Behind the Veil: A Critical Analysis of European Veiling Laws.

• Author: Bahcecik, Serif Onur
• Position: Book review

Behind the Veil: A Critical Analysis of European Veiling Laws (1)

By Neville Cox

Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019, 279 pages, $135,00, ISBN: 9781788970846

The religious rights of Muslims living in Europe is increasingly attracting the attention of scholars from various disciplines. Behind the Veil deepens the literature with its specific focus on the question of veiling and the way it is approached in European legislation and through the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The main argument of the book is that while the "primary reason for voluntarily wearing" the veil is "religious" (p. 35). European laws ban face veils by citing concerns about terrorism and threats against gender equality, open society and the rights of others. Cox emphasizes that these laws and their justifications are not consistent with the European human rights regime. He further "speculates" that the real reasons (hence the title of the book) for the ban are an attempt to respond to the ideological challenge of Islam and to reaffirm Europe's moral high ground in a time of anxiety.

European anti-veiling laws and the Court's approval of this legislation are based on the erroneous assumption that the veil has a single inherent meaning. After an expert but brief discussion of the place of the veil in Islamic law and the different rationales for veiling, Cox points out that while the question of whether specific forms of veiling are required by Islamic law cannot be conclusively answered, evidence shows that women wear the veil with religious motivations. This is a significant point for Cox since it demonstrates the "non-choice" (p. 34) that Muslim women in Europe are facing. When confronted with European anti-veiling laws, Muslim women have to make a choice between obeying what they see as the command of God and being excluded from education, employment and sometimes the entire public sphere. This means that not only are anti-veiling laws significantly different from other instances of sartorial regulation, but also that these laws lead Muslims into a fundamental dilemma. This point loses some of its rigor in places where the author relies on analogies in his argumentation. For instance, in Chapter 5 when Cox discusses whether veiling is a consequence of community pressure, he argues that some Muslim women may have been veiling due to societal influences just as European women adopt fashionable items through a similar mechanism. This...