“Tis very easy to see they have more Liberty than we have, no Woman of what rank so ever being permitted to go in the streets without two muslims, one that covers her face all but her Eyes and another that hides the whole dress of her head and hangs halfway down her back …You may guess how effectually this disguises them, that there is no distinguishing the great Lady from her Slave, and ’tis impossible for the most jealous Husband to know his Wife when he meets her, and no Man dare either touch or follow a Woman in the Street. This perpetual Masquerade gives them entire Liberty of following their Inclinations without danger of Discovery.” (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,  Letters)

The anonymity of the face-veil has long been seen by Muslims and non-Muslims alike as a potential instrument of female subversion, as well as a means of subjugation.

While Lady Mary Montagu, visiting Constantinople in the eighteenth century, delighted in the “perpetual masquerade” of the face-veil, some Muslim scholars and clerics oppose the practice for the same reason that Montagu lauded it – its usefulness as a device for feminine mischief-making.

Recent debates in the West around banning the burqa and other forms of face-veiling from public spaces have centred on its status as a symbol of female submission. While Montagu had associated veiling with “Liberty,” the ABC’s  Virginia Haussegger articulated a popular contemporary view when she said that “this shroud of cloth thrown over women defies freedom. It is a symbol of control.”

Certainly, those who seek to impose the burqa generally wield it as a means of control, rather than an instrument of liberty. As Hausseger notes, the burqa came to represent the Taliban’s regulation of female mobility – regulation that had disastrous consequences for women’s employment, health, and education.

Yet even under Taliban rule, women deployed the burqa as a cover for engaging in forbidden activity. Most famously, a member of the Revolutionary Association for the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) used a burqa to conceal the video camera with which she filmed the public execution of a burqa-clad woman accused of murdering her husband.

Face-veiling, then, can be used as a means of resistance as well as control, transgression as well as submission.

Those who advocate a burqa ban often cite both these dimensions of veiling. At least some of the women who cover their faces have made an autonomous decision to do so, but according to figures ranging from Nicolas Sarzoy in France to Senator Cory Bernardi in Australia, this hardly matters. It is the wrong decision, no matter whether it’s chosen or imposed.

The pending French legislation reserves the heaviest penalties for men who force their womenfolk to wear the burqa, but also threatens to fine the women themselves. Cory Bernardi denies that “burqa-wearing” should be a matter of personal choice, as it places a “symbolic barrier” between the person wearing it and society at large.

Moreover, the face-veiling facilitates prohibited behaviour. Historically, the veil has been perceived as an aide to sexual transgression, although these days, suspicion tends to focus on the face-veil as a potential tool of suicide bombers and gangsters, rather than adulterers.

According to  Bernardi, “the burqa is not longer simply the symbol of female repression and Islamic culture, it is now emerging as the preferred disguise of bandits and ne’er do wells.”

Face-veiling, then is a weapon that can be used both by and against women (or men posing as women) as an act of surrender or aggression, empowerment or disempowerment.

Discussions about veiling have focused on a woman’s entitlement to participate in public life – but the dignity associated with such participation very much depends on the circumstances in which it occurs.

Public life is empowering when it allows women to achieve a fulfilling career and a private space into which they can retreat at the end of the day.

However, for many women, the right to privacy is a far more pressing concern. These are women who lead most of their lives in public, thanks to factors such as overcrowded living conditions or the need to earn a living through low-status jobs such as street-trading, begging, or prostitution.

In these circumstances, public exposure is experienced as an act of degradation rather than liberation, and veiling can provide a form of shelter.

Most of the (very few) Muslim women who veil their faces in societies such as Australia, France, or Belgium live in far less desperate circumstances. However, forced de-veiling is still unlikely to be experienced as liberation.

More likely, the women who are targeted by such laws will use the walls of their home as their veil – and their boundaries will contract rather than expand.

Shakira Hussein is the McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on Muslim women, gendered violence and racialised political discourse. She completed her PhD at the Australian National University and is a regular media contributor on issues including gender, multiculturalism and Islam.

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2011/01/10/3109706.htm?topic1=&topic2=