Author of Why the French Don’t like Headscarves (Princeton UP, 2007), Professor John Bowen of the University of Washington in St. Louis is interviewed about the new commission on the burqa and niqab, set to give its recommendations in December 2009. Bowen describes other European positions against the burqa and how it has trespassed French…
Speaker: JOHN BOWEN, Chair, Social Thought and Analysis & Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis; Commentators: JOCELYNE CESARI, Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Director of Harvard’s Islam in the West Program; MARY LEWIS, History Department, Harvard University; AMY WALDMAN, “The Atlantic” and Fellow at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Sponsor:…
The French government’s 2004 decision to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious signs from public schools puzzled many observers, both because it seemed to infringe needlessly on religious freedom, and because it was hailed by many in France as an answer to a surprisingly wide range of social ills, from violence against females in poor…
