2 April 2016.
Parekh, B. (2005). Rethinking multiculturalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Patel, P. (1997). Third wave feminism and black women’s activism. In H. S. Mirza (Ed.), Black British feminism (pp. 269–277). London: Routledge.
Recurso Casasion Num.: 4118/2011 Tribunal Supremo Votacion: 06/02/2013 Ponente Exc. mo. Sr. D Vicente Conde Martin de Hijas Secretaria Sr./Sra.:11mo. Sr. D. Jose Golderos Cebrian 06/02/2013.
Sahgal, G. & Yuval-Davis, N. (Eds.) (1992). Refusing holy orders. London: Virago.
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. London: Penguin.
Said, E. W. (1997). Covering Islam: how the media and the experts determine how we see the rest of the world. London: Vintage.
SAS v. France (2014). Application no. 43835/11, 1 July 2014, Grand Chamber.
Samia Belkacemi et al. v. Belgium (2012) (Application no. 145/2012 (6 December 2012) http://www.const.be/public/f/2012/2012-145f/p. Accessed 2 June 2016.
Southall Black Sisters. (1989). Two struggles challenging male violence and the police. In C. Dunhill (Ed.), The boys in blue (pp. 38–44). London: Virago.
Wilcox, L. B. (2011). Dying is not permitted: sovereignty, biopower, and force-feeding at Guantanamo Bay. In S. Biswas and Z. Zalloua (Eds.), Global re-visions: torture: power, democracy, and the human body (pp. 101–128). Washington, USA: University of Washington Press.
Yeğenoğlu, M. (1998). Colonial fantasies. Cambridge: CUP.
Yoder WesselHoeft, K. M. (2010). Gendered secularity: the feminine individual in the 2010 Gerin Report. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 31(3), 399–411.
Young, R. J. C. (2003). Postcolonialism: a very short introduction. Oxford: OUP.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Edwards, S.S.M. (2016). Targeting Muslims Through Women’s Dress: The Niqab and the Psychological War against Muslims. In: Scutt, J. (eds) Women, Law and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44938-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44938-8_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44937-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44938-8
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)