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Email info@uluisoc.com to register for free to listen to the next in our History Webinars. This time the focus is on the 1st Caliph in the history of Islam - Abu Bakr (R) - and the incident that would define his Caliphate. Prepare yourselves for the Garden of Death.

Venue: www.uluisoc.com |  Date: Sun. 7th Feb  |  Time: 7:45 - 8:30pm |  Price: Free 

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ULU ISoc invites you to our February Monthly Circle on the topical issue if Islam & Romance. Valentines Day is around the corner & we'd like to take our own spin on things from an Islamic angle.

Venue: GKT, London Bridge Station | Date: 10th Feb. | Time: 2pm | Price: Free

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Read the latest issue of ISocNews with thought provoking articles on targetting ISocs and political participation as well as comedy and a competition! Click on the poster below.

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So the tide is rapidly turning against the Niqab in Europe. Muslims for the most part are sitting back and hedging their bets. They fall into four main camps:

Camp 1: The liberal fundamentalists

These Muslims hate Islam and anything connected with it. They see any form of hijaab, beard, or Muslim symbolism as a threat to their hopes for seamlessly integrating with the Western world and eventually becoming enlightened Europeans. They think the Niqab ban does not go far enough.

Read on...

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After the previously unthinkable action of the Niqab being banned in Al Azhar itself, Western governments questioned why they should be any more tolerant to the Niqab than Egypt? After all, Turkey - the former seat of the Caliphate - had been banning the hijaab for decades. Tunisia was equally as intolerant of women covering up. So why should Western Europe be the one place where Islam could be practised freely?... Hmmm, they do have a point there.

Berlusconi was the first to jump on this opportunity. Normally the best way to deflect from all the stories about philandering and orgies would not be to attack anyone trying to be modest, but when it comes to the Niqab - normality does not apply.

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By now, the Niqab Wars were in full swing and Muslims were bracing themselves for a new round of bans, headlines and diatribes being hurled at them by the Western world and their liberal Muslim sympathizers. What they didn't expect was for the Sheikh of Al Azhar to join in. Clearly, they hadn't been paying attention.

Over the years, Muslims have learnt to have a love-hate relationship with Al Azhar. Al Azhar is widely respected by many Muslims as a centre for the transmission of knowledge. However, Muslims know it is for all intents and purposes a department of the Egyptian government, they know that the intellectual standards there have dropped to an all time low and they know that for many issues they just cannot take everything that comes out of there seriously - still, this third rate institution is the premier University in the Islamic world!

Tantawi (the current Sheikh of Al Azhar) was meeting female students at the University when his eyes met a sight that made his blood boil. Was it the sight of a despot ruling over his people for decades? Was it the sight of a Zionist leader who was directly involved in attacking Palestinians? No - he shakes the hands of those guys. It was something far, far worse... a woman in Niqab. Even though they had been present in the city of Cairo and his University since they were founded, apparently a millenia of conditioning was not enough and Tantawi flew into a rage demanding that the student remove her Niqab. When she refused he insulted her calling the Niqab "a tradition" directly negating centuries of scholarly opinion from his own predecessors. After the 16 year old girl relented he looked at her face and was reported to have said, "Hmph, what would you have done if you were actually pretty?"

Of course publicly humiliating a 16 year old girl and unilaterally throwing out a legitimate viewpoint in Islamic law was not enough. He went on to try and enact a ban of the Niqab on Al Azhar campuses. The Egyptian ministries decided that if Niqab wasn't good enough for Al Azhar, then why should it be accepted anywhere else so they decided to go about the vital task of forbidding it in all educational institutions - and that my dear brothers and sisters is how a Niqab ban is born.

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After 9/11 governments rushed to reassure Muslims that they were not under attack... only madrasas, Islamic governance, Islamic Schools, Islamic charities, Islamic organisations, Islamic symbols, Islamic preachers, Islamic canonical law and a few Muslim countries were under attack. This "we're-not-attacking-you-but-we-really-are" tactic extended to the Niqab.

Everytime "evil" Muslims were mentioned the imagery of the Niqab (or Burqa) was not far behind. Within a short period of time the public were conditioned to seeing the Niqab as not something "different" but something "dangerous." The arguments ranged from the pseudo-intellectual (the Niqab as a barrier to multiculturalism) to the ridiculous (women wearing Burqas have been accused of kidnapping Maddy McCann.)

It was on the background of this climate of hate and intolerance that a young mother was stabbed to death in Germany. Her crime? Wearing the headscarf. A man had hurled abuse at her in the street and threatened her. Not accepting that she should be treated this way simply due to her faith, she took him to court. (Read on...)

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A few years ago, a failing politician who used to jet around the globe meeting world leaders was stuck in his dreary constituency desperately trying to figure out how he could catapult himself back into the limelight. And then it came to him like manna from heaven - why not attack the absolute weakest section of society - a minority (niqabis) of a minority (of those who wear hijaab) of a minority (Muslim women) of a minority (Muslims)?

Jack Straw decided that the sizeable Muslim population of his Blackburn constituency should be repaid for their loyalty to him by denying the right of any lady covering her face to see him. He felt that despite someone sitting directly in front of him and speaking to him, he needed to physically see someone's face before the conversation became "face-to-face." He went further saying that the simple face veil had implications for community cohesion and he would rather no one wore it.

Whilst a few Muslim organisations were indignant at his views, some came out and supported him. The Muslim Education Centre (a liberal secular organisation in Oxford) supported him and extended this support to banning of Niqabs in school. After a few court actions, schools now have the right to deny an education to any Muslim girl who refuses to remove her face veil. The message is clear - if you do not conform we will make sure that we cut you off from an education, a career, a future.

What was shocking to many was the way in which the supposedly liberal and tolerant society they lived in so easily upheld such hateful views. Those who wore the Niqab or Burqa were continually presented as an evil that threatened to undermine anything and everything. The debate raged but it was one-sided. People could sympathise with the right of serial murderers not to be executed or the right of certain birds to have their environment preserved against global warming, but they could not - would not - accept the right of a Muslim woman to cover her face. It would seem that Western freedom comes with caveats.

Note: The picture in this post is reproduced from Spirit21 blog

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Since the earliest days of Islam, the Niqaab (face veil) has been prevalent in almost all Muslim societies. Even browsing documentary footage from as late as the 1940's show that a large proportion of Muslim women ventured out of their house with their face covered.

It was partially the Niqaab and the entire system of Purdah that made Muslim women inaccessible to Western colonialists - and hence a source of mystery and wonder. However, over the past century there has been a concerted effort from within and outside Muslim societies to present covering as a throw back to the dark ages. This has met with varying degrees of success.

Despite there not being a common consensus amongst Muslim scholars about whether it was an obligation to cover the face or not, there was no doubt that doing so was not outside the boundaries of Islam - until recently. Now, Muslim and Non-Muslims pontificate on the Niqab and what it means to be "different" in the modern world.

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