It’s difficult to think of an item of clothing more politicised than the niqab.

In today’s political context, particularly in the UK, calls to ‘ban the burka’ have become a rallying cry of the far right, signifying a sinister brand of politics that sees non-white migrants as a whole, but often Muslims more specifically, as a threat to be controlled, vilified and ultimately eradicated. 

The so-called ‘burka debate’ routinely rears its sinister head in politics; anyone seeking to reinvent themselves as a far right figure will spontaneously declare a call to ban the niqab as an indicator of where they stand on Muslims more generally; our once-Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, even infamously compared them to letterboxes. Tabloid media front pages are frequently emblazoned with sensationalist headlines and images about fully-covered Muslim women, designed to stoke fear, hatred and most of all play into the idea that Britain is being taken over by a nefarious faceless mass. 

All of this about a garment that is worn by only around 1% of Muslim women in Britain seems, frankly, disproportionate – but this preoccupation with the niqab is nothing new, and is certainly not uniquely British.

The Oriental Gaze: The Colonial Legacy of Policing Muslim Women

At the height of colonialism, the veils worn by Muslim women were equally as obsessed over. Except, rather than the modern-day perception of the niqab and hijab as inherently oppressive, colonialists’ accounts reveal a slightly different view, though no less dehumanising.

Muslim women were eroticised precisely because of the fact that their bodies and faces were shrouded from view, leading to colonialists coveting native women as sexual objects to be unveiled and accessed.

Orientalist paintings from the era expose a preoccupation by European male artists with the Muslim woman. (In)famous works such as Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834) by Eugène Delacroix and La Grande Piscine de Brousse (1885) by Jean-Léon Gérôme reveal what can best be described as an artistic colonisation, as the (white, male) painter invites his imagination into the sort of intimate location that he could never have actually accessed, such as a harem or public bath. This genre of painting commonly features naked women holding their veils as if to highlight the symbolism of their removal, coquettishly revealing their bodies behind a transparent shroud as if to invite the artist, and the colonial voyeur by extension, into their private sphere. The allegory here, of the Muslim woman enticing the white, male coloniser with her exotic sexuality, conveniently allows the brutality of colonialism to masquerade as nothing but natural temptation. 

Besides this, these paintings projected a fantastical and highly exoticised imagination of the Orient, often including improbable features like naked women lounging with tigers, contributing to an overall perception of the East as a place that was both exotic and regressive, fantastical yet inferior. Contrast this to the more suppressed sexuality of Victorian Christian attitudes prevalent in the motherland at the time, and it is clear that these Orientalist images were part of an agenda to position the Muslim colonial subject as primitive and uncivilised.

Native societies were dehumanised and objectified in order for European colonial expansion to become not just a necessary exercise, but a moral obligation. 

Of course, it goes without saying that the sexualisation of the veil and therefore Muslim women as a whole was simply another way that the natives were subjugated and exploited. For female colonial subjects in Muslim lands, their dehumanisation was underscored by the fact that not only was their beauty exotic, foreign and otherised, but specifically that it was shrouded from view. This fetishisation wasn’t the result of an admiration for the Muslim woman, but rather an extension of the colonial agenda itself. White colonialist fantasies about accessing Muslim women sexually seem to parallel their pursuits to own and pillage the land itself. Both metaphorically, because accessing the body behind the veil was symbolic of occupying and owning new land, but also because of rape as a weapon of war and mass impregnation campaigns to spread ‘superior’ white genes amongst the black and brown population. If ‘civilising’ the natives by blood as well as ideology was a fundamental part of the colonial agenda, then access to the veiled woman’s body was a fundamental element of this domination. 

However, at the same time, the niqab also posed a fundamental threat to the coloniser. As Frantz Fanon says in his 1959 essay ‘Algeria Unveiled’ from his book, A Dying Colonialism, ‘the woman who sees without being seen frustrates the coloniser.’

The veil therefore represents a submission to something other than the coloniser himself, and when the aim is absolute control and domination, this is a potentially dangerous prospect.

Hence, a fundamental part of France’s colonisation of Algeria was a public education campaign encouraging Algerian women to remove their hijabs and niqabs. Posters with the slogan “dévoilez-vous” (unveil yourself) and “n’êtes-vous pas jolie?” (Are you not pretty?) accompanied by images of Algerian women in French-style ‘liberated’ dress were plastered in public places, both as part of the mass civilisation initiative to bring supposedly enlightened Western ideals to ‘regressive’ Muslim subjects, but also ostensibly in an attempt to ensure that the colonised can never evade the gaze and control of the coloniser. In many ways, this is similar to the way that European colonisers targeted mosques and criminalised public or communal prayer across North Africa. Religiosity and conservatism are dangerous propositions to a coloniser who demands that only they can dictate the status quo – and a woman who veils herself is, potentially, a woman who dares worship something other than the colonial motherland. 

The Evolution of the Colonial Gaze into Modern Day Oppression

Fast forward to today and we see the niqab and hijab occupy different, though no less hyperpoliticised, roles in the western public consciousness. 

The popularity of so-called hijabi pornography performed by actors like Mia Khalifa and the existence of disturbing internet forums where men eroticise the perceived purity and submissiveness of niqabis are enough to prove that fetishisation of the veil hasn’t entirely disappeared. However, there is a fundamental, systemic subjugation and criminalisation of the veil today that seems more targeted than the eroticisation of the past. As the trajectory of feminism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries meant that women secured more material rights than ever before, emancipation from patriarchy became more heavily tied up in clothing itself – specifically the idea that less clothing equals liberation. In this vein, modest dress, the hijab and especially the niqab become the epitome of misogyny. Of course, there has never been much attempt to ask Muslim women what we feel about our own religious garments. Instead, the idea has persisted that Muslim women need saving from the clothes we wear.

This idea isn’t just problematic; it’s rooted in a racism that presumes that Muslim women are somehow unable to advocate for themselves the way white or non-Muslim women can. Most garments, from the push-up bra to high-heels, originate from patriarchal beauty standards imposed upon women, yet we never hear politicians advocate for a ban on certain kinds of underwear or shoes. Muslims who cover their bodies, hair or faces, on the other hand, are constantly infantilised as victims in need of feminism, governments and policy to save us. Consider how white, mainstream feminists will rally with Iranian women defying hijab mandates but offer nothing but tumbleweed silence for the French women fighting to wear their hijabs in public institutions.

It’s not about bodily autonomy, but rather an inherently racist version of feminism that still equates less clothing with modernity and therefore liberation.

Interestingly, this idea of less clothing signalling modernity has persisted as an ideology in some formerly colonised Muslim nations. For example, it is common to find luxury hotels in some North African countries banning burkinis or wealthy, aristocratic families in countries like Turkey, Pakistan and Iran viewing the hijab as associated with the lower classes. Less clothing prevails as proximity to whiteness or Western-ness, and that in turn is considered more modern and therefore civilised. Almost as though the colonisers’ boot might have long left, but the colonial mindset never did.

The Politicisation of the Niqab and Vilification of Muslims in Modern Times

At the same time, after 9/11 and with the advent of the War on Terror, we saw the image of the oppressed (veiled) Muslim woman being exploited to rationalise brutal military force. In 2001, US Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney wore a burka in the House of Representatives in an attempt to draw attention to the plight of Afghan women under the Taliban and ultimately manufacture public consent for the subsequent US invasion. Even today, this idea prevails. In the wake of America’s bombing of a girls’ school in Iran, which killed almost two hundred children, a close ally of Donald Trump suggested that Iranian girls are better off dead than in a burka. This, of course, is by design. It is politically convenient – even necessary – for the covering of one’s head or body to become such an incursion on personal liberty that it can manufacture liberal, feminist consent for even the most brazen, bloodstained acts of imperialism.

In other words, wearing a niqab has to become worse than being killed by Western bombs in order to justify the latter as an act of salvation. 

The positioning of the niqab and hijab as anti-feminist and patriarchal forced upon women cannot be separated from the demonisation of Muslim men. In the West, Muslim men have been painted as uniquely misogynistic in a way that non-Muslim white men in positions of power are able to escape culpability from. In Britain, we have seen politicians and the media portray South Asian Muslim men as groomers and child sexual abusers despite the statistics contradicting this. We have seen waves of far-right riots attacking (largely Muslim) asylum seekers in the name of protecting English women and girls. We have witnessed vandalism and abuse aimed at the whole Muslim community whenever a man with a Muslim name commits a crime. Whereas the Epstein files did nothing for the reputation of powerful white men, any crime committed by a Muslim is enough to spark anti-Muslim riots across the country.

The moral panic about the Muslim veil therefore seems like a necessary component of the demonisation of Muslim men, too, whose Muslimness is the sole reason for their misogyny rather than the fact they are men. Simply put,

for Muslim men to become the ultimate villain, they need us Muslim women to be their perpetual victims and therefore the clothing that we wear, even when we choose it ourselves, remains a sign that we are oppressed by the uniquely barbaric Muslim men in our lives.

Arguably, though, there has been a shift of late as the narrative that Muslim men are meek, oppressed victims unravels in the face of rising diversity and inclusion initiatives that mean that we are more unapologetically visible than ever before – be that hijabi mannequins on the high street or niqabis on TV. There is an emerging trend of Muslim women in veils being seen as not victims of patriarchy but as a threat in and of themselves.

Likewise, the niqab or hijab is viewed as a deliberately divisive, inherently political tool to stake our dominance in the UK and pledge our allegiance to something other than the British state. Recent far-right riots have featured speakers on the main stage wearing burkas and standing in ominous silence to present the niqab as something sinister and foreign. There is an increasingly common attempt to link the niqab to criminality, with politicians insinuating that the garment is used to hide illegal activity or allow Muslims to go unseen (as though Fanon’s immortal words never stopped being relevant). In fact, recently, calls to ‘ban the burka’ no longer bother masquerading as some sort of feminist campaign about saving women and are now unmistakably racist in nature.

The preoccupation with the niqab seems less about a plight to ‘save’ the Muslim woman and more about eradicating Muslims altogether.

With a colonial legacy of exoticisation colliding with a modern-day vilifying of these garments that are actually about personal submission to Allah ﷻ, it feels like we can never escape the hyperpoliticisation of our bodies, our choices, our very existence. Meek victims and dangerous threats to Western civilisation; conservative prudes and fetishised sex objects; anti-feminists and terrorists in hiding – we are framed as everything, contradicting, all at once: a political football constantly kicked between competing teams. All in all, it’s no wonder then that it feels exhausting to be a visibly Muslim woman.