The Politics of the Veil

The Politics of the Veil PDF Author: Joan Wallach Scott
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691147981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In 2004, the French government instituted a ban on the wearing of "conspicuous signs" of religious affiliation in public schools. Though the ban applies to everyone, it is aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves. Proponents of the law insist it upholds France's values of secular liberalism and regard the headscarf as symbolic of Islam's resistance to modernity. The Politics of the Veil is an explosive refutation of this view, one that bears important implications for us all. Joan Wallach Scott, the renowned pioneer of gender studies, argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens. She examines the long history of racism behind the law as well as the ideological barriers thrown up against Muslim assimilation. She emphasizes the conflicting approaches to sexuality that lie at the heart of the debate--how French supporters of the ban view sexual openness as the standard for normalcy, emancipation, and individuality, and the sexual modesty implicit in the headscarf as proof that Muslims can never become fully French. Scott maintains that the law, far from reconciling religious and ethnic differences, only exacerbates them. She shows how the insistence on homogeneity is no longer feasible for France--or the West in general--and how it creates the very "clash of civilizations" said to be at the root of these tensions. The Politics of the Veil calls for a new vision of community where common ground is found amid our differences, and where the embracing of diversity--not its suppression--is recognized as the best path to social harmony.

The Politics of the Veil

The Politics of the Veil PDF Author: Joan Wallach Scott
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691147981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In 2004, the French government instituted a ban on the wearing of "conspicuous signs" of religious affiliation in public schools. Though the ban applies to everyone, it is aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves. Proponents of the law insist it upholds France's values of secular liberalism and regard the headscarf as symbolic of Islam's resistance to modernity. The Politics of the Veil is an explosive refutation of this view, one that bears important implications for us all. Joan Wallach Scott, the renowned pioneer of gender studies, argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens. She examines the long history of racism behind the law as well as the ideological barriers thrown up against Muslim assimilation. She emphasizes the conflicting approaches to sexuality that lie at the heart of the debate--how French supporters of the ban view sexual openness as the standard for normalcy, emancipation, and individuality, and the sexual modesty implicit in the headscarf as proof that Muslims can never become fully French. Scott maintains that the law, far from reconciling religious and ethnic differences, only exacerbates them. She shows how the insistence on homogeneity is no longer feasible for France--or the West in general--and how it creates the very "clash of civilizations" said to be at the root of these tensions. The Politics of the Veil calls for a new vision of community where common ground is found amid our differences, and where the embracing of diversity--not its suppression--is recognized as the best path to social harmony.

Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling and Reveiling

Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling and Reveiling PDF Author: Hamideh Sedghi
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511296574
Category : SOCIAL SCIENCE
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
Why were urban women veiled in the early 1900s, unveiled from 1936 to 1979, and reveiled after the 1979 revolution? This question forms the basis of Hamideh Sedghi's original and unprecedented contribution to politics and Middle Eastern studies. Using primary and secondary sources, Sedghi offers new knowledge on women's agency in relation to state power. In this rigorous analysis she places contention over women at the centre of the political struggle between secular and religious forces and demonstrates that control over women's identities, sexuality, and labor has been central to the consolidation of state power. Sedghi links politics and culture with economics to present an integrated analysis of the private and public lives of different classes of women and their modes of resistance to state power.

The Veil

The Veil PDF Author: Jennifer Heath
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520250400
Category : Veils
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
Veiling is a globally polarizing issue, a locus for the struggle between Islam and the West and between contemporary and traditional interpretations of Islam. This book examines the vastly misunderstood and multi-layered world of the veil. It explores and analyzes the cultures, politics, and histories of veiling.

Politics, Religion and Gender

Politics, Religion and Gender PDF Author: Sieglinde Rosenberger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136589317
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Heated debates about Muslim women's veiling practices have regularly attracted the attention of European policymakers over the last decade. The headscarf has been both vehemently contested by national and/or regional governments, political parties and public intellectuals and passionately defended by veil wearing women and their supporters. Systematically applying a comparative perspective, this book addresses the question of why the headscarf tantalises and causes such controversy over issues about religious pluralism, secularism, neutrality of the state, gender oppression, citizenship, migration, and multiculturalism. Seeking also to establish why the issue has become part of the disciplinary practices of some European countries but not of others, this work brings together an important collection of interpretative research regarding the current debates on the veil in Europe, offering an interdisciplinary scope and European-wide setting. Brought together through a common research methodology, the contributors focus on the different religious, political and cultural meanings of the veiling issue across eight countries and develop a comparative explanation of veiling regimes. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of religion & politics, gender studies and multiculturalism.

The Political Psychology of the Veil

The Political Psychology of the Veil PDF Author: Sahar Ghumkhor
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030320618
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Veiled women in the West appear menacing. Their visible invisibility is a cause of obsession. What is beneath the veil more than a woman? This book investigates the preoccupation with the veiled body through the imaging and imagining of Muslim women. It examines the relationship between the body and knowledge through the politics of freedom as grounded in a ‘natural’ body, in the index of flesh. The impulse to unveil is more than a desire to free the Muslim woman. What lies at the heart of the fantasy of saving the Muslim woman is the West’s desire to save itself. The preoccupation with the veiled woman is a defense that preserves neither the object of orientalism nor the difference embodied in women’s bodies, but inversely, insists on the corporeal boundaries of the West’s mode of knowing and truth-making. The book contends that the imagination of unveiling restores the West’s sense of its own power and enables it to intrude where it is ‘other’ – thus making it the centre and the agent by promising universal freedom, all the while stifling the question of what freedom is.

What is Veiling?

What is Veiling? PDF Author: Sahar Amer
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748696849
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
In an environment of increasing conservatism, in a world where a woman's right to wear the headscarf has become a touchstone for issues of all sorts, and at a time when racial and religious profiling has become commonplace, it is our political and social

The Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling

The Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling PDF Author: Anna-Mari Almila
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317041143
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Veils and veiling are controversial topics in social and political life, generating debates across the world. The veil is enmeshed within a complex web of relations encompassing politics, religion and gender, and conflicts over the nature of power, legitimacy, belief, freedom, agency and emancipation. In recent years, the veil has become both a potent and unsettling symbol and a rallying-point for discourse and rhetoric concerning women, Islam and the nature of politics. Early studies in gender, doctrine and politics of veiling appeared in the 1970s following the Islamic revival and ’re-veiling’ trends that were dramatically expressed by 1979’s Iranian Islamic revolution. In the 1990s, research focussed on the development of both an ’Islamic culture industry’ and greater urban middle class consumption of ’Islamic’ garments and dress styles across the Islamic world. In the last decade academics have studied Islamic fashion and marketing, the political role of the headscarf, the veiling of other religious groups such as Jews and Christians, and secular forms of modest dress. Using work from contributors across a range of disciplinary backgrounds and locations, this book brings together these research strands to form the most comprehensive book ever conceived on this topic. As such, this handbook will be of interest to scholars and students of fashion, gender studies, religious studies, politics and sociology.

Negotiating Women's Veiling

Negotiating Women's Veiling PDF Author: Dewi Candraningrum
Publisher:
ISBN: 9786167571157
Category : Clothing and dress
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description


Books-In-Brief: Rethinking Muslim Women & The Veil

Books-In-Brief: Rethinking Muslim Women & The Veil PDF Author: Katherine Bullock
Publisher: International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)
ISBN: 1565643585
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
Until now the bulk of the literature about the veil has been written by outsiders who do not themselves veil. This literature often assumes a condescending tone about veiled women, assuming that they are making uninformed decisions choices about veiling makes them subservient to a patriarchal culture and religion. “Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil” offers an alternative viewpoint, based on the thoughts and experiences of Muslim women themselves. This is the first time a clear and concise book-length argument has been made for the compatibility between veiling and modernity. Katherine Bullock uncovers positive aspects of the veil that are frequently not perceived by outsiders. “Rethinking Muslim Women and the Veil” looks at the colonial roots of the negative Western stereotype of the veil. It presents interviews with Muslim women to discover their thoughts and experiences with the veil in Canada. The book also offers a positive theory of veiling. The author argues that in consumer capitalist cultures, women can find wearing the veil a liberation from the stifling beauty game that promotes unsafe and unhealthy ideal body images for women. This book also includes an extensive bibliography on topics related to Muslim women and the veil.

Un-Veiling Dichotomies

Un-Veiling Dichotomies PDF Author: Giorgia Baldi
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030792978
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
This book analyzes the implication of secular/liberal values in Western and human rights law and its impact on Muslim women. It offers an innovative reading of the tension between the religious and secular spheres. The author does not view the two as binary opposites. Rather, she believes they are twin categories that define specific forms of lives as well as a specific notion of womanhood. This divergence from the usual dichotomy opens the doors for a reinterpretation of secularism in contemporary Europe. This method also helps readers to view the study of religion vs. secularism in a new light. It allows for a better understanding of the challenges that contemporary Europe now faces regarding the accommodation of different religious identities. For instance, one entire section of the book concerns the practice of veiling and explores the contentious headscarf debate. It features case studies from Germany, France, and the UK. In addition, the analysis combines a wide range of disciplines and employs an integrated, comparative, and inter-disciplinary approach. The author successfully brings together arguments from different fields with a comparative legal and political analysis of Western and Islamic law and politics. This innovative study appeals to students and researchers while offering an important contribution to the debate over the role of religion in contemporary secular Europe and its impact on women’s rights and gender equality.