The Veil, the Sun, and the Politics of Islamophobia.

The issue of the veil has a long (and complex) history in the cultural imaginary of Western modernity and so it is imperative to consider how current discussions of the veil are framed by the contemporary socio-political climate and to examine the manner in which the concerns that arise from recent discussions are related to a much longer history of British colonial encounters with Islam and the veil. The increased visibility of veiled bodies in Britain today has stirred a response that draws on long-standing Orientalist oppositions and reworks them in the current climate of 'War on Terror', connecting them to parallel racist discourses about 'threats' to British culture. Sections of the British media have presented veiled Muslim women as an obstacle to meaningful 'communication', and as an example of Islamic 'refusal' to embrace 'modernity'. Veiled women are considered to be ungrateful subjects who have failed to assimilate and are deemed to threaten a perceived homogenous entity called the 'British' way of life. The media coverage of this issue has achieved a reversal by displacing the issue of the right to religious freedom onto an abstract, a-historical, conceptualisation of British 'freedom' which relies on unstated assumptions about British culture as cohesive, liberal, sealed (until the intrusion of the masked other) and ultimately superior. This paper reviews the debate over the veil in Britain in the context of British foreign policy, attacks on civil liberties, the further marginalization of poor communities and the politicization of British Muslims, where the veil is an increasingly political image of both difference and defiance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]