The Headscarf
Controversy: Secularism and Freedom of Religion
Hilal Elver
Abstract
This book deals with an ongoing
controversy of the Muslim women’s headscarf from the legal and sociological
perspective in democratic countries. It depicts headscarf controversy and
argues with the interaction of religion/secularism, law/politics,
multiculturalism, and gender politics. In recent years, there have been major
public policy debates, court decisions and laws about the acceptability of
Islamic practices, specifically women and girls wearing a headscarf or “hijab”.
These has produced concerns in the West and to some extend Muslim secular
countries, about how to accept, accommodate, ... More
This book deals with an ongoing controversy of the Muslim
women’s headscarf from the legal and sociological perspective in democratic
countries. It depicts headscarf controversy and argues with the interaction of
religion/secularism, law/politics, multiculturalism, and gender politics. In
recent years, there have been major public policy debates, court decisions and
laws about the acceptability of Islamic practices, specifically women and girls
wearing a headscarf or “hijab”. These has produced concerns in the West and to
some extend Muslim secular countries, about how to accept, accommodate, and
tolerate the Muslim women’s forms of religious observance. It is an
interdisciplinary study that compares the legal, sociological and political
debates on this issue particularly in Turkey
and in various European countries (such as France
and Germany), and parallel practices
and patterns in the United States.
At first glance, the main preoccupation of all these countries is to strike the
proper balance between liberal constitutional principles and the accommodation
of Islamic practices. Beyond this, there are unacknowledged desires and
political ambitions that skilfully manipulated policy pertaining to headscarf
issue. This book calls attention to these hidden preoccupations and explores
the exclusion of pious Muslim women from the public sphere in the name of human
rights, women's rights, equality, secularism, democracy, and liberalism. The
book relies on comparative law method, and by so doing highlights some aspects
of the headscarf debate that are ignored if scholarship is directed only at a
single country.
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