For context here, my Salvation Army/United Church Sunday-school teaching mum would not go out, when I was a child, without covering her head. She wore a head scarf usually. Sometimes a hat. When I became an adult, she could not grasp how I could, as a man, go about in public without covering my head.
I cannot for the life of me understand what anyone’s objection is to a hijab. It is just a head scarf. Not very dissimilar to the ones my mum tied on in order to go over town. It does not obliterate a woman’s personal identity or even conceal her face. I wear a dickie balaclava outdoors in winter for strenuous activity which is essentially a pile hijab pullover.
A hijab is not a niqab or a burka. And while I object in principal to the cultural ideology behind those, I am none the less painfully aware of the futility of trying to force women not wear them if they choose to wear them.
Often lately when deciding whether to argue I weigh what advantages might come from the disadvantages of conflict. Will I get a prize? A gold star? What do people trying to ban head scarves think they are gonna win? What is the prize?
