The Niqab Controversy
Azar Nafisi, a professor at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, says that although she herself refuses to wear a veil, she feels that it is a matter of choice. She believes that the state should not tell people how to dress or how to relate to their religion.
This issue is playing out dramatically in France. Salon.com’s Broadsheet blog expounds story from the International Herald Tribune about Faiza Silmi, a Muslim woman who immigrated to France with her husband and has had 4 children there. Her application for citizenship was denied because she wears a niqab, the head to toe veil that some Muslim women choose to wear. In a country as adamantly secular as France, wearing any religious item is controversial. Her niqab, which Silmi wears by choice and not her husband’s insistence, has caused French immigration officials to declare that she hasn’t assimilated enough into their society. Strange that she’s assimilated enough to know that under French law she has a right to be an orthodox Muslim if she chooses to be.
