National Security Archives - Page 2 of 2

Related to Ms. Hummel’s post below, a new book, The Headscarf Controversy: Secularism and Freedom of Religion (OUP 2012) by Hilal Elver (UC Santa Barbara) is scheduled to be released next month and treats subjects of great interest to CLR Forum readers from what I think is an unusually ambitious cross-cultural perspective. The publisher’s description follows.

Hilal Elver offers an in-depth study of the escalating controversy over the right of Muslim women to wear headscarves. Examining legal and political debates in Turkey, several European countries including France and Germany, and the United States, Elver shows the troubling exclusion of pious Muslim women from the public sphere in the name of secularism, democracy, liberalism, and women’s rights.

After evaluating political actions and court decisions from the national level of individual governments to the international sphere of the European Court of Human Rights, Elver concludes that judges and legislators are increasingly influenced by social pressures concerning immigration and multiculturalism, and by issues such as Islamophobia, the “war on terror,” and security concerns. She shows how these influences have resulted in a failure on the part of many Western governments to recognize and protect essential individual freedoms.

Employing a critical legal theory perspective to the headscarf controversy, Elver argues that law can be used to change underlying social conditions shaping the role of religion, and also the position of women in modern society. The Headscarf Controversy demonstrates how changes in law across nations can be used to restore state commitments to human rights.

Sahar F. Aziz (Texas Wesleyan University School of Law) has posted Terror(izing) the Muslim Veil. The abstract follows.

The September 11th terrorist attacks transformed the meaning of the Muslim headscarf. No longer is the crux of the debate whether the “veil” is used to oppress women by controlling their sexuality, and by extension, their personal freedoms and life choices. Rather, a Muslim headscarf “marks” her as a representative of the suspicious, inherently violent, and forever foreign “Terrorist other” in our midst.

In the post-9/11 era, Muslim women donning a headscarf find themselves trapped at the intersection of bias against Islam, the racialized Muslim, and women. In contrast to their male counterparts, Muslim women face unique forms of discrimination not adequately addressed by Muslim civil rights advocacy organizations, women’s rights organizations, or civil liberties Read more