Islamic veiling practices by country

There are currently 16 states that have banned the burqa (not to be confused with the hijab), including Tunisia,[15] Austria, Denmark, France, Belgium,[16] Tajikistan, Bulgaria,[17] Cameroon, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Netherlands,[18] China (in Xinjiang Region),[19] Morocco, Sri Lanka[20] and Switzerland.

[29] After returning from the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Rome in 1923, the feminist Huda Sha'arawi removed her veil and mantle, a signal event in the history of Egyptian feminism.

In more formal settings such as weddings or religious celebrations like Eid, women wear the dirac, which is a long, light, diaphanous voile dress made of cotton or polyester that is worn over a full-length half-slip and a brassiere.

[103] In February 2020, Uttar Pradesh's labor minister Raghuraj Singh has called for an outright ban on women wearing burqas, suggesting that terrorists have been using them to elude authorities.

On 23 February 2018, Iranian Police released an official statement saying that any women found protesting Iran's compulsory veiling code would be charged with "inciting corruption and prostitution," which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Note- Women who appear in public places and roads without wearing an Islamic hijab, shall be sentenced ten days to two months' imprisonment or a fine of five hundred to fifty thousand rials.

[212] An important event in the growing trend of unveiling among upper-class women in Lebanon and Syria in the 1920s was the publication of al-Sufur wa-l-hijab by Nazira Zeineddine in 1928, claiming that Islam did not consider veiling necessary.

A judgment from the then-Supreme Court of Malaysia in 1994 cites that the niqab, or purdah, "has nothing to do with (a woman's) constitutional right to profess and practise her Muslim religion", because Islam does not make it obligatory to cover the face.

[222] Malaysian activist Maryam Lee reportedly received vitriolic backlash and death threats in 2020 for criticizing what she saw as institutional patriarchy in Islam and speaking out about her decision to not wear the hijab.

For some of a more conservative religious background, the burqa is expected to be worn to cover her face in the presence of other males, along with the wiqaya, or head scarf, and the abaya, an all-enveloping cloak revealing only her hands and feet.

The multitudes of designs and decadent embellishments on the modern day abaya has allowed it to become a versatile clothing that can be made either plain or a fashion statement, in Oman and in other neighboring Islamic countries.

During the visit of the King–Crane Commission in Damascus in 1919, women's rights activists (of the Nur al-Fayha organization) attended unveiled to demonstrate the progressive modernist ambitions of the Faisal Government.

An apparently less politicized argument is that in specific professions (teaching), a ban on "veils" (niqab) may be justified on the grounds that being able to see facial expressions and making eye contact can be helpful in communicating.

[299] According to a 2017 ruling by the European Court of Justice on a case involving two Belgian women, employers in the EU may restrict the wearing of religious symbols if such regulations on appearance are applied consistently.

[72] The veil ban in Albanian was not aggressively enforced, since this was not seen as effective, but through persuasion, campaigns by the women's organization, and by the king's sisters, who acted as role models by appearing unveiled.

The Austrian legislators said their motivation was promoting equality between men and women and improving social integration with respect to local customs, and parents who send their child to school with a headscarf would be fined €440 ($427 or £386 as of 2022[update]).

The proposed ban was extremely controversial, with both sides of the political spectrum being split on the issue, some people arguing that the law went against religious freedom and was racist because it affects mostly Muslim women and Jewish men.

Judges Angelika Nussberger and Helena Jäderblom dissented, calling the concept, "far-fetched and vague",: 61  going on to note that the very decision of declaring what a woman is allowed to wear was hypocritical and antithetical to the aim of protecting human rights.

[333] In May 2021, Emmanuel Macron's party La République En Marche barred a Muslim woman from running as one of its local election candidates because she wore a hijab for a photograph on a campaign flier.

[335] Due to rapid demographic changes in Germany following immigration from Muslim countries, public debates ensued which among other topics concerned Islamic veils from the turn of the century onward.

The president of the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers [de] argued that freedom of speech meant that controversial topics should be resolved by debate, not "boycotts, mobbing or violence".

On 7 October 2019, Tendayi Achiume, the UN Special Rapporteur on racism, wrote a report questioning the perceived inclusivity of Dutch society and how that perception masks a reality of treating racial and ethnic minorities as foreign.

The greater part of the hair remains under the ornaments mentioned above, except on the forehead where it is divided into two locks, which are led along the temples to the ears, and the ends are allowed to hang loose behind over the shoulders.In accordance with the islands' strict moral code, Turkish Cypriot women also wore long skirts or pantaloons in order to cover the soles of their feet.

[9] In March 2017, the Ministry of Defence in Ankara announced a change in rules to allow women in the armed forces to wear headscarves with their uniforms, which sparked concerns from secularists over creeping Islamisation of the military.

[394] In October 2022, Turkey's government and opposition both pledged legal steps to establish women's right to wear Islamic headscarves, bringing an issue that previously caused severe splits back to the forefront of political discourse ahead of following year's elections.

[396] In March 2023, a large, nationally representative research study conduced by Turkish academics found out that the percentage of women who wore a headscarf in some way (including irregularly) is 73% this indicates that nearly three-quarters of the female participants over the age of 18 in Turkey engage in this practice.

[29] The people of the United States have a firm constitutional protection of freedom of speech from government interference that includes clothing items, as described by Supreme Court cases such as Tinker v. Des Moines.

[428] Journalist Howard LaFranchi of The Christian Science Monitor has referred to "the traditional American respect for different cultural communities and religions under the broad umbrella of universal freedoms" as forbidding the banning of Islamic dress.

Maria Omar, director of media relations for the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America (IFANCA), has advised Muslim women to avoid these complexes entirely.

[430] Despite perceptions of social discrimination against Muslim women, there are no legal restrictions on Islamic modesty garb in the United States, due to universal religious freedom protections in American law.