...Natasha Bakht Abstract Bans or attempts to ban the niqab have traveled global circuits, with disastrous consequences for Muslim women who wear the face veil. These women have evoked a repugnance that insists on erasing them from public spaces. An analysis of niqab bans reveals that: (1...

... as well as in several African and Asian nations. Revealing the interconnections between gendered anti-Muslim legal projects across the globe, it is striking that bans are articulated as the protection of women’s equality even as they punish women who wear the niqab by imposing fines or imprisonment...

... as an extension of Orientalist fetishization of the hijab, potentially hearkening to “‘hijab porn—pornographic films [where] the women only wear a niqab (as a means of defiling it)’” (Moors 2011 : 132). However, until the last scene (which I discuss later in the essay), Muna’s hijab is not remarked on by her...

... evident (that is, they did not wear hijab, niqab, etc.). 10 I also purposefully eliminated women who are publicly associated with a religious movement or politico-religious party or enact what Mahmood has termed a “pious” subjectivity (Mahmood 2005 ). 11 On the other hand, I did not deliberately...