Visual Frames and Political Contexts: Hijab Controversies in Post-Cold War Western Europe

Claudia Koonz compares visual representations of women and girls wearing headscarves during the “long” decade between the end of the Cold War and 9/11/2001, when the headscarf became a synecdoche for Muslim immigrants in European public culture. Koonz explores the work of gender in facilitating a consensus in support of hijab bans that drew together arch rivals: reactionaries and progressives, misogynists and feminists, imams and rabbis, and racists and anti-racists. Although the “headscarf question” touched off major controversies in France, discussions appeared throughout Western Europe. In the newly-unified Federal Republic, headscarf debates were overshadowed by other issues related to ethnic diversity. In Britain, where the headscarf became normalized as a component of school and work-related uniforms, the “headscarf question” caused little concern. Koonz analyzes the issue saliency of the hijab in print news and televised documentaries and dramas with particular emphasis on how the headscarf was framed (as either a proto chador that envelops its wearers' bodies or as a form of contemporary feminine religious apparel). Even programs and articles that endorsed multiculturalism might represent women wearing headscarves in Europe as opaque. Because West European culture valorizes transparency and modern states demand legibility, veiled women can appear to contravene progress. No matter that a hijab actually leaves the face visible and enables devout Muslims to participate freely in secular spaces, hostility to the hijab increased in the immediate post-cold war era.