Why Would Anyone Wear the Niqab?
April 13, 2010 -- Little more than one hundred years ago, women did not have the right to vote anywhere on Earth. Over the course of the twentieth century, this measure of women’s second class status faded away, and women’s suffrage gradually became all but universal. Today, every frontier is open to women—including the final frontier, as at this very moment, a record four women are circling our planet aboard the International Space Station. Given the advancement of women’s rights, it is hard to understand why any woman living in a free country would voluntarily cover her face in public. Yet some tiny minority of Muslim women living in the West do choose to wear the niqab, a full face veil. A Quebec law proposed late last month, Bill 94, would interfere with that choice. It would entrust top government administrators with the power to forbid public sector employees, as well as those using government services, from covering their faces if “reasons of security, communication or identification warrant it.” The controversial proposal has touched off a fierce debate within and without the Canadian province on what it means to be modern, tolerant, and free.
Apr 15, 2010
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