http://www.nytimes.com/
By JANE PERLEZ
Published: June 22, 2007
LONDON, June 16 - Increasingly, Muslim women in Britain take their
children
to school and run errands covered head to toe in flowing black gowns that
allow only a slit for their eyes. On a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park,
groups
of black-clad Muslim women relaxed on the green baize lawn among the
in-line
skaters and badminton players.
Their appearance, like little else, has unnerved other Britons, testing
the
limits of tolerance here and fueling the debate over the role of Muslims
in
British life.
Many veiled women say they are targets of abuse. Meanwhile, there are
growing efforts to place legal curbs on the full-face Muslim veil, known
as
the niqab.
There have been numerous examples in the past year. A lawyer dressed in a
niqab was told by an immigration judge that she could not represent a
client
because, he said, he could not hear her. A teacher wearing a niqab was
dismissed from her school. A student who was barred from wearing a niqab
took her case to the courts, and lost. In reaction, the British
educational
authorities are proposing a ban on the niqab in schools altogether.
A leading Labor Party politician, Jack Straw, scolded women last year for
coming to see him in his district office in the niqab. Prime Minister Tony
Blair has called the niqab a "mark of separation."
David Sexton, a columnist for The Evening Standard, wrote recently that
the
niqab was an affront and that Britain had been "too deferential."
"It says that all men are such brutes that if exposed to any more normally
clothed women, they cannot be trusted to behave - and that all women who
dress any more scantily like that are indecent," Mr. Sexton wrote. "It's
abusive, a walking rejection of all our freedoms."
Although the number of women wearing the niqab has increased in the past
several years, only a tiny percentage of women among Britain's two million
Muslims cover themselves completely. It is impossible to say how many
exactly.
Some who wear the niqab, particularly younger women who have taken it up
recently, concede that it is a frontal expression of Islamic identity,
which
they have embraced since Sept. 11, 2001, as a form of rebellion against
the
policies of the Blair government in Iraq, and at home.
"For me it is not just a piece of clothing, it's an act of faith, it's
solidarity," said a 24-year-old program scheduler at a broadcasting
company
in London, who would allow only her last name, al-Shaikh, to be printed,
saying she wanted to protect her privacy. "9/11 was a wake-up call for
young
Muslims," she said.
At times she receives rude comments, including, Ms. Shaikh said, from a
woman at her workplace who told her she had no right to be there. Ms.
Shaikh
says she plans to file a complaint.
When she is on the street, she often answers back. "A few weeks ago, a
lady
said, 'I think you look crazy.' I said, 'How dare you go around telling
people how to dress,' and walked off. Sometimes I feel I have to reply.
Islam does teach you that you must defend your religion."
She started experimenting with the niqab at Brunel University in West
London, a campus of intense Islamic activism. She hesitated at first
because
her mother saw it as a "form of extremism, which is understandable," she
said, adding that her mother has since come around.
Other Muslims find the practice objectionable, a step backward for a group
that is under pressure after the terrorist attack on London's transit
system
in July 2005.
"After the July 7 attacks, this is not the time to be antagonizing Britain
by presenting Muslims as something sinister," said Imran Ahmad, the author
of "Unimagined," an autobiography about growing up Muslim in Britain, and
the leader of British Muslims for Secular Democracy. "The veil is so
steeped
in subjugation, I find it so offensive someone would want to create such
barriers. It's retrograde."
Since South Asians started coming to Britain in large numbers in the
1960s,
a small group of usually older, undereducated women have worn the niqab.
It
was most often seen as a sign of subjugation.
Many more Muslim women wear the head scarf, called the hijab, covering all
or some of their hair. Unlike in France, Turkey and Tunisia, where
students
in state schools and civil servants are banned from covering their hair,
in
Britain, Muslim women can wear the head scarf, and indeed the niqab,
almost
anywhere, for now.
But that tolerance is slowly eroding. Even some who wear the niqab, like
Faatema Mayata, a 24-year-old psychology and religious studies teacher,
agreed there were limits.
"How can you teach when you are covering your face?" she said, sitting
with
a cup of tea in her living room in Blackburn, a northern English town, her
niqab tucked away because she was within the confines of her home.
She has worn the niqab since she was 12, when she was sent by her parents
to
an all-girl boarding school. The niqab was not, as many Britons seemed to
think, a sign of extremism, she said.
She condemned Britain's involvement in Iraq, and she described the
departure
of Mr. Blair at the end of this month as "good riddance of bad rubbish."
But, she added, "there are many Muslims like this sitting at home having
tea, and not taking any interest in jihad."
The niqab, to her, is about identity. "If I dressed in a Western way I
could
be a Hindu, I could be anything," she said. "This way I feel comfortable
in
my identity as a Muslim woman."
No one else in her family wears the niqab. Her husband, Ibrahim Boodi, a
social worker, was indifferent, she said. "If I took it off today, he
wouldn't care."
She drives her old Alfa Romeo to the supermarket, and other drivers take
no
exception, she said. But when she is walking she is often stopped, she
said.
"People ask, 'Why do you wear that?' A lot of people assume I'm oppressed,
that I don't speak English. I don't care. I've got a brain."
Some British commentators have complained that mosques encourage women to
wear the niqab, a practice they have said should be stopped.
At the East London Mosque, one of the largest mosques in the capital, the
chief imam, Abdul Qayyum, studied in Saudi Arabia and is trained in the
Wahhabi school of Islam. The community relations officer at the mosque,
Ehsan Abdullah Hannan, said the imam's daughter wore the niqab.
At Friday Prayer recently, the women were crowded into a small windowless
room upstairs, away from the main hall for the men.
A handful of young women wore the niqab, and they spoke effusively about
their reasons. "Wearing the niqab means you will get a good grade and go
to
paradise," said Hodo Muse, 19, a Somali woman. "Every day people are
giving
me dirty looks for wearing it, but when you wear something for God you get
a
boost."
One woman, Sajida Khaton, 24, interviewed as she sat discreetly in a Pizza
Hut, said she did not wear the veil on the subway, a precaution her
husband
encourages for safety reasons. Sometimes, she said, she gets a kick out of
the mocking.
" 'All right gorgeous,' " she said she had heard men say as she walked
along
the street. "I feel empowered," she said. "They'd like to see, and they
can't."
She often comes to the neighborhood restaurant along busy Whitechapel Road
in East London for a slice or two, a habit, she said, that shows that even
veiled women are well integrated into Britain's daily life.
"I'm in Pizza Hut with my son," said Ms. Khaton, nodding at her 4-year-old
and speaking in a soft East London accent that bore no hint of her
Bangladeshi heritage. "I was born here, I've never been to Bangladesh. I
certainly don't feel Bangladeshi. So when they say, 'Go back home,' where
should I go?"
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