Hijabophobia is a type of religious and cultural discrimination against Muslim women who wear the hijab. The discrimination has had manifestations in public, working and educational places.
Analysis
Hijabophobia is a term referring to discrimination against women wearing Islamic veils, including the hijab, chador, niqāb and burqa. It is considered a gender-specific type of Islamophobia, or simply "hostility towards the hijab". The term is applied to discourse based in colonial representations of Muslim women as victims oppressed by misogynistic cultures in academic circles.
According to The Gazette, hijabophobia began as a French national phenomenon, citing the 1989 headscarf affair (). In France, according to Ayhan Kaya, Islamophobia is mixed with hijabophobia. In a 2012 paper, Hamzeh posits that 'hijabophobia' encapsulates the sexist aspects of Islamophobia, in which Muslim women bear the brunt of anti-Muslim attacks.Other studies referred to the way that the Islamophobia is laced with hijabophobia, creating a scapegoating system in which Muslim women are stimatized for using a hypervisible Islamic symbol. The practice of Hijab is also viewed as a submission to the patriarchal discourse that the US media and Western communities stoke it as a part of the Islam religion. In a nutshell, Muslim women veils interfere with the culture of Western communities as being a symbol of extremism, backwardness, and oppression.
Political scientist Vincent Geisser argues that hijabophobia became more widespread after the September 11 attacks, as evidenced by the number of laws regulating and restricting the hijab in public places and governmental offices. A study found that Muslim girls in London perceived discrimination when wearing the hijab outside their immediate communities, and felt social pressure to not wear the hijab. In addition, according to the ACLU, 69% of women who wore the hijab reported at least one incident of discrimination, compared to 29% of women who did not wear the hijab.
Manifestations
Working places
European Court of Justice
A ruling by European Union's top law court, European Court of Justice, on 14 March 2017 allowed the employers "to ban staff from wearing visible religious symbols" such as the hijab. The decision was criticized for disguising what Muslims described as "a direct attack on women wearing hijabs at work". As a result, by 2017, two women from France and Belgium were dismissed from work since they refused to remove their hijabs. Samira Achbita, a woman from Belgium, was dismissed from working in her company (G4S) as a result of the court ruling. OpenDemocracy argued that the ruling was ostensibly based on the employer's wish "to portray a position of neutrality", and hence the court ruling was a normalization of hijabophobia.
Public places
There are instances where Muslim dress have been banned in public spaces. The Muslim burqa was banned by local laws in Spain in 2010, though these laws began to be overturned by the Spanish Supreme Court in 2013. Similarly, in 2016, France's Council of State began to overrule a ban on the burkini by over thirty French municipalities as Islamophobic. FIFA's ban of the head cover in 2011–2014 is an example of hijabophobia. In 2018, Austria banned full-face coverings in order to limit the visibility of orthodox Islam. This was criticized by police who were put in the position of charging people for wearing smog and ski masks. France and Belgium have enacted a similar ban since 2011. In 2015, a partial ban was introduced in the Netherlands and the German parliament banned face coverings while driving in September 2017. Hijabophobia also influences the hospitality industry in Malaysia. Hotels believe employees that wear the headdress appear less professional; therefore causing islamophobic policies to be implemented. On February 16, 2021, The National Assembly of France voted in favor of an “anti-separatism” bill that aims to reinforce the secular system in France by banning the wearing of hijabs for women under 18 while in public. In response, #handsoffmyhijab has been spreading across social media platforms.
Schools
In 1994, the French Ministry for Education sent out recommendations to teachers and headmasters to ban Islamic veil in educational institutions. According to a 2019 study by the Institute of Labor Economics, more girls with a Muslim background born after 1980 graduated from high school after the ban was introduced.