ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how gender is framed and negotiated in European debates on Muslim women’s head and body coverings, and analyses how gender and sexuality play into constructions of nationality and national identities. Veiling is framed as being a threat to universal values and principles of gender equality, autonomy, emancipation, secularism and tolerance. In the European debates that we studied for the VEIL project, the most common frame observed was that Muslim girls and women are oppressed by their community, culture and religion and in need of liberation. This victimization frame appeared in all countries’ documents, although it was not salient in the British and Greek debates. The chapter describes counter-arguments which contest the nationalized discourse of Muslim women in need of liberation by the white majority. In all countries we observed alliances between them and Second Wave feminist protagonists defending national achievements of women’s rights against multiculturalism or religious pluralism, as that would give leeway to Islamic fundamentalism.
