1 A Tale of Two Approaches

The recognition of newcomers’ religious freedom belongs to the plethora of challenges of contemporary plural societies. While the issue concerns both women and men of all religions and beliefs,Footnote 1 old and new migration flows to the “Western World” have particularly affected Muslim women’s and girls’ religious norm-following behaviours.

Limiting the analysis to the European Union (EU) context, the rise in legislation banning headscarves and/or full-face veils prevents Muslim women and girls from accessing workplaces, education, public institutions, public spaces, and ultimately from social inclusion in many countries. Different rationales justify the prohibition, on the one hand, of headscarves and, on the other hand, of full-face veils (see Para. 2 and Para. 3 of the present chapter). However, they originate from the same othering process distinguishing between “us” and “them”. To be sure, in the present article, I don’t intend to deny that there are Muslim women forced to wear these pieces of clothing, nor to underestimate their struggles to not wear them; here I want to refer to those who freely choose to adhere to religious norms and decide to express their faith through symbols in European plural societies. Particularly concerning full-face veils, though, I agree with Dolores Morondo Taramundi that the issue goes well beyond the wide dichotomous view “agency/emancipation and oppression/coercion” (Taramundi 2015, 60), as I’ll explain at the end of this paragraph.

The last largest survey on Muslim minorities across Europe, published by the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency (EUFRA) in 2017,Footnote 2 highlights that only Muslim women (not men) feel discriminated against in healthcare (EUFRA 2017, 33). These women also declare that they feel discriminated against to a larger degree than men in employment—both in the job search and at the workplace in particular because of their clothing (Ivi, 24; cf. 11). Collected data show that Muslim women who don’t wear a headscarf or niqab in public are employed to a larger extent (Ivi, 30) and are less likely to face bias-motivated harassment (Ivi, 41) than those who do.

On the contrary, Muslim women appear less exposed than men to being stopped by the police (Ivi, 15).

These results are not surprising and may be explained by the representations of “Muslim-looking” women and men in European societies. While the former are perceived as oppressed, the latter ones are portrayed as dangerous.

Extensive scholarly literature has addressed the topic from two prominent perspectives.

One body of literature frames the subject within the liberal feminism vis a vis multiculturalism debate. Susan Moller Okin’s essay “Is multiculturalism bad for women”? raised a wide range of replies by scholars holding diverging views on recognising or accommodating “others” practices and beliefs, collected in the eponymous book of 1999 (see also Okin 1998).

The friction within the debate is clearly visible concerning identity politics acknowledged to communities perceived as oppressive towards their members (“minorities within minorities”, Eisenberg and Spinner-Halev 2005), e.g., women, children, gender non-conforming individuals. By focusing on inter-group moral equality, multiculturalism scholars have been criticised for overlooking intra-group inequalities. Furthermore, politics based on group rights entail the risk of reproducing an essentialist, statical and monolithic view of minorities as immune to intra-group contentions or evolving dynamics.

Liberal feminists don’t seem reassured even by the liberal theory of multiculturalism, based on equality and inclusive justice for groups’ members, elaborated by Will Kymlicka (1999; cf. Kymlicka 1989, 1995a, b, 1995a)Footnote 3: he maintains that claims of “external protections” from majority society’s economic and political power should go hand in hand with and reject “internal restrictions” to group members (1999, 31). This conceptualisation should, at least potentially, reconcile the respect for universal human rights inspired by liberalism—including gender equality—, that cannot be renounced, and the sense of belonging to own communities.Footnote 4

However, the liberal feminist critique of multiculturalism extends well beyond identity politics. It raises the radical question of the primacy of universal human rights and freedoms over cultural, religious or other minorities’ norms, practices or beliefs, leading to a potential or actual infringement on them. The feminist liberal approach taken towards Muslim women’s wearing headscarves—and more so—full-faced veils questions the effective exercise of their free choice and autonomy: in this sense, oppression equates coercion by one or more members of the family/community by reproducing the stereotype of inherently violent communities. Furthermore, even when they are not forced to use religious symbols by men (or women) of their family or community under the threat of social sanctions, they are conceived as lacking choice on the assumption of their full internalisation of patriarchal norms and “false consciousness”, or “deceitful awareness” or “servitude volontaire” (Edwards 2012; Lépinard 2011; Nussbaum 2010; Taramundi 2015). Being unaware victims, they need to be saved.

The “double standard” used to assess Muslim women’s and—loosely said—non-Muslim women’s autonomy not only reproduces stereotyped representations about them but, even unintentionally, delegitimises their own choices. In more recent times, the hypervisibility of Muslim women in the public discourse has been analysed in relation to femonationalism (Farris 2017), i.e., the “instrumentalisation” of migrant women’s rights in Europe by different but intertwining social actors (e.g., right-wing nationalists, neoliberals and some women’s equality bodies/groups) to pursue their political agenda, by portraying Muslim communities as intrinsically patriarchal and oppressive.

The second body of studies relies on intersectionality, defined by Black legal scholar and activist Kimberlé W. Crenshaw (1989) as a heuristic device (Crenshaw 2011) to bring forward criticism of the liberal principle of formal equality and related paradigm of sameness/difference used by North American courts of the time to rule on discrimination cases concerning Black women. For instance, by applying a mono-categorical approach—based on either race or gender—and comparing the treatment of Black female workers separately with that of either Black male or White female workers, the specific gender-race violation of rights was overlooked.

Intersectionality has travelled across disciplines and borders ever since and has been largely applied to analyse Muslim women’s religious freedom in Europe, making them “the privileged subjects for European intersectional analysis” (Davis 2019, 116; cf. Bilge 2010; Chapman 2016; Davis and Zarkov 2017) and as “epitomizing intersectionality” (Schiek 2018, 84).

Wearing the headscarf or the full-face veil makes the experience of Muslim women (ontologically) “qualitatively different”—a crucial characteristic of intersectionality—from both Muslim men and non-Muslim women or Muslim women who don’t use religious symbols. This specific type of discrimination can be uncovered by considering jointly gender and religion.

Dagmar Schiek (2018, 96) pointedly suggests considering the process of racialisation of Muslim women in European societies as well, recalling that the affiliation to a religious group often becomes a proxy for ethnicity and otherness (see also McColgan 2014; cf. CIJ 2019; on the “racialization of religion”, see Meer 2012). To be clear, not all Muslim women have a migration background, but the legal status of many of them—e.g., permit to stay as Third Country Nationals (TCNs) and/or their citizenship—intersects the gender-religion-ethnicity lines, challenging their chances to meet the requirements to access a more stable legal status in EU countries.

Differently from liberal feminists (Okin 1999), scholars (feminists or not) relying on intersectionality depart from liberalism and identify its very flaws, namely the primacy of formal equality—following Aristotle’s principle of treating like cases alike—over substantive equality; and the adoption of universal, abstract and neutral criteria that are blind to differences, especially to those generated by intersecting categories of identity, and have a disparate impact on specific human beings.

In fact, even when legislation or policies don’t refer to any specific religion or belief and are framed in neutral terms based on secularism, Muslim women wearing a headscarf (at the workplace) or a full-face veil in public spaces are disproportionally impacted, and their substantive equality is affected (CIJ 2019, 29).

Concerning the full-face veil, Taramundi suggests departing from the focus on intersectional discrimination against women who voluntarily wear the face-veil and delving into intertwining oppressive systems and structures in relation to which women can freely decide. Relying on Iris Marion Young’s (1990) concept of oppression, Taramundi’s view implies two shifts: from oppression as coercion to oppression as “practices, norms and values of societies and societal groups, as well as their structural and institutional characteristics” (Taramundi 2015, 61); from intersectional identities to interlocking power relations and the decision-making space Muslim women concretely enjoy expressing their will, which is not “contingent on a woman’s consent” (Ibidem).

Following Kimberlé W. Crenshaw’s idea of intersectionality, I suggest that both subjective and structural dimensions, as well as dynamic interactions between them, should be taken into account. An intersectional perspective may then shed light on (a) how Muslim women are perceived and “socially constructed” (see “representational intersectionality”, Crenshaw 1991); (b) intragroup and intergroup relations in contemporary societies; (c) as well as normalised intertwining norms at the structural level.

2 The Muslim Veil at the Workplace

The right to work and non-discrimination belong to the fundamental principles of the EU: apart from the EU Treaties (Art. 2 and 3 of the TEU and Art. 10, 19 and 48 of the TFEU), the EUCFR provides that “[n]ationals of third countries who are authorised to work in the territories of the Member States are entitled to working conditions equivalent to those of citizens of the Union” (Art. 15(3)) “and any discrimination based on, inter alia, sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, religion or belief shall be prohibited” (Art. 21).

Antidiscrimination DirectivesFootnote 5 have led EU Member States to adopt national legislation or adapt them consistently to prevent and sanction discrimination at work and, limited to specific grounds, in other spheres (Havelková and Möschel 2019). The legal, socio-legal, and legal philosophy interest in intersectional discrimination in Europe has been boosted by the non-binding Preambles of Directives 2000/43/EC and 2000/78/EC, which suggest to “promote equality between men and women, especially since women are often the victims of multiple discrimination” (respectively, Whereas 14 and Whereas 3) in implementing the principle of equal treatment.

For clarity’s sake, it is worth mentioning that “multiple discrimination” (also “discrimination on multiple grounds”) is a different factual experience and legal category from “intersectional discrimination”, but the former term has prevailed for a long time in the EU context, notwithstanding legal scholars’ commitment in raising awareness of the relevance to distinguish between them in terms of legal protection (Makkonen 2002; Fredman 2016; in Italian, see Bello 2020).

The specific focus on intersectionality/intersectional discrimination concerning Muslim women can be found in the recently adopted European Parliament Resolution of July 6, 2022, though this is only soft law. However, this text deserves attention for the subject of the present essay for three reasons. First, it marks a departure from the terminology used in previous soft law documents addressing minority women, including migrant women and mentioning Muslim women via multiple discrimination (see European Parliament Resolution of 2003, Para 11). Secondly, it can be considered the first legal text in the EU to clarify the difference between intersectional and multiple discrimination (Whereas B). Last, it takes a step forward in the intersectional approach to Muslim women if compared with the EU Court of Justice (EUCJ)’s judgements, as I’ll explain below.

In fact, it underlines how policies concerning religious symbols and clothing are rooted in prejudices and “trigger unequal treatment and multiply the related barriers, which have a particularly negative impact on Muslim women when accessing the labour market and housing and excluding them from the public space and any form of meaningful participation in societal processes and decisions, thereby keeping them in a precarious socio-economic situation” (Whereas S). To provide evidence about their specific conditions, it also recalls the EUFRA’s data of 2017 (Whereas AC).

The distance from the Resolution of 2003 is visible from another perspective too. At the time, the recommendation to Member States was to particularly consider.

Muslim women and adopt measures to protect them “against violation of their human rights, in religious communities, and against practices that hinder their education, training, employment, advancement and, above all, integration in the host countries” (Para. 15). In other words, the concern seems to have shifted from intra-group relations in 2003 to societal stereotypes that prevent them from accessing rights in different areas of their life in 2022.

However, the reasoning of the EUCJ has not endorsed an intersectional perspective in any of the four judgements ruled on wearing religious symbols at the workplace so far: Achbita v. G4S Secure Solutions NV and Bougnaoui v. Micropole SA, 14 March 2017; IX v. WABE eV and MH Müller Handels GmbH v. MJ, 15 July 2021. All cases referred to the Luxembourg Court by national judges concern Muslim female workers who, in different moments of their life and work experience, didn’t comply with the employer’s neutrality policy.

Although concrete facts and requests for a preliminary ruling by the EUCJ differ from case to case, the legal issues raised by the Islamic headscarf are well explained by the Opinions of Advocates General (AG). It is well-known that these documents usually offer a more thorough analysis of the cases if compared to the conciseness of the judgements. In 2017, AG Juliane Kokott (Achbita case) considered that the.

Islamic headscarf is “symbolic of the more fundamental question of how much difference and diversity an open and pluralistic European society must tolerate within its borders and, conversely, how much assimilation it is permitted to require from certain minorities” (Para. 3 of the Opinion). In 2021, AG Athanasios Rantos (cases of 2021, considered jointly) urged the Court to provide a “uniform interpretation of the principle of non-discrimination when applying Directive 2000/78/EC and the need to afford discretion to the Member States, given the diversity of their approaches as regards the place of religion in a democratic society” (Para. 4 of the Opinion).

All in all, a balance must be found between employees’ fundamental principle of religion freedom, expressed through symbols (forum externum), and the principle of freedom to conduct a business (Art. 16 EUCFR), which allows imposing neutrality policies on employees.

The Opinions of the Achbita and Bougnaoui cases are also worth mentioning because the AGs take different stances regarding “religious identity”, although the suggested solutions for both cases are similar. In the former case, AG Kokott maintains that “[w]hile an employee cannot ‘leave’ his sex, skin colour, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or disability ‘at the door’ upon entering his employer’s premises, he may be expected to moderate the exercise of his religion in the workplace, be this in relation to religious practices, religiously motivated behaviour or (as in the present case) his clothing” (Para. 116). In the latter case, AG Eleanor V.E. Sharpston disagrees with this view and considers “religious identity [as] an integral part of that person’s very being. The requirements of one’s faith—its discipline and the rules that it lays down for conducting one’s life—are not elements that are to be applied when outside work (say, in the evenings and during weekends for those who are in an office job) but that can politely be discarded during working hours” (Para. 118).

She also recalls the variety of views surrounding the headscarf. These views could vary from being a “feminist statement […] to be a Muslim who wishes to manifest her faith in that way” (Para. 75) or “a symbol of oppression of women” (Ibidem), suggesting that the EUCJ should not conclude that the wearing of the headscarf is an inherently oppressive practice just because it might be so on some occasions.

For the purpose of this chapter, I’ll focus here directly on the decisions adopted by the EUCJ on neutrality policies only (more in detail, see Protopapa 2017; Schiek 2018). In the Achbita case, it was to the national court to ascertain whether the employer’s neutrality rule did amount to indirect discrimination, i.e., which would occur when “the apparently neutral obligation imposes results, in fact, in persons adhering to a particular religion or belief being put at a particular disadvantage, unless it is objectively justified by a legitimate aim, such as the pursuit by the employer, in its relations with its customers, of a policy of political, philosophical and religious neutrality, and the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary” (Para. 45 Achbita, emphasis added). In the Bougnaoui case, this point was not the core issue, but the Court aligned to the Achbita case (Para. 33 of the Judgement).

I agree with Filip Dorssemont (2022) that in 2021 the EUCJ seems to take some further steps regarding neutrality policies if compared to 2017, by more clearly articulating when a differential treatment that is indirectly based on religion or belief—provided for by an employer’s policy pursuing a policy of political, philosophical and religious neutrality and hindering workers from wearing “any visible sign of political, philosophical or religious beliefs in the workplace” (Para, 92(2))—may be justified. It also clarifies that a provision that prohibits only the wearing of “conspicuous, large-sized symbols of political, philosophical or religious beliefs” is likely to account for direct discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief and cannot be justified by any means (Para. 92(3)).

Interestingly, the referring court in the Wabe case frames the questions concerning indirect discrimination “against a female employee who, due to her Muslim faith, wears a headscarf” by recalling both “religion and/or gender” (Para. 34(2)), opening room for intersectional reasoning. However, the case was not approached from a gender perspective because this type of discrimination is covered by Directive 2006/54/EC rather than by Directive 2000/78/EC (covering, inter alia, religion or belief), regarding which the interpretation of the Court is asked by the national judges.

In all judgements, the EUCJ takes an “intersectionality-blind” eye to the cases, raising criticisms by scholars and part of the civil society (ex plurimis, Schiek 2018; Šeta 2016; cf. Bello 2020; Jackson 2021). Overall, the Court does not delve into Muslim women’s specific needs by affirming that neutrality policies equally target all religions and beliefs. This “overtly westernised concept of secularism” (Jackson 2021) overlooks the “cultural space” (Ibidem) of the Islamic headscarf.

Firstly, it does not ensure protection for the “whole” person (Moon 2011; cf. in Italian see Ferrari et al. 2022). By comparing the concrete situations on the basis of either gender or religion, the Court fails to grasp the full expression of Muslim women’s identity to decide to wear the headscarf. If the comparison had jointly occurred on gender-religion, then the peculiar differential treatment would have emerged.

Secondly, it does not consider the condition of Muslim women from a lower socioeconomic background, who face the extra dilemma of choosing between following their own religion in the way they want to (with the consequence of losing their job) and keeping their work by being denied a fundamental part of their identity, feeling that they are not following religious norms important to them and, possibly, facing isolation in their own communities (Jackson 2019).

In the light of the above, a binding provision on intersectional discrimination could have hopefully led to different reasonings and judgements.

In my view, AG Sharpston’s suggestion that “employer and employee will need to explore the options together in order to arrive at a solution that accommodates both the employee’s right to manifest his religious belief and the employer’s right to conduct his business” (Para. 128) appears more like a wishful thinking that underestimates the asymmetric power relations characterising labour contracts and the representation of Islam/Muslim women in European societies. It is not a case that the needs of those who want to wear a veil at the workplace are often accommodated in alternative job tasks that do not involve face-to-face contact with the public: they are hidden and made invisible (see also Para. 108 of AG Kokott’s Opinion). While this solution ensures they maintain their job, it is far from recognising their moral equality in society.

3 Covering Own’s Face in Public Spaces

Wearing a full-face veil in public spaces raises different concerns from those analysed in the previous paragraph. The notion of “public space” can undergo conceptual stretching: the wider it is understood, the narrower Muslim women’s opportunities to move outside their homes. Inspired by Jurgen Habermas’s distinction between the political and institutional public spaces (Habermas 2006), Silvio Ferrari (2012 and 2013) tries to deconstruct this concept and rearticulates it around the different functions of three kinds of public spaces in contemporary social interactions, namely “common spaces”, “political spaces” and “institutional spaces”.

The first (common space) covers streets, squares and other areas that every person has to enter to carry out basic activities of daily life; therefore, they should be as accessible as possible without restrictions, having the effect of marginalising all those people who wouldn’t feel at ease to move through it if their overt cultural norms are not allowed.

The second one (political space) is the locus of debate and discussion, where public discourse is framed: e.g., old and new media and political meetings. According to the scholar, these spaces should also be free and plural in democratic societies. The only places that could have prohibitions are institutional ones, embodying coercive deliberations: e.g., public administration, parliament, and law courts. However, this is not what occurs in common and political spaces in many European countries (Mancini 2018), and this situation has led to defining Islamophobia as “respectable racism” (Khemilat 2021, 214).

While some national legislation invokes secularism (e.g., France) to prohibit this clothing in public spaces, other legislation does not address religion per se; however, it can justify restrictions to preserve public security. One example is Art. 5 of the Italian Law “Provisions to Preserve the Public Order” n. 152 of 24 May 1975. It was adopted during the Seventies due to internal terrorism, prohibiting people from covering their faces with full-face helmets or masks in public to protect public order. In Italy, being a country of emigrants rather than immigrants at the time, this provision did not aim to target Muslim women, but it has been largely used by regional/local authorities to address them in more recent times (Mancini 2013, 2018, 2017). Such “policies”—here understood loosely to encompass both interventions and discursive practices—stem from the “threat” of Islamic radicalisation, representing itself as a menace to European/national identity (Inglis and Almila 2020) and Muslim communities as “enemies to fight”, by overshadowing religious identity and freedom. Public and media discourses are often framed as concerning Muslim women’s oppression and rights. From a purely Western perspective, it may be difficult to understand why women should freely opt to wear this clothing.

Lastly, the role of face-to-face interaction in “our” societies is at the centre of the well-known case of S.A.S v. France before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR),Footnote 6 which also has turned a blind eye to intersectionality when dealing with this clothing. In its landmark judgement, the Court of Strasbourg ruled that there was no violation of Art. 8 (“Right to respect for private and family life”), Art. 9 (“Freedom of thought, conscience and religion”), Art. 10 (“Freedom of expression”), and Art. 14 (“Prohibition of discrimination”) taken in conjunction with Art. 8, Art. 9 or Art. 10, by the French bill banning a full-face veil in public.

The explanatory memorandum accompanying this bill focuses on the relevance of “living together”, which the ECtHR carefully examines (Para. 121), based on the consideration that “face plays an important role in social interaction” (Para. 122) and that a full-face veil may hinder interpersonal socialisation. In other words, wearing this clothing would breach “the right of others to live in a space of socialisation which makes living together easier” (Ibidem).

Several third-party interventions explained why the impact of banning a full-face veil on Muslim women could be entirely grasped only by considering gender-race jointly (CIJ 2019, 23).

For instance, Amnesty International’s intervention shows that Muslim women “might experience a distinct form of discrimination [intersectional discrimination] due to the intersection of sex with other factors such as religion, and such discrimination might express itself, in particular, in the form of stereotyping of sub-groups of women […] [and] restrictions on the wearing of headscarves or veils might impair the right to work, the right to education and the right to equal protection of the law, and might contribute to acts of harassment and violence” (Para. 90).

In the same manner, the association “Article 19” recalls the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief in his 2011 interim report, according to which “the prohibition on sex-based discrimination was often invoked in favour of banning the full-face veil, whereas such prohibitions might lead to intersectional discrimination against Muslim women” (Para. 93). The organisation further explains that legislation banning a full-face veil may have the unintended effect to confine and isolate the women who wear it to their homes and exclude them from public life. It also highlights that “the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, in particular, had recently recommended that Member States should not opt for general bans on the wearing of the full-face veil in public” (Ibidem).

Also, the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University reiterates that “in addition to constituting a disproportionate interference with freedom of religion, the ban generated indirect and intersectional discrimination on grounds of religion and sex, endorsed stereotypes and disregarded the fact that veiled women made up a vulnerable minority group which required particular attention” (Para. 97).

Differently from the majority of the judges in the S.A.S. v. France case, the Joint Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judges Nussberger and Jäderblom finds a violation of both Art. 8 and Art. 9 and explains how individual rights are sacrificed to abstract principles in this case. The criminalisation of the wearing of a full-face veil touches upon “the right to one’s own cultural and religious identity, is not necessary in a democratic society” (Para. 1) and is deemed.

“disproportionate to the aim of protecting the idea of “living together”—an aim which cannot readily be reconciled with the Convention’s restrictive catalogue of grounds for interference with basic human rights” (Para. 25).

Interestingly, the unexpected experience of wearing a sanitary mask generated by the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that, despite all challenges, we can still “live together” in public spaces—namely in common, political and even in institutional places, as Ferrari puts it. To be sure, the obligation to wear it was an emergency and temporary measure to protect public health but, not surprisingly, the coexistence of bans on a full-face veil worn for religious purposes and duties to wear the mask for public health reasons has stimulated a vivid debate around the world. Mario Ricca (2020, 1124; cf. Inglis, Almila 2020) pointedly underlines the social paradox raised by the fact that “covering one’s own face, simultaneously, turns out to be an obstacle against ‘living together in public spaces’ and an essential tool ‘to live together in public spaces’” in many countries (e.g., France, Austria; to a certain extent Germany, Luxembourg, Spain). By allowing, encouraging or making mandatory face masks in public spaces, where a full-face veil was forbidden, “unveils” “a societal-level hypocrisy” (Inglis and Almila 2020, 256) to say the least, and the “real intentions behind the ban” (El Morabet 2020) even in cases in which legislation prohibiting it is phrased in neutral and general terms.

The difference in either legislation’s rationale—banning the full-face veil and imposing the sanitary mask—has been used as a counter-argument to this only apparent paradox since wearing the mask concerns “us all” (women and men worldwide), collectively and universally, in order to prevent and tackle the spreading of COVID-19, while wearing the full-face veil regards just a narrow subset of people in “our societies” driven by their own religion.

In my view, from a human rights perspective, this counter-argument does not suffice because health and religious freedom are two fundamental rights per se, independent from the number of people concretely affected. More profound reasons need to be explored, which are linked with conscious and unconscious biases and forged by Western-centric discourses. For this purpose, it has been underlined that face covering is “a multilayered signifier due to its different functions” (Taleb 2020, 743). COVID-19 has shown that perceptions of this practice as acceptable or not may change over time, depending on the “who” and the “why” it occurs and, ultimately, on the stereotypes about certain communities in our societies.

Furthermore, as far as religious symbols as the full-face veil are concerned, they show “a complex reality embodying a plurality of meaning […] that, on a case-by-case basis, depend on the person who displays the symbol and the person who views it” (Ferrari 2013, 14).

During the pandemic, some Muslim women pointed out that they felt less targeted for personal attacks (Inglis, and Almila 2020, 256) and hoped that people could even sympathise with them, having experienced the need to cover their faces in public (Fareed 2020). The question of Muslim women’s “need” to wear a full-face veil remains an open question, but a look at “the intersectional positioning of Muslim women […] on axes of power” (Khemilat 2021, 223) may at least help to shed light on the impact of abstract gender-religion blind policies/legislations, concretely racialising and othering them.

4 Reimagining Muslim Women and Their Rights

Following Georg Simmel’s intuition on the “stranger” (Simmel 1908, 509; cf. Rigo 2020, in a gender perspective), newcomers in EU societies are persons “who come today and stays tomorrow. [They are] fixed within a particular spatial group, or within a group whose boundaries are similar to spatial boundaries. But [their] position in this group is determined, essentially, by the fact that [they have] not belonged to it from the beginning, that [they] import qualities into it that do not and cannot originate from the group itself” (my translation). Newcomers’ distance from “us” is emphasised by their nearness to “us” (Ibidem). Muslim female migrants travel with their beliefs, norms, values, traditions and, therefore, confront contemporary societies about our “distance” and “nearness” in daily interactions. The baggage that travels with them, however, should not be caged in assumedly homogeneous boxes but rather be intended as plural themselves. As far as religion is concerned, when opening this luggage, we will find many different clothes and garments, among which headscarves and full-face veils amount to just part of the whole. Religion freedom in all its forms (including atheism or agnosticism) shapes people’s identity and Weltanschauung. The way how certain groups and symbols are represented in public discourse and incessantly mediatised hinders both a human rights approach that jointly considers gender-religious needs as well as intragroup/intergroup relations, and tackling the racialisation/othering of women belonging to religious groups perceived as a threat to “our” identity. At this point in our history, we need to stop imagining Muslim women through paternalistic and colonial repertoires and re-imagining them starting from the rich variety of instances they bring to our society.