Sarah Sayeed and Matthew Weiner write about the implications of a recent court case in Toronto, in which a Muslim woman was ordered to remove her face veil while giving testimony in a sexual assault trial:
While all can agree that identity, tolerance and religious freedom are important, advocates for the face veil emphasize the upholding of freedom while opponents focus on the face veil, or niqab, as a challenge to collective identity. Such tension between public expression of religion and collective identity is not new. It has even gone on for centuries in Muslim countries, where religious minorities feel the tension between acceptance and their need to adapt, in varying degrees, to a Muslim majority worldview. There is also a debate within Muslim communities about whether wearing the niqab is a religious requirement.
What seems problematic in the current debate, whether in Toronto or Milan, is the implication that Europeans and North Americans are willing to tolerate differences, but only up to a limit. Some differences seem too threatening for them to consider seriously. They seem to think some differences should be made invisible. Thus, and perhaps inadvertently, the opponents of the niqab—who see themselves as the defenders of collective identity—call into question another value and practice that is central to Western democracy: open dialogue in the public sphere.
Read the full post here.