The Experiences of Face Veil Wearers in Europe and the Law.

• Author: Hyokki, Linda
• Position: Book review

The Experiences of Face Veil Wearers in Europe and the Law

Edited by Eva Brems

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 307 pages, [pounds sterling]67, ISBN: 9781107058309

The Islamic face veil is now banned in public spaces by several European countries; Austria being the last country to pass a bill for a general ban in March 2017 and Germany having decided for a partial ban for selected professions in April 2017. However, in reality many know very little about this religious practice that is marginal in numbers, yet has become an obsession of European domestic politics, embedded in narratives of security threat and gender equality--mostly formulated by outsider perspectives. The book under review, edited by Eva Brems, offers therefore a timely and significant contribution to the topic and, more generally, to the body of literature on Muslims and Islam in Europe. The Experiences of Face Veil Wearers in Europe and the Law consists of 14 chapters and is methodologically divided into two parts. The first part contains studies based on empirical research from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark and the UK, and offers valuable insight into the everyday lives, experiences and motives of Muslim women opting for the face veil (niqab) as a religious practice. The contributions in the second part of the book give their support to the subaltern voices emerging from Part I by analyzing the empirical material through different theoretical approaches.

The articles of this volume show how remarkably fallacious the arguments of the politicians and others advocating the criminalization of the niqab are. For instance, Annelies Moors argues in chapter two, that contrary to outsider assumptions about the presence of niqabis negatively affecting societal life, for interactions in the public space, communication is not a problem as the women wearing the face veil are very self-initiating in making contact with their fellow citizens and even consciously adjust their behavior to ensure a positive image of themselves. However, successful contacts are dependent on the goodwill of both sides, as is established also by Brems et al. in chapter four. Their research shows that sometimes the Belgian women wearing the niqab wish nothing more than to be "treated like anyone else," such as having a door opened when moving with a baby buggy (p. 100). However, the negative images spread in the media make it difficult to overcome the false knowledge that is also...