Region 
 

Colombo

New Realities of Veil Ban

Sri Lanka and other countries must treat the necessity of wearing masks in
COVID-19 as an opportunity to re-tune their policies of banning the veil.

By Dr M Ali Hamza | August 2020

Even in the new millennium, certain parts of the globe are reluctant to allow Muslim women to cover their faces. The rationale behind the veil ban is ensuring safety of others, retaliating to security threats, hurdles in identifying terrorists and discouraging those dreadful elements who mostly claim to be linked with Muslim communities. Indeed the advancement in technology has offered us facilities like closed-circuit television (CCTV) and face veils appear to negate the facility. Look into the ironical shift of happenings in 2020, when covering the face with masks has been made compulsory to ensure safety for mankind. Whether masks or no masks, the apparent purpose is to guarantee security.However, the matter has been taken to another level and is cooked-up as religious discrimination.

What is the idea of the veil and what denies the right of wearing a veil? Hijab is part of a woman’s dress and is particularly associated with Muslim women. Most Islamic legal systems explain such clothing as covering everything excluding the face and hands up to the wrists, whereas some believe that the Quran itself does not order that women wear hijab. So hijab is not a problem to any country but burqa and niqab are. Burqa is an encasing outer garment that covers the body and the face of women and niqab is also a garment that covers the face. The burqa and other types of face veils have been testified since pre-Islamic times. Many Jews, Christians, and women of other faiths considered covering their faces as a symbol of piety. Jains in India take it to the next level and cover their faces regardless of gender.

Many Islamic scholars do not regard covering the face as a religious requirement. However, some scholars, particularly those belonging to the Salafi school of thought, view face veils as obligatory for women, particularly in the presence of non-related males. In early Islamic jurisprudence, when the veil was discussed beyond prayer requirements, it was generally considered an issue of social status and physical safety, rather than one of religious nature. Later, during the medieval period, Islamic jurists began to give more consideration to the idea of “awrah” (intimate parts) and the question of whether women should cover their faces.

The opinions of the mainstream and the majority which surfaced during those times and were predominant among Maliki and Hanafi jurists, professed that women cover everything except their faces in public. On the contrary, most Hanbali and Shafi jurists of the same era viewed a woman’s face to be among the “awrah”, concluding that it should be concealed, except for the eyes. Back in 1328, the Hanbali jurist Ibn Taymiyyah was a persuasive advocate of the latter view and the Hanafi scholar Burhan al-Din al-Marghinani in 1197, stressed that it was particularly important for a woman to leave her face and hands uncovered during everyday business dealing with men. In the Shia/Jafaria school of fiqh, covering the face is not obligatory. Thus, there is a difference of opinion on this question within the Islamic legal schools. In this context, it will be inappropriate to call the niqab, an unanimously accepted Islamic religious obligation and, if not followed, the faith is in shambles.

It is quite clear that hijab is not a matter of concern to anyone, but niqab or face covering is banned by more than 15 countries in Oceanic, Asia, Africa and Europe. Some Muslim countries have also banned the niqab while some have discouraged it through the argument that niqab is not a religious binding. For instance, on October 8, 2009, Egypt’s school of Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar, banned the wearing of the niqab in classrooms and dormitories of all its affiliate schools and educational institututions.

In the summer of 2010, students wearing the niqab were prohibited from registering for university classes in Syria. In 2017 the government of Tajikistan passed a law requiring people to stick to traditional national clothes and culture; an attempt to prevent women from wearing Islamic clothing, in particular the style of headscarf wrapped under the chin, in contrast to the traditional Tajik headscarf tied behind the head. In 2015, the constitutional Council of Islamic Ideology in Pakistan issued the fatwa that women are not required to wear niqab or cover their hands or feet under Shariah.

More than 15 countries have banned face covering through their democratic, majority voting systems to ensure safety of their citizens. Bombings by an Islamic state-affiliated group, as claimed, killed more than 250 people in Sri Lanka’s capital in April 2019. Subsequently, the Sri Lankan government banned the covering of the face because it hindered the identification of individuals in a way that it threatened national security. Why was then so much hue and cry? At the same time, countries that have banned face veils or plan to, must recognize the historical fact in which 20 million deaths in WWI, 85 million causalities in WWII, 1.3 million deaths in north and south Vietnam, .2 million civilian fatalities in Syria,and more than 150,000 deaths in Sri Lankan Civil War were not caused by people who value covering faces to maintain the modesty of their women.

Yes, if banning the face veil instigates a sense of insecurity or discrimination among Muslim women; who prefer to wear a niqab, the COVID-19 has provided a chance for rethinking and instead of being nosy in the everyday life of an individual, it is recommended to reevaluate the security mechanism. The buzz word “innovation” has to be applied to such old-fashioned and pathetic methods of controlling and scrutinizing people of different faiths. Sri Lanka and other countries must treat the necessity of wearing masks in COVID-19 as an opportunity to re-tune their policies of banning the veil.

Read More