Joan W. Scott

No matter how many attempts there have been to clarify the significance of the Islamic veil it remains a hotly contested issue. In Western civilizational discourse it is taken to be a symbol of women’s oppression and, beyond that, of Islam’s inability to grant gender equality and so of its followers’ unsuitability for membership in the countries of secular/Christian Europe. In an ironic transformation of its literal meaning as a curtain or screen to preserve modesty by segregating the sexes, the hijab has become, for its critics, the flag of an Islamist insurgency.