Veiled Women, Symbolic Interaction and The Western Hypocrisy
(Veiled women are not oppressed by their religion (displayed by the veil), but that North American, European social, cultural, and political systems oppress them)The Islamic veil becomes a symbolic stigma in Western European society, which has a tendency to move into bigger symbols. This symbol as an interaction of society has another tendency to develop small relationships into bigger relationships.[1] This paper will focus on how veiled women justify their decision to wear the veil as a symbol of liberation, but in turn, Western society judges it as a symbolic stigma or oppression. It will argue that veiled women are not oppressed by their religion (displayed by the veil), but that North American, European social, cultural, and political systems oppress them. The main purpose of the paper is to prove that there is no freedom resulting from the choice, voice and expression of veiled women because of the symbolic interpretation of the veil as a stigma, even though Western countries demand that personal choice is respected.The argument is presented in three points: (1) social, (2) cultural, and (3) political context, by using sociologists’ and feminists’ perspective of symbolic interaction.
A Muslim woman’s personal choice to wear the veil displays a broader sense of the social, cultural, and political dilemma in operation. According to Herbert Blumer, the characteristics of "symbolic interaction" are: (i) human interaction, (ii) interpretation or definition rather than mere reaction, (iii) response based on meaning, (iv) use of symbols, and (v) interpretation between stimulus and response.[2] Based on the characteristics of symbolic interaction, is the Islamic veil a symbol of oppression or liberation for Muslim women in North America and Western Europe?
According to Pierre Bourdieu when dominant culture uses symbolic capital (education, prestige, honor, values) as a power against those groups who hold less in order to alter their actions, this dominant culture exercise symbolic violence. When a cultural group clashes with the main stream educational system, they (such as veiled women) can not get equal access to the educational field. Thus, cultural domination and symbolic violation go hand to hand.[3] Such cultural domination creates universal norm through the state and its organized institutionsand dominates ideology in order to control its power over others.[4] In fact, Western countries operate with such systems of hypocritical dominant cultural ideology. According to Judy Mabro, “The veil, as it is called in the West, although it may sometimes be a scarf covering the head, is such powerful symbol that it can blind people into false generalizations.”[5] On the other hand, this ‘false generalization’ or ‘stigma’ gives the impression that Muslim women are oppressed and controlled by men. There is the idea that veiled women are either, uneducated, brainwashed, backdated, and foolish, or they are fundamentalists and extremists. The Euro-centric ideals dominant in countries such as Canada, America, Britain and France, find difficulty perceiving veiled women as “normal” human beings, equal to their own ‘Western’ citizens. Thus, in contemporary social, cultural, and political frameworks of North America and Europe, individuals are free to choose their identities through their sex, gender, ethnicity, religion, and culture. However, veiled women are perceived “as passive victims of religious extremism and dictatorship, and deserving to a greater or lesser degree of Western liberation or politically active and predisposed to extremism and fanaticism.”[6] Consequently, veiled women, living in Western societies, are prejudged in negative ways and their personal voices are not acknowledged. This is hypocrisy of “Western” freedom at its best.
In North American and European social contexts, socialists, feminists, and journalists, continuously introduce the Islamic veil as a symbol of oppression, not liberation. On the other side, Canadian, American, and European born Muslim women (both Muslim by birth and by conversion) have been adopting veils as a form of resistance to social inequality, and expression of personal identity. By adapting the veil this young generation of Muslim women know they will be discriminated against in larger society, yet their strong faith in Islam encourages them to do what they believe in.
Contemporary symbolic interactionist Herbert Blumer, emphasizes “People constantly define and redefine the situations in which they find themselves, changing not only their definitions but social structure as well.”[7] When images of veiled women not only define and redefine, but also construct and project, in social institutions in repetitively negative ways, society reacts with negative connotations. In such social structures, veiled women are oppressed not by their religion, but by their society.
Recent images from the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen are an excellent example of how veiled women are marginalized in a Canadian social context. The National Post printed a front-page picture of Canada’s Governor General Micheäelle Jean shaking hands with five veiled women. The caption read: “Jean on a Mission of Her Own.”[8]Underneath the picture was written: “Governor General Micheäelle Jean greets women in Kabul. A suicide bomb went off in Kandahar yesterday, but no Canadians were harmed.”[9] On the same day, the Ottawa Citizen printed a picture of Canadian enlisted women with Jean, along with the caption: “Women of Afghanistan ‘No longer alone.’”[10] The picture in the National Post, along with its caption, attempts to define women in veils as extremist or terrorist by adding the byline: “A suicide bomb went off in Kandahar yesterday, but no Canadians were harmed.” By greeting the veiled women and letting the readers know how suicide bombs went off in Kandahar, the statement only redefines the definition of terrorism in order to connect this definition with fundamentalist veiled women. Alternately, the Ottawa Citizen demands that “Women of Afghanistan ‘No longer alone.’”[11] Thus, Canadian army troops are there to liberate those ‘oppressed veiled women.’ As Goffman states, “creating identity is an active negotiation process between who others tell us we are and our continuous attempts to present who we think we are to others.”[12] Since veiled women’s identity is already defined under dominant symbolic culture, by defining and redefining women in the veil in such way, basically, the state and its representative scholarly fields (such as socialists, journalists, activists, and feminists) have been creating a well-known social image for all Muslim women in general. Consequently, women in veils become victims of North American social and cultural symbolic contexts.
In another perspective, why are Canadian, American, and European born, young women adapting the veil as their identities? How are societies reacting to this? Do these women identify themselves as oppressed or liberated when they wear the veil? Veiled women answer these questions with confidence and dignity.[13] According to Sara Bokker:
Willingly or unwillingly, women are bombarded with styles of "dressing-in-little-to-nothing" virtually in every means of communication everywhere in the world. ---Yesterday, the bikini was the symbol of my liberty, --- Today, Niqab (veil) is the new symbol of woman's liberation.[14]
Like Sara, most of the veiled women find liberation in wearing their veil where they feel themselves as a human with respect and dignity, yet they receive oppression from the so-called liberal Western and European people because of their decision to wear a veil and to practice their faith. When veiled women define the veil as a new symbol of woman's liberation, ultimately this definition creates new conflict with the mainstream “distribution of symbolic expressions (in terms of dress, in particular).”[15]
In light of the view of sociologist Randolph Colins, society is constructed from the ground up, rather than from the top down. Consequently, society will choose actors over structure and individual freedom over social determinism,[16] but in reality, for veiled women the ground up theory does not work. Ironically, North America and Europe value equal rights and freedom of expression for all of humanity, except in their eyes, veiled women are not fully human.[17] But recently, from them, the converted Muslims have been introducing the real facts about these veiled women to the world. Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist, washeld captive in Afghanistan in 2001,she writes:
The real inspiration has been meeting and getting to know all the sisters. Without exception I have found them to be highly intelligent, opinionated, vocal, motivated, switched on to international and political anaffairs and be highly supportive. Of course this blows the myth that Muslim women are shy, retiring, timid creatures who are rarely seen and heard.[18]
Ridley’s experiences tell the opposite facts about veiled women that ‘blow the myth’ of cultural stigma or extremism, rather her experiences challenge the contemporary Western world’s perception of veiled women.
In fact, Muslim women in Canada who decide to wear the veil have the same opinion Yvonne Ridley does. Some young veiled women wear the veil to represent themselves as a person, not an object of sexual desires in Western society. Some choose the veil as their Muslim identity, with some taking farther steps in social and political stages to wear the veil as a protest. Interestingly, some wear the veil to connectthemselves with women in Afghanistan and Iran and other Muslim countries’ veiled women, to let the world know that the images of the veil are a misconception in North American and European contexts. The veil gives women the opportunity to explore their sexuality with respect and dignity. According to Homa Hoodfar:
In Canada, and particularly in Quebec, many feminists and Quebecnationalists who have advocated banning the veil in public schools claimthat young women are forced by their families to wear the veil and thatbanning it will free young women from such oppression. However, wedid not find any evidence to support such claims among the participantsin this study. Moreover, one very unexpected finding was that manyyoung women had to fight with their parents ---for the right to wear the veil. Furthermore, while some mothers felt powerless to deny their daughters’ decision to veil, they themselves did not associate veiling with Islam.[19]
Indeed, in reality, Muslim women in Canada have increased wearing the veil over the last ten years.[20] Consequently, visible minority veiled women are on “social trial” because of their cultural field is separated than the mainstream cultural field. Because of social assumption of veiled women lower status, the dominant culture justified them as inferior and danger. As noted by Goffman, we:
Exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances… We construct a stigma-theory, an ideology to explain his inferiority and account for the danger he represents… We use specific terms… and we tend to impute a wide range of imperfections on the basis of the original one…[21]
In other words, these veiled women have been going through difficult times with unbearable discriminations in their daily lives; for example, in high schools, young girls wearing the veil are singled out and feel alone.[22] In the workplace, veiled women experience discrimination.[23] Even at the academic level they are forced to take off their spiritual identity. “They pay heavy price for their spirituality. Others say they are singled out for harassment on the streets or in the mall, in misguided retaliation for the terrorists who kill in the name of Islam.”[24] In France and Québec, wearing the veil is a crime against social-national security. Socially and culturally, general people have been receiving the message that the veil is a:
… “conspicuous symbols" of group identity in the republican institutional space of the schools. When a number of adolescent females protested against what they perceived as discrimination, French media depicted them as "manipulated by extremist groups" and "blind" to the Islamist danger to themselves as women and to the advantages of liberal French gender arrangements.[25]
In Western eyes, the veiled women are dangerous. Thus, they should be forced to remove their veils, and not be allowed to practice their identity. They should try to come out from extremist groups and follow the social norms of Western society; otherwise they will be labeled as “deviant.” Consequently, they deserve to be social outcasts. Goffman noted: “the members of a particular stigma category will have a tendency to come together into small social groups whose members all derive from the category.”[26] Consequently, all veiled women are going through social injustice regardless their age, race, ethnicity.
Now the question is, what are these veiled women doing in most of the cases? How they are reacting on behalf of their faith? Indeed, veiled women believe their veil is a symbol of their liberation, a source for their own spiritual journey, and nothing else. Mary C. Ali, a converted Muslim who wears the veil, says: “They see it (the veil) not as a denial of sex and sexuality but rather as an acknowledgement that these are treasures to be sharedwith a loved one and them alone. They are not hidden but rather freed from objectification.”[27]
Veiled women also feel they are protected from all kind of social pressures such as following the mainstream fashions and images of beauty. Having a thin figure is a continuous struggle, for that reason a large number of girls develop anorexia and bulimia where veiled young girls are usually free from this pressure. Going to dance parties and proms, having a boyfriend, engaging in sex, drinking alcohol, and taking drugs, are common peer pressures in Western cultural contexts. But because of deciding to veil, these young girls say they are not put under pressure by being approached by peers or offered to participate in illicit activities. Therefore, they are fortunate to then be able to concentrate in their education, family and more productive social activities.[28]
When veiled women have been trying to clear the idea of the veil being about oppression or extremism, but instead about liberation, feminists step out and join with the mainstream of misinformation. Feminists make statement such as “feminism, as a Western export, is marked as part of the of promissory of western democracy and as contradictory to traditionalist Islamic and patriarchal nationalism. [29]Eisenstein also states: “Muslim fundamentalists, in partial reaction to global capital, demand the return of women to the home and the veil.”[30] These kinds of statements are fundamentalist, feminist statements, where little has to do with North American and European veiled women who wear the veil willingly to identify their own personality with spiritual power, and without objectification as sex symbols. As an American, Dr. Amena Haq wears the veil and claims: “faith has made her a better person, reminding her, for example, to bite her tongue before saying an unkind thing, and to care for others who can not take care of themselves.”[31] In the Unites States, because of her position of professional independence, Dr. Amenia is lucky enough to practice medicine while wearing her veil. But in London, teaching assistant Aishah Azmi is suspended for wearing her veil at work in a public school. Azmi’s case has similarity to veiled girls who were suspended from schools because of their veil, and they become of symbols of oppression in democratic countries like America, Canada and France. Still, these women chose to wear the veil without having recognition from sociologists, feminists, activists, and politicians, in order to stop racism against the veil. Consequently, veiled women are forced to choose jobs where they can work independently, as does Dr. Ameniah. That is why today’s veiled women have been choosing medicine, law, and other professional practices, instead of public service. Ultimately, these women are following the higher professional roots because of their veil.[32] Still, they are regarded as uneducated, and an unproductive burden on society.
Although, in North America and Europe most of the people perceive veiled women as oppressed, ironically those same people do not feel the need to help these women gain access to equality and their own position of liberty. The question arises who is oppressing whom in our current times? The Western double standard plays a dramatic role in the lives of veiled women. Veiled women are marginalized as oppressed twice, first by social misconceptions, and second by public and governmental unwritten work policies. The accepted social norms for women’s dress include: tattoos, false hair, enlarged breasts, cosmetics, and form fitting clothing, but the veil is not on the list. The prominent British journalist, scholar KatherineBullock, before converting to Islam, was a highly respected activist in Canadian society and never felt discrimination as a British white woman, but after accepting Islam and wearing the veil, she has been going through daily struggles of harassment and discrimination in her field. She says: “becoming Muslim joined me to the minority perspective, which is frequently under siege in Canada.”[33]
In other words, veiled women fall into the trap of minority groups and suffer as a social victim under the dominant powers. They become “second-class” citizens who do not deserve the equal rights of “mainstream” women. For example, converted British Muslim journalist Yvonne Ridley says: “When I converted to Islam and began wearing a headscarf, the repercussions were enormous. All I did was cover my head and hair - but I instantly became a second-class citizen.”[34] Unfortunately, veiled women have to deal with the mentality of “second-class” citizens while applying for a job. One survey, funded by the federal government (with a $100,000 grant from the federal government and the city), found that:
Twenty-nine of the 32 Muslim women surveyed said that they have had an employer make a reference to their hijab while applying for job in the manufacturing, sales and services sectors. Twenty-one of them have been asked if they could take the head cover off and one-third has at least once been told flatly, "You must take it off if you want a job." [35]
A question arises: Are these veiled women oppressed by their religion, or by the Canadian job market and social systems that can be known as interlocked oppression?
In contemporary Western European society, the veil is a powerful visible political symbol that declares Islam is present and will be a source of spiritual power no matter what the consequences. Every religion has political power, consequently its symbols display power too, therefore, and in order to achieve so called-democratic political structure all religious symbols must be banded in so-called democratic countries like France, Britain, America and Canada. Instead of having democracy regardless of religion, culture and race, the dominant political power prefers to practice hypocrisy. In fact, “All the institutions of modernity, including the capitalist market and the state itself, share in a tendency to promise far more than they deliver. They present themselves as working for the common good, but in fact reproduce social inequalities.”[36] Because of their fear to lose power, the secular dominant culture creates terror in people’s mind, which ultimately goes against veiled women. As a result, the Western European politicians and social reformers along with contemporary feminists find difficulties and challenges to accept this visible symbol of veil which is growing firstly in the West (Islam is the largest growing religion in the West). However, President Bush’s declaration of the fight against terrorism needs clarification to understand today’s political platform in global contexts and the position of veiled women. In his speech on September 21, 2001, Bush says:
They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. --- And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. --- Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.[37]
Who are “they”? They are terrorists; the political domain and fear go against terrorism, without hesitation Bush labels terrorisms with Islam In his speech, Bush clarified that “they” are the fundamental extremist Muslims. Since veiled women are perceived as either, fundamental-extremists or uneducated oppressed women, they fall into the Western European political agenda. Thus, the war against terrorism applies on these veiled women too. Bush’s statement above creates not only a falsehood about “our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech”[38] but it also begs the question of how a nation will be free when it has to chose either Bush’s way or the terrorist way. There is no place in-between for any individual, rational, spiritual person. Consequently, a war against veiled women is not a hidden agenda in such a political atmosphere, but clear and open. When British former Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, describes the veil as a barrier to communication (while all other barriers are gladly accepted - telephone, e-mail, and fax machines) then, Prime Minister Tony Blair has to support his political reasoning. According to Blumer:
Usually, most of the situations encountered by people in a given society are defined or structured by them in the same way. Through previous interaction they develop and acquire common understanding or definitions of how to act in this or that situation. These common definitions enable people to act alike.[39]
As a result, not only politicians and sociologists see symbol of veil as a political stigma, but also feminists’ interpretation about the veil give the same interpretation. Thus, veiled women’s personal choices and voices are not respected equally where feminists have been struggling to establish equality for all women regardless race, gender, age, religion, and culture. Feminists believe the “personal is political,”[40] where as sociologists believe in political symbols, and politicians react upon those symbols. Consequently this personal choice of wearing the veil creates political awareness. Is this personal choice respected in the North American and European political contexts? Are feminists trying to stand up for women who choose to wear the veil? The answer of these both questions is unfortunately negative. Individuals who posses what Goffman terms a social “stigma” like a visible disability “veil” is harassed in every single aspect in social, cultural and political context.[41] Recently, for the first time in Quebec election the Quebec politician banned the vote of veiled women. How will feminists justify such discrimination against their veiled sisters? The answer of these both questions is unfortunately negative.
How do veiled women see themselves in Bush’s divided world? Carolyn Moxley Rouse, a converted veiled woman says: “Ultimately, choosing to adopt a minority faith, and choosing to perform that faith in public spaces, could be considered a form of social suicide.”[42] Most of these veil women in Western European political context are strong enough to continue practicing what they believe in, and that is the main problem for these political, social, and feminists groups. Because these women are not ready to blend themselves in with American, European melting pots, rather they dignify their identity within the veil and continue to journey with it for spiritual reasons. They want to prove to the world that women in veils do not fit any criteria, which has been known through social, cultural and political leaders. Bourdieu is right by saying: “The most brutal relations of force are always simultaneously symbolic relations. And acts of submission and obedience are cognitive acts which as such involve cognitive structure, forms and categories of perception, principles of vision and division.”[43] But, these veiled women’s symbolic submission and obedience not toward dominant culture, but to God, nothing else, where else “social agents construct the social world though cognitive structures that may be applied to all things of the world and in particular to social structures.”[44] Consequently, conflict creates between social agents and God’s agents (veiled women) and as a result political exploitation exercise over these veiled women.
In conclusion, in society oppression develops when the Western hypocrisy politically controls all social structures, institutions, and cultural discourses to justify its own views, beliefs, and theoretical and political statements and discoveries against a specific group and interpreted the symbols of a group with negative connotations - stigmas.Western society culturally justifies others’ actions through its unmarked, unnamed, dominate, Eurocentricstandard. All the social structures encourage people to practice these discourses and differences through state, schools, cultural institutions, political organizations and people’s actions. Political leaders, such as Bush, and Blair, and political statements such as those made by Straw, create symbolic interpretation about the veil as negative. Consequently, the conflict between the dominant people vs. veiled women not only continues, but also veiled women become oppressed in their own country as second class citizens under the Western and European social, cultural, and political contexts, where alternately, they feel freedom and dignity in their own religion.
This domination over veiled women must be eliminated in order to achieve social equality regardless of class, gender, religion, and culture. It is possible only when people will educate each other, and only then they will overcome fear and ‘false generalization’ which “symbolic power as a recognized power”[45] imposes on them about veiled women.
In the meantime veiled women should try to upgrade their social, cultural, political standards by working against fear of Islam. By having the freedom to wear the veil, they get more freedom and self-controlling power in order to achieve greater success. If that is the correct point of view of these veiled women, then they are also responsible to provide their dignity, unity, and spirituality through their active actions wherever they have opportunities. In fact, they should create their opportunity to speak up for themselves.
Already a significant number of people from the dominant culture are trying to educate people about this problem to stop oppression against veiled women. The last point to remember from Blumer: “Interpretations have to be developed and effective accommodation of the participants to one another has to be worked out. In the case of such undefined situations, it is necessary to trace and study the emerging process of definition which is brought into play”.[46] To create social harmony, justice and equality, now is the time for the dominant culture, state, scholars, feminists, and politicians to study the symbol of the veil without being judgmental and denounce the “pious hypocrisy”[47] attitude.
[1] Jonathan Roberge, Lecture Notes, Theoretical Currents in Contemporary Sociology. Soc3312B. University of Ottawa, March, 2007.
[2]http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/f100.htm last visited 27th of March, 2007
[3]Jonathan Roberge, Lecture Notes, Theoretical Currents in Contemporary Sociology. Soc3312B. University of Ottawa, March, 2007.
[4] Ibid
[5] Judy Mabro, “Veiled Half-Truths: Western Travellers’ Perceptions of Middle Eastern Women,” Islam and Women Critical Concept (London, and New York: Routledge Press, 2005), 111.
[6] Ghazi-Walid Falah, “The Visual Representation of Muslim/Arab Women in Daily Newspapers in the United States,” Geographies of Muslim Women: Gender, Religion and Space (New York, London: The Guilford Press, 2005), 313.
[7]Janet Saltzman Chafetz, Feminist Sociology: An Overview of Contemporary Theories (USA: F.E. Peacock Publishers Inc., 1988), 19.
8] National Post, vol 9, No. 113, March 9, 2007. Ottawa, Ontario, A1.
[9] National Post, vol 9, No. 113, March 9, 2007. Ottawa, Ontario, A1.
[10] The Ottawa Citizen, Friday March 9, 2007. Ottawa, Ont. Page A1.
[11] The Ottawa Citizen, Friday March 9, 2007. Ottawa, Ont. Page A1.
[12] Joel M. Charon, Symbolic Interactionism: An Introduction, An Interpretation, An Integration. (New Jersey: Pretice Hall Upper Saddle River, 1979),167.
[13]Dr Nazreen Nawaz (Hizb ut-Tahrir) on the UK veil controversy at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc0QTILt-5c visited on 1st of March, 2007.
My Thoughts on the Veil Response at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf6eUaMJFg0 visited on 1st of March, 2007
Islam French woman talks about becoming Muslim at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ROb_5H-zww visited on March 1st, 2007
[14] Why I Shed Bikini for Niqab: The New Symbol of Women's Liberation. http://www.albalagh.net/women/0097.shtml visited at 1st o f March, 2007.
[15] Pieere Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field” Theoretical Currents in contemporary Sociology, Soc3312BC70 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2007), 51.
[16]Jonathan Roberge, Lecture Notes, Theoretical Currents in Contemporary Sociology. Soc3312B. University of Ottawa, March, 2007.
[17] Sonia Sikka, Lecture Notes, “Philosophical Issues in Women’s Studies,” PHI 2390, University of Ottawa, November 7, 2006.
[18]http://archive.muslimuzbekistan.com/eng/ennews/2002/08/ennews27082002_1.html (online interview)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4929046509315492036&hl=en-CA (online video interview) last visited at March 11, 2007.
[19] Sajida Sultana Alvi, Homa Hoodfar, and Sheila McDonough, The Muslim Veil in North America (Toronto: Canadian Scholar's Press Inc., 2003), 15.
[20] Harold G. Coward, The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada, and the United States (Albany, NY State University of New York Press, 2000), 183.
[21] Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963) 5
[22]Donna Gehrke-White, The Face Behind the Veil: the Extraordinary Lives of Muslim women in America, (Ciradel Press: Kensington Publisting Corp. 2006), 14.
[23]Ibid.
[24]Donna Gehrke-White, The Face Behind the Veil: the Extraordinary Lives of Muslim women in America, (Ciradel Press: Kensington Publisting Corp. 2006), 14.
[25]Barbara Daly Metcalf, “Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe” Comparative Studies on Muslim Societies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 248.
[26] Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), 23.
[27]http://www.guidedones.com/metapage/women/Hijab.htm last visited at February 26th, 2007.
[28] Sajida Sultana Alvi, Homa Hoodfar, and Sheila McDonough, The Muslim Veil in North America (Toronto: Canadian Scholar's Press Inc., 2003),
[29] Zillah Eisenstein, Hatreds: Racialized and Sexualized conflicts in the 21st century, “Feminism of the Global South and East” (Routledge New York, London), 140.
[30]Ibid,146
[31] Donna Gehrke-White, The Face behind the Veil: the Extraordinary Lives of Muslim women in America, (Ciradel Press: Kensington Publisting Corp. 2006), 59.
[32] Harold G. Coward, The South Asian Religious Diaspora in Britain, Canada, and the United States (Albany: NY State University of New York Press, 2000), 245
[33] Katherine Bullock,Muslim women activists in North America: speaking for ourselves (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 58.
[34]Yvonne Ridley, How I Came to Love the Veil, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102001259.html visited at March112th, 2007.
[35]Hijab-Wearing Women Face Discrimination in Torontohttp://www.islamonline.net/English/News/200212/19/article07.shtmlvisited at 8th March, 2007.
[36] Craig Calhoun, “Pierre Bourdieu” (Theoretical Currents in contemporary Sociology, Soc3312BC70 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2007), 701
[37]Transcript of President Bush's address, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript visited at 1st of March, 2007.
[38] Transcript of President Bush's address, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript visited at 1st of March, 2007.
[39] Herbert Blumer, “Society as Symbolic Interaction” Theoretical Currents in contemporary Sociology, Soc3312BC70(Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2007), 187
[40] Feminist Issues: Race, Class and Sexuality. Edited by Nancy Mandell. (York University. Pearson Hall, Toronto 2005), 66.
[41] Joel M. Charon, Symbolic Interactionism: An Introduction, An Interpretation, An Integration. (New Jersey: Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, 1979),197
[42]Carolyn Moxley Rouse, Engaged Surrender (London: University of California Press, 2004), 9.
[43] Pieere Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field” Theoretical Currents in contemporary Sociology, Soc3312BC70 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2007),53
[44] ibid
[45]Bourdieu, Peirre. “ Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste” (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986) 251
[46] Herbert Blumer, “Society as Symbolic Interaction”Theoretical Currents in contemporary Sociology, Soc3312BC70(Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2007), 188.
[47] Pieere Bourdieu, “Rethinking the State: Genesis and Structure of the Bureaucratic Field” Theoretical Currents in contemporary Sociology, Soc3312BC70 (Ottawa: University of Ottawa, 2007), 60.