The Niqab Revisited: The Pandemic

 

The pandemic has given rise to a new wave of interest in niqab wearing, a practice at the center of a string of public controversies. While it has previously been dissected from various cultural and religious perspectives (is it compatible with national cultures, security interests, secular sensibilities? Is it religious? Is it authentic? Is it absolutely necessary in Islam, or a sign of extremism?), 2020 is a year when the perceptions of the niqab became, perhaps, less outwardly antagonistic in the West.

Many media pieces discuss how increasingly mask-wearing societies are developing new modes of communication, and note the striking parallels between the logics of mask- and niqab-wearing. Realizing that women who wear the niqab have functioned and communicated in public with covered faces for a long time, commentators became interested in their insights. Niqab wearers’ insights, previously largely dismissed by the mainstream media, were suddenly rendered valuable, as they could inform new communication practices that have emerged during the pandemic. Simultaneously, countries that introduced legislation that banned face coverings pre-pandemic, and now instituted mask requirements, such as France, provoked widespread criticisms and scorn. Consider this: a woman who goes in public in France wearing a niqab risks a 125 euro fine; if she doesn’t cover her face, she risks a 150 euro fine. This inevitably gives rise to questions about the logic of such mutually exclusive decrees. For example, The New York Times ran an article headlined “Will mandatory face masks end the burqa bans?”

These swings of public opinion and paradoxes pertaining to the politics of niqab wearing indicate it continues to be a hot button issue. When the niqab was discussed in the British media on the heels of a 2013 legal ruling regarding wearing the niqab in the courtroom, only one newspaper printed an opinion piece written by a niqab wearer during that time, titled “I wear the niqab, let me speak on my own behalf.” Inspired by that appeal, I conducted a research project that involved interviewing 40 women who wore the niqab (my book communicating the findings from the project, Wearing the Niqab: Muslim Women in the UK and the US, will be published in February 2021 by Bloomsbury).