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'Now It's a Sign of Protest:' Muslim Women in Denmark Defy the Face Veil Ban

By KARIS HUSTAD/COPENHAGEN August 2, 2018

Sabina started wearing the niqab two years ago as a way to feel more connected

to God. The face veil—a piece of fabric tied around the back of her head that

only reveals her eyes—is a reminder of her identity and beliefs, she says. “I

found it very beautiful,” the 21-year-old education student explains, sitting

cross-legged on the floor of the women’s prayer room in Det Islamiske

Trossamfund, a mosque in Copenhagen. “In the beginning it was a very

spiritual choice.”

But starting this month when she wears her niqab in public, her act of devotion

will also be an act of civil disobedience. She will be one of the Danish citizens

defying the country’s ban on face coverings in all public places, which came

into effect on Wednesday.

“Now it has also become a political choice for me,” says Sabina, who asked

TIME not to disclose her last name out of concerns for her safety. “It is also a

sign of protest.”

Sabina is a founder of Kvinder i Dialog (Women in Dialogue), an organization

started by niqabis—women who wear the veil—that brings Muslim women

affected by the ban into conversation with the larger Danish population

through events, social media and public appearances. Their goal has been to

dispel what they say are misconceptions about their choice to wear the veil:

that niqabis are forced to wear the garment, don’t go to school or work, and are

radicalized and pose a threat.

Now their aims have expanded to include standing their ground in Danish

society. On the first day of the ban, the women led a public protest over their

right to wear the veil. Hundreds of people of different religious and ethnic

backgrounds congregated at Den Sorte Plads in Copenhagen’s Nørrebro

neighborhood, donning niqabs, colorful scarves and flamboyant face coverings

—a horse head, fake beards and lucha libre masks were spotted across the plaza

—to challenge the enforcement of the ban. The crowd marched on local streets

led by a sign that read “My clothes, my choice” and chanted “No racists in our

streets!” as they locked arms around the Bellahøj police station. At the same

time, across the country a protest took place in Aarhus, Denmark’s second

biggest city.

Many in the crowd said taking to the streets seemed to be the only way to bring

attention to the problem. “When I was a kid, no one talked about who you

could be and how you could look and dress,” said Line Schmidt, 33, wearing a

black balaclava with yellow translucent heart-shaped glasses.“It’s not the

Denmark I know.”

To protesters and women who wear the veil, the ban looks like another sign

that Denmark is betraying its long-held value of tolerance. “It’s not just about

us fighting for the right to wear our niqab,” Sabina says. “It’s also about us

fighting for right to live our lives as practicing Muslims in Denmark. We are

saying to the government: we do not accept this form of racist, Islamophobic

and oppressive politics.”

Denmark’s new law, passed May 31 to take effect from August 1, does not

specifically mention the niqab (a veil that covers the face except for the eyes)

or burqa (more conservative headwear that covers the head and body and

includes a mesh screen over the eyes). It is up to police to judge whether a face

covering is in violation of the ban and to instruct the offender to go home.

Fines range from 1,000 krone ($156) up to 10,000 krone ($1,568) for repeat

offenses.

But many of those in support of the ban have been clear that it is meant to

target the Muslim face veil. “We don’t want the burqa and niqab in Denmark,”

Naser Khader, a parliament member with the Conservative People’s Party and a

Muslim who has long supported the ban, tells TIME. He says it’s about the

principle of women not being oppressed, rather than the number of women

who wear the veil. “We want gender equality in Denmark, that’s it. If you want

to go with burqa and niqab, find another place to do it.”

The current number of women who wear the veil in Denmark is unknown, but

the most recent research suggests it is very few. A 2009 study by Margit

Warburg, a professor in sociology of religion at the University of Copenhagen,

indicates less than 0.2% of Muslim women in the country wear the niqab or

burqa—an estimated 150 women out of a country of 5.7 million. “It is really a

very small minority out of a minority out of a minority,” says Warburg.

Human rights groups have slammed arguments like Khader’s. While there

might be some specific instances where the full-face veil ban might be

legitimate in the interests of public safety, Amnesty International argues that

the blanket ban is a violation of women’s rights to freedom of expression and

religion. “If the intention of this law was to protect women’s rights it fails

abjectly. Instead, the law criminalizes women for their choice of clothing—

making a mockery of the freedoms Denmark purports to uphold.”

A Continent-Wide Debate

Denmark follows France, Belgium and Austria with full bans on face coverings

(Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Germany and other regions and cities across Europe

have partial bans based on geographical area or type of space). In 2014 the

European Court of Human Rights upheld France’s 2011 law, accepting that

social cohesion was a valid argument for the ban, even though fewer than 2,000

women reportedly wore the veil in 2011, out of nearly 5 million Muslims in

France.

But enforcement and effectiveness of the ban have been mixed. In Austria,

which implemented a similar law in October 2017, police fined people with

scarves and a man in a shark costume because of confusion over the vague

wording of the law. France, the first European country to introduce such a ban,

has consistently enforced the law—but surveys indicate niqabis continue to

wear the veil but spend more time indoors (though there is little research on

women who wear the veil after the ban).

“It divides society,” says Sara Silvestri, professor of religion and politics at

City, University of London, and an expert on Islam in Europe. “It either

withdraws women into the closely-knit community or empowers them to fight

back and become even more religious and even more proud to wear the veil.”

In Denmark both the center-right government and center-left Social Democrat

party voted in favor of the ban, passing the law 75-30. At the heart of the

government’s argument were concerns over the subjugation of women and a

need to enforce Danish culture and values.“We must be able to see each other

and we must also be able to see each other’s facial expressions,” Justice

Minister Søren Pape Poulsen said when the ban was passed in May. “It’s a value

in Denmark.” A significant portion of the Danish population favored the ban:

62% supported a ban on the niqab and burqa according to an opinion poll from

last September.

Read more: Denmark’s “ghetto” policies are an ominous sign that liberal

Europe is starting to unravel at the seams

Denmark is still a homogeneous country: 87.6% of the country’s population is

ethnically Danish and 75% of the population is Protestant (based off

membership in the state-funded National Church). In recent decades, the

country has struggled to integrate immigrants and their new cultures. This year

alone, significant debate has raged over policies that seem to target minorities.

For example, the country has weighed a citizens’ proposal to outlaw

circumcision (mainly practiced by the country’s Jews and Muslims) and the

immigration minister suggested Muslims do not work during Ramadan because

they pose a safety hazard. And more concretely, the government passed a series

of laws to eradicate “ghettos,” neighborhoods with social problems where more

than 50% of residents are non-Western immigrants.

“The parliament decides what it means to be Danish,” says Garbi Schmidt, a

Roskilde University professor who studies migration and cultural encounters.

“Right now, it is Muslims that fall out and minorities that fall out [of that

definition]. But it is also problematic for society—how xenophobic should it be

when it comes to ethnic, religious and all kinds of diversity? Who has the right

to live as a Dane?”

Fighting for the Right to Wear the Veil

Asserting the right to live as a Dane while wearing the niqab has been the goal

of Kvinder i Dialog since it officially launched in January. The group, which has

grown to approximately 60 niqabis and allies, has hosted open houses, stood

on the street handing out flyers, visited high school classrooms and

participated in debates on the issue, all in the hopes of trying to help their

fellow citizens understand their choice. “We were saying to everyone, just ask

us whatever you like,” Sabina says. “Let’s talk about it.”

By becoming more visible, Kvinder i Dialog has been able to change some

minds. “If you are forced to wear it, I would not understand why you are

fighting so much for it,” Sabina recalls a woman telling her at an open house.

But it hasn’t always worked. Politicians have refused to take their meetings and

they’ve received hateful responses on their social media posts.

Part of the problem is that many Danes have never seen, let alone met or talked

to, a woman who wears the niqab, Sabina says. That fueled misconceptions

about the background and motivations of the niqabis. Half of the women that

Warburg found in her 2009 study were ethnic Danes, for example, as recent

converts tend to be more devout in their religious expression. Further, women

wear the niqab as a way to challenge and deepen their faith, Warburg says. She

did not find evidence that there were women being forced to wear the veil in

Denmark.

Women who choose the niqab say oppression has not come from the veil itself,

but from Denmark’s opposition to it. Sarah, a gregarious 30-year-old student,

mother of three and another founder of Kvinder i Dialog, said it was already

difficult to wear her face covering in public. Once a man threatened to kill her

at a train station in front of her then 3-year-old son.

Despite this, Sarah, who was born in Denmark to a Muslim family and speaks

Danish as her first language, grew up believing that the country’s tradition of

tolerance would protect her religious choices and allow her to follow her

dreams of studying engineering and starting her own business. Now Sarah—

who asked TIME to only use her first name to protect her privacy—is

considering switching to e-learning to finish her courses, and her husband has

agreed to take full responsibility of picking up their children from school and

running errands.

“If I want to go somewhere, I really have to think about it—is it worth getting a

fine?” she says, bouncing her curly-haired 7-month-old daughter on her lap

during a preparation workshop for the protest on Wednesday. “I have never felt

like a victim before. This is the first time I’ve felt oppressed.”

Still, she sees the veil as a source of power as she begins life after the ban. “You

have to be very strong to wear the niqab in Denmark,” Sarah says. “We are not

going to lie down and let people kick us. We are going to fight to the end.”