Suchergebnisse

The issue of whether Muslim women should be permitted to wear headscarves in public domains in various European nations is addressed. The author's experiences as a member of the Turkish parliament in 1999 are shared to illustrate the degree of public condemnation Muslim women encounter concerning their wearing of headscarves in public places. Various pieces of legislation enacted in certain European nations that prohibit Muslim women's headscarves in public places are then reviewed. It is subsequently asserted that Western feminists have misinterpreted the symbolic importance of the headscarf. Rather than construe headscarves as reminders of Muslim women's oppression in Islamic societies, it is stressed that such garments possess tremendous religious & cultural import for Muslim women. Indeed, Western feminists are discouraged from generalizing Muslim women's experiences & imposing their cultural values upon them. J. W. Parker

This paper is an attempt to analyze the transformation of the Islamic headscarf from being a private question of piety to a public question of freedom of religious expression. It argues that such a transformation constitutes not only the foundations of the emergence of the headscarf issue but also what we call headscarf-skepticism. The long-lasting headscarf issue has reached a point of deadlock once again due to the reactions of the secular sections of society to the recent efforts of the government to lift the headscarf ban. Different uses and meanings of the Islamic headscarf have reached an increased complexity since the foundation of the republic. It is argued that this complexity is due first to the elements of the history of the Turkish Republic, second to the emergence of new state-society relations, and third to the accelerated developments in the conflict between Islamists and secularists.

This paper is an attempt to analyze the transformation of the Islamic headscarf from being a private question of piety to a public question of freedom of religious expression. It argues that such a transformation constitutes not only the foundations of the emergence of the headscarf issue but also what we call headscarf-skepticism. The long-lasting headscarf issue has reached a point of deadlock once again due to the reactions of the secular sections of society to the recent efforts of the government to lift the headscarf ban. Different uses and meanings of the Islamic headscarf have reached an increased complexity since the foundation of the republic. It is argued that this complexity is due first to the elements of the history of the Turkish Republic, second to the emergence of new state-society relations, and third to the accelerated developments in the conflict between Islamists and secularists.