liberal paradoxes.pdf

The debate over the hijab has become an arena of fervent discussion in Europe. The recentpolitical developments have opened a discussion on the relationship between a“secularized” West and an Islamic world. At the heart of this debate is the juridical regulationof women’s body and whether a simple piece of cloth such as the veil should beallowed or prohibited. This article takes into consideration two leading cases decided atthe European Court of Human Rights over the practice of veiling which rely on the assumptionthat the headscarf is incompatible with western democratic values becauseirreconcilable with the principle of gender equality. I argue that the hijab cannot be seenas an expression of women’s oppression, as the concept of freedom and agency changesin different historical and cultural contexts: thus, what these decisions reveal is that the 167universalism of the Western/liberal concept of freedom and agency has been the maindomain through which to read women’s oppression and their possibility of agency.