From Tunis to Tehran, the great veil debate

Part of the discrepancy among countries may be due to the fact that veiling – a term used here to refer to a whole range of practices from covering the hair to concealing everything but the eyes – stems from various cultural traditions that predate Islam. Faegheh Shirazi, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, points out in her book, "The Veil Unveiled," that the practice has ebbed and flowed in importance throughout the ages.

Ms. Shirazi, who was born in Iran – where the head scarf has been required since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 – says she is just as concerned about admonitions against the veil as she is with requirements that it be donned. In either case, she argues that freedom to make that choice should be paramount in any just society.

"Whenever states get involved with it, it gets worse,'' says Shirazi, who doesn't cover her hair. "Take the example of the Islamic Republic [of Iran]. When you push women so far, they become very innovative; They come up with things that Khomeini never would have predicted."

Just as in countries where the veil is frowned upon, some women have taken it up as a way to distance themselves from what they feel is illegitimate or immoral, so, too, do many women in the cosmopolitan parts of Iran push the boundaries of what is allowed by the state, artfully draping their head coverings to reveal as much hair as they can get away with.

Women are, of course, just as artful in fighting restrictions on the veil. After Turkey in 2000 banned wearing head scarves for driver's-license photos, many women simply took to using computer programs to insert images of hair over their scarves.

Shirazi remembers hearing from a Turkish professor friend that women in Turkey are sometimes barred for covering their hair during exams.

"I thought that was very interesting," she says. "It's covering her hair, not her brain. You're barring her from education for this reason? That's not empowerment."

That's just the tip of the seeming contradictions surrounding veiling practices.

Commonly seen by Westerners as a means of controlling or even oppressing women, veiling, in its own way, is also a practical means of increasing influence and access in some cultures.

Farzaneh Milani, a literature professor at the University of Virginia and author of "Veils and Words," points out that veiled women today are much more integrated in society.

She contrasts the Iran of her grandmother's time, in which many women withdrew from society after Reza Shah banned the veil in 1936 – going to public baths only in sacks on the backs of their husbands or sons – with that of modern Egypt, where the choice of women covering their hair puts their families at ease about the fate of their daughters out in public society.

"The veil of my grandmother was different from the veil of the women you see on the streets of Egypt today, who are out seeking education, working, having their pictures taken," she says. "It's a very different issue."

In Egypt in the past 20 years, some middle-class families have watched aghast as their daughters have taken to covering their hair under the influence of popular television preachers like Amr Khaled.

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