ABSTRACT
I argue that this absence of research with those most immediately concerned in the niqab debate is conspicuous. While research on the general public’s perceptions and treatment of the niqab and niqabis in the Western socio-political context is useful in its
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critical capacity, as it challenges established “truths” about supposedly liberty-based European/American Judeo-Christian values, the lack of dialogue with niqabis contributes to the construction of these women as “walking deficits” (Halleh Ghorashi 2010, p. 13) unable to voice their own reasoning. In this sense, the former research tells us much more about the non-Muslim West, and its prejudices and isolated cultural monologue, than about niqabis themselves.
