The appearance of a small number of students wearing the face-veil or niqab at two unrelated universities, The American University in Cairo and Leiden University, led to official bans on face... Show moreThe appearance of a small number of students wearing the face-veil or niqab at two unrelated universities, The American University in Cairo and Leiden University, led to official bans on face covering. The bans were justified on remarkably similar grounds, at the core of which were arguments that face covering is inherently incompatible with principles and practices of liberal education. Yet the prohibition of face veiling speaks t o issues far larger than pedagogy in liberal educational settings; it gets to the core of critical issues relating to integration, liberalism and the possibly uneasy place of Islam in it all. Show less
Copious studies on Islamic resurgence throughout the Muslim world deal with new veiling, a socio-religious practice which has been explained as a form of both resistance and submission to... Show moreCopious studies on Islamic resurgence throughout the Muslim world deal with new veiling, a socio-religious practice which has been explained as a form of both resistance and submission to patriarchy, an assertion of cultural authenticity, a reaction against Western imperialism and local secular regimes, a genuine desire by women to live more piously, and a practice born out of economic necessity. While there is a degree of plausibility in each of these theories, especially when taken in tandem, another dimension should be added to the debate on new veiling, and that is a subtle and seemingly growing tendency among many urban Egyptian women towards what can be called 'downveiling'. Show less
