Here is a nice piece from HuffPo that tries to understand why Muslim women wear the hijab. I think it is still a bit essentializing, but overall is very good.
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Hijab in the UK
Via this Crooked Timber piece [sorry CT folks, can’t find your trackback ID] I found out about this case in the UK about a Muslim girl wanting to cover in school. I like Harry’s last paragraph: But the fact that the regulations might drive a girl into an educational situation in which her religious beliefs will not be challenged or tested seems to me a reason for bending, or revising the rules, not a consideration in their favour. The parents’ enthusiasm that their child should attend a state comprehensive school is to their credit. Telling them that they should school…
The New Orientalists
An upcoming article talks about lenses used to describe the lives of Muslim women (via Law and Humanities Blog): "Popular narratives produced from the west, particularly since 9/11, perpetuate negative stereotypes about Middle Eastern Muslim women. Native writers settled in the west also dish out heart-rending tales of women's oppression in fundamentalist Islamic societies, targeting a western audience long fed on tales of Islam's intolerance towards women. These 'New Orientalist' narratives, portraying Muslim women as hapless victims of Islamic fundamentalism, only serve to reinforce the stereotypes entrenched in popular western imagination. With Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran as a…
The Female Factor – What the Head Scarf Means, When Everyone Wears One – NYTimes.com
Wait, Muslim women have opinions about veiling? Who knew? [/sarcasm] The Female Factor – What the Head Scarf Means, When Everyone Wears One – NYTimes.com. To take off the veil, as some women have done, is to ask the candid question of what it means to be a Muslim woman today.