The Politics of Islam in the West: The ways to the veil
| | Agenda | 28 January 2005 |
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Why has the veil become such a hotly debated issue today - after more than a millennium of encounters between West and East in which the veil played at best a marginal role?
Dr. Markha Valenta, Researcher in Contemporary History at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, debates this issue with Prof. Veit Bader, Chair in Sociology and Philosophy.
The veil's prominence in the encounter between Islam and Europe marks not so much the differences between the two but instead depends on a fundamental collaboration between all those involved. Whatever their standpoint, however opposed and far removed from each other, all have agreed that this is to be a primary site at which to take their stand. The question is why? And more specifically why now?
Markha Valenta argues that the answer to this question derives from the very nature of European modernity as it reached its peak at the end of the nineteenth century - modernity as a process of state-formation, of secular "conversion", of democratisation, and as a project of creating an idealised "Europe". Each of these processes is under pressure today and it is precisely at the points at which the pressure is most intense that debates about the veil emerge. This is because for all sides the veil is much more than just a symbol or a gesture. Rather, it embodies alternative - yet just as modern - forms of nation formation, of religiosity, and of governmentality than those proposed by liberal secularism. In this sense, debates about the veil entail not the encounter between tradition and modernity but instead are better understood as contests about the social, political, and religious forms our modernity is to take.
Institute on Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES), Oost Indisch Huis, room B.017
More information: Contact Ilse van Liempt | 020-5252144
Published on 28 January 2005 by RISQ
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