The vast majority of women surveyed who wear the niqab in Canada are not only willing to remove their veils to be identified, but feel it is part of their responsibility to do so, according to the most extensive research of its kind.
The niqab has become a polarizing issue in the federal election — with the Conservatives vowing to limit its use in certain circumstances — but interviews with niqabists themselves suggest some political assumptions about them are incorrect.
In fact many of the women interviewed for the study Women in Niqab, by Concordia religion and Islam professor Lynda Clarke, were “irritated” by the widely held belief that they were being forced to wear the veiled garment.
.... Clarke, whose 2013 research for the Canadian Council of Muslim Women was based on interviews and surveys of 81 niqab-wearing women in Ottawa, Toronto and elsewhere, said she was surprised by some of the findings in what is the largest study of its kind in the western world.
The women interviewed were generally young and the vast majority had chosen to wear the niqab on their own, often despite the protests of family.
Clarke said she had a sense from the research that choosing to wear the niqab in Canada “may be a bit of a youth movement,” and “a lot of it is done in the spirit of defiance.” [National Post] Read more
