{"id":25845,"date":"2020-05-21T18:40:59","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T13:10:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kashmir.today\/will-mandatory-face-masks-end-the-burqa-bans-in-west\/"},"modified":"2020-05-21T18:40:59","modified_gmt":"2020-05-21T13:10:59","slug":"will-mandatory-face-masks-end-the-burqa-bans-in-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/?p=25845","title":{"rendered":"Will Mandatory Face Masks End the Burqa Bans in West?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As face coverings become the rule in public spaces, attitudes about head scarves may change.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

New York Times<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Women
Women in Paris after their release from a police station in 2011, when a ban on full-face coverings went into effect in France.
Credit: Gonzalo Fuentes\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While face coverings are fast becoming the norm to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, visible on city streets and public transportation everywhere, the global politics that surround them are more complicated than ever \u2014 a reflection not just of this current crisis, but also of broader values and stereotypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is especially true in the European Union, where the laws informally known as \u201cburqa bans\u201d that forbid full-face coverings, often on the basis of public safety, are being called into question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly the niqab, or full-face veil, has a whole set of new, more communal, associations; and various legal establishments are gearing up to challenge the current status quo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big contradiction,\u201d said Alia Jafar, a British schoolteacher in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, of the many face covering laws, which differ by country \u2014 especially because, to avoid charges of discrimination, the legal wording of most burqa bans is often framed more neutrally to apply to both men and women hiding their faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, inspired by the global surge of face coverings, Ms. Jafar posted a picture on social media, which she shared with The New York Times, of two women in the street during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Both wore wide-brimmed hats, pulled low, with scarfs tied across their faces. Only their eyes peeked through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt looks like the burqa,\u201d Ms. Jafar said, by telephone. The implication being that things are not that different today. In the street, many wear baseball caps with bandannas across their faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet this week France stood firm on its ban, which prohibits the wearing of clothing intended to hide the face in public spaces, despite the fact that masks are now being required on public transportation and in high schools. The French interior ministry confirmed to The Times that the face coverings rule of 2010 would stay in place. (A separate 2004 ban prohibits head scarves in public schools, referring to the religious neutrality of state institutions.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result is a Catch-22. Those who do not wear a mask can be fined, as can those who violate the face-covering law<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While some European countries, such as France, have exceptions to their bans that allow for face coverings for \u201chealth\u201d reasons, confusion remains about what counts as an acceptable coronavirus face mask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

France has offered no formal specification. A spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Interior said, in an email, \u201cit is common sense without legal definition.\u201d The situation is further complicated by a worldwide shortage of personal protective equipment (P.P.E.), which has many people turning to existing items found at home for coverings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When contacted, multiple human rights lawyers referred to the situation in France as \u201cridiculous.\u201d Yet it is not unique. Many European countries are now requiring the wearing of face masks despite their concurrent bans on face coverings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A florist in Paris preparing her flower shop for reopening while wearing a protective face mask.
Credit: Mohammed Badra\/EPA, via Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Belgium, a law passed in 2011 bans the wearing of clothing in the street that obscures one\u2019s identity. Yet now, because of the coronavirus, masks are compulsory on public transportation and \u201cstrongly encouraged\u201d in other places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Netherlands, citizens are now required to wear masks on trains and buses. Yet last year, a law came into effect banning face coverings on public transportation, in hospitals and in schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Austria, face masks are now compulsory in shops and on public transportation, yet in 2017 a bill was passed prohibiting face coverings in public spaces. There are similar situations in Denmark, Bulgaria and certain parts of Italy, Spain and Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFace masks are now seen as a social measure for protecting people, yet still niqabs are treated as an antisocial act,\u201d said Asima Majid, a British Muslim, who currently wears a hijab (the Muslim head scarf), but has worn a face veil in the past. She reached out to other Muslim women via WhatsApp to ask about their experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One, Maryam (she asked that only her first name be used), told The Times that she felt \u201cpersonally attacked\u201d by the bans. The spread of face coverings during the pandemic has made her feel \u201cvictorious.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere you go \u2014 you were objecting to this last year, and now you are joining in with me,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can see that the supposed security threat all of a sudden has ceased.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, the justifications for face-covering bans \u2014 that there is safety in being able to see people\u2019s faces \u2014 are now unsettled. When contacted, several lawyers in Europe argued that the current situation makes such burqa bans unenforceable. \u201cGiven circumstances we live in now, the law is de facto not applicable,\u201d said Rupert Wolff, the president of the Austrian Bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Satvinder Juss, a lawyer in London and a human rights expert, said that Europe\u2019s burqa wearers are now, legally, on much \u201cfirmer ground\u201d given the newly publicized health guidance around face coverings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Juss said that if a French police officer were to single out and challenge a woman for wearing a burqa or niqab in public, since she would potentially be surrounded by others wearing home-sourced face coverings, the officer would \u201cclearly be engaging in religious discrimination and sex discrimination,\u201d which is forbidden under the European Convention of Human Rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2014, Mr. Juss represented a 24-year-old French Muslim who appealed France\u2019s face-covering ban at the European Court of Human Rights in the case of S.A.S. v. France. While the court rejected France\u2019s arguments for the ban for public safety reasons (as well as the protection of human dignity and gender equality), it ultimately upheld the ban, accepting the vaguer aim of \u201cvivre ensemble\u201d (living together). This justification holds that a concealed face inhibits the right of citizens to easily socialize and coexist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that many people in France are rapidly becoming used to seeing people from all walks of life covering their noses and mouths, however, Mr. Juss believes the \u201cliving together\u201d justification no longer stands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belgium finds itself in a somewhat different position. Its face-coverings ban, which involves punishments of up to seven days in prison, makes no allowances for someone wearing a covering for health reasons, unlike most other European bans. The only exceptions are work, \u201cfestive events\u201d or other, overriding laws, like those related to motorcycle helmets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country is currently in a state of emergency, which has given the government special powers to pass decrees, and it has made wearing a mask (or an alternative, such as a scarf) mandatory on public transportation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, no such allowances exist for those wearing masks in the street or other public spaces \u2014 a legal situation that Isabelle Rorive, a founder of the Equality Law Clinic at the University of Brussels, described as \u201cbizarre.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A store in Rotterdam that sells protective face masks, currently being required in many countries to help curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Credit: Marco De Swart\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the Netherlands, Tom Zwart, a professor of cross-cultural law at Utrecht University, used the word \u201chypocrisy\u201d to characterize his country\u2019s situation. The Dutch government bans face coverings, except for \u201chealth and safety,\u201d but Mr. Zwart believes it is on shaky footing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMasks are not available,\u201d Mr. Zwart said. \u201cThe prime minister even said to make one yourself, use a shawl or something else. So, if you have a burqa or a face veil, why not use that to protect yourself and others against the coronavirus? You are doing exactly what you\u2019ve been told to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In simultaneously enforcing masks for safety while also banning other face coverings, he said, with a laugh, huge swaths of the population are currently unwittingly breaking the law despite following the government\u2019s new advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is \u201cvery ironic,\u201d said Karima Rahmani, the chair of group of more than 70 niqab-wearing women in the Netherlands called Blijf van mijn Niqaab (\u201cDon\u2019t touch my niqab\u201d), who believe the burqa ban has fostered divisions and oppresses women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The government, she said, was \u201ctalking about my niqab for years and years and making it a problem, coming with all kinds of arguments about how I\u2019m dangerous, and disconnected from society, but they are all wearing masks now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, she said, she has noticed a slight public shift as others cover their faces. \u201cSince the outbreak, there haven\u2019t been people swearing at me in the street,\u201d Ms. Rahmani said. \u201cAnd I was used to being sworn at every day. People normally look at me angrily, but I have seen a change in their eyes. I can only hope that after all of this we can come together, and speak about their experience with face veils being everywhere now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E. Tendayi Achiume, the United Nations special rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, said she hopes that as wearing masks for the sake of good will becomes normal, people will pause to think about how fear helped justify the passage of burqa bans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe political construction of the idea that face veils are something that are threatening to a nation, to a culture, to a society, has now been confronted,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lou Stoppard c.2020 The New York Times Company<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As face coverings become the rule in public spaces, attitudes about head scarves may change. New York Times While face coverings are fast becoming the norm to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, visible on city streets and public transportation everywhere, the global politics that surround them are more complicated than ever \u2014 a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18742,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kashmir.watch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}