| Abstract: | Literature which debates the degree of liberation or oppression associated with wearing the hijab is frequently focused on the Middle East. Two strands of feminist writing have either condemned the veil as oppressive or reframed it as liberating and as a sign of resistance. I argue that the significance of wearing the hijab in Britain is frequently missed. In Britain far from being a sign of conformity and fulfilling the function of making the wearer invisible the converse is true. The hijab is, of itself, neither liberating nor oppressive; the power relations invested in it are situational and contextual. The white Muslim women who participated in this study experience various kinds of responses from non-Muslims. At times they find themselves on the receiving end of what amounts to racial abuse. In this article I suggest that although neither “race” nor racism are fixed, they tend, nevertheless, to shift as reinventions of the same phenomena. |
