Back in 2004 his predecessor President Jacques Chirac had sought legislation to ban all conspicuous religious signs such as Islamic head scarves, Jewish skull caps and extra large Christian crosses worn by students in state schools and other public institutions. This year a cross-party committee of French parliamentarians referred to the burqa as 'a veritable challenge' to the republic. Its recommendations bar burqa wearing women from using public services like buses, hospitals and schools, but fallshort of a total ban on wearing the burqa in public. One MP, though unsuccessfully, called for a fine of 750 Euros (about $800) on anybody wearing a full veil anywhere outside the home or  a private dwelling.

Is all this furore over just about 2,000 burqa wearing women in a Muslim population of about five million in all of France? No, for the French it is a matter of secular principles and a constitution which must not be allowed to be diluted. It also means no grant of French citizenship to anybody wearing a veil, according to an incoming new decree. In neighbouring Switzerland, people recently voted in a referendum to ban any more tall minarets for mosques.

But in much of Asia there is no such furore. Indian secularism, for instance, accommodates all symbols and practices without imposing restrictions on any one. It is inclusive rather than exclusive, within limits. The Indian Supreme Court, for instance, recently agreed with the Election Commission's rejection of a full burqa wearing woman's right to vote without allowing her photograph to be taken for identification purposes. No photo identity, no vote, said the Election Commission and, without passing any final judgement, the Supreme Court upheld the Election Commission's view that the burqa or veil was a mere custom and that it could not be considered an integral or essential part of Islam.

The burqa — in its varying length and body cover — has long been a part of the Muslim cultural and social scene in parts of the Indian sub-continent, Arabia and elsewhere. I saw it as a child in pre-partition Muslim majority Punjab as I see it now in Pakistan's Punjab, parts of India, Afro-Asia and even Europe. It was the head-to-toe wear or uniform of a microscopic minority among Muslim women. For the majority of women everywhere it was — and is — not feasible to wear it as it interferes with working life at home or outside. In fact, it was — and is — more in prominence on special occasions like shopping trips, visits to festivals and mosques where Maulvis (priests) demand strict observance of rituals.

Very largely the pattern remains so even today — but with an important difference. It is much more in the spotlight today than ever before — thanks to the resurgence of puritanism in the name of Islam and in reaction to the creeping Islamophobia in the West. Islamophobia itself gained currency as a reaction to the 9/11 attacks on New York, the heart and symbol not just of the US but of the entire Western world.  The 9/11 attacks by al Qaeda followers, who were spawned as a disparate force to eject Soviet forces and their allies from Afghanistan, were themselves encouraged and armed by the US in alliance with General Zia-ul-Haq's Pakistani military regime. Al-Qaeda has, of course, an even earlier origin as a reaction to the spread of American influence and dominance in oil-rich Arab power centres. Nevertheless 9/11 became a defining moment for anti-American forces, including elements like the Taliban, in the name of Islam.    

Like it or not, al Qaeda-Taliban ideology or view of an anti-American Islam has made substantial impact on a minority of Muslims right across the Islamic world. And this view is not just anti-American, it is anti-West, not merely in political or economic terms but in cultural, behavioural and dress code, mores. And the burqa, like beards for men, has become the badge of an assertive identity among a determined minority of Muslim women. It has become a declaration of defiance and rejection of all things Western and the West's criticism of Islamic imagery and symbolism.

But is this symbolism and imagery of Talibanised-al Qaeda Islam, which has no room for girls' education or jobs or the participation of women outside the four walls of the kitchen and home, an essential part of Islam? Or is it a mere accretion over periods of history? Is it part of the Quran as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) or Hadith (traditions) and Sunna (practices) flowing from the Quranic Suras (chapters) and Ayats (verses)? Or is it part of Fiqah, the prescriptions based on the interpretations of latter day Qazis (priestly judges) and ulemas (scholars)?

Eminent scholars from Egypt to India find no mention of the face covering burqa in the Quran. Nor has anybody claimed it to be part of Hadith. As Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, member of India's Planning Commission, points out in a newspaper article: 'In the Quran there are three references to dress code and none of them refers to the naqab, or veil.' Quoting Surah and verse, she points to the 24th Surah Al Nur (The Light) which reminds both men and women equally to dress modestly: 'Tell the believing men to lower their gaze and be modest (Ayat 30). Tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be modest (Ayat 32).'

Most importantly it does not find any direct mention, except by way of references to preserving one's modesty, as an edict of the Prophet. How could it? How could the Prophet, who married a businesswoman, Khadijah, his first wife, have even thought of a face covering burqa as a woman's dress? Clearly she could not have carried on a successful business, as she did, by hiding behind a veil, certainly not a face covering veil, naqab or hijab. By all accounts, she was an eminently successful merchant who struck deals with other traders, hired assistants like the Prophet himself, after discussing the finer details of purchase, transport, marketing and sale of her merchandise. If the Prophet's wife herself wore no burqa, how could it become part of essential Islam as the Taliban and al Qaeda ideologues arrogate in the name of Allah, Islam and the Ummah or the global Islamic nation?

The face covering veil is certainly an accretion of later ages scores if not hundreds of years after the Prophet's times. Coming to our modern times, year after year we see the solemn spectacle of thousands of women performing the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca without any veil covering their face. Saudi Arabia's opening of the co-educational institute, The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, last September was rightly hailed as a step reaffirming the same principle. Mullahs from Saudi Arabia to India who issued fatwas against the university and the king were roundly condemned by a wide cross section of people in the Islamic world. 

The notion of the burqa, naqab or hijab, especially the face covering veil, belongs to pure fiction authored by self-appointed protectors of modesty and opportunist rulers who had nothing better to show for their credentials than raising the cry of Islam in decline and danger — much like the doings of the late lamented General Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan and his Taliban inheritors. Yet the small minority — and it is a microscopic minority — who still want to wear the burqa as their badge of separatist identity are free to do so as long as they don't proclaim it in the name of Islam. Enlightened families throughout the Islamic world, such as those in Pakistan and India, do not foist it on their sisters, daughters and wives. It is time they openly came out against the mullahs and help to liberate the rest of their women-folk from the seclusion and restrictions imposed by the false interpreters of Islam.
 

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