Across Europe there have been growing tensions surrounding the Muslim practice of wearing hijab, niqab and jilbab in schools. In France, heated debate on this issue has resulted in the passing of the law banning all religious symbols in public institutions; in England, individual cases have been tried before human rights courts; and in Sweden schools now have the right to expel students who wear burqa or niqab. Even in those countries where hijab and other religious symbols are permitted in schools, there nonetheless has been much discussion over those sartorial practices on the part of Muslim students and teachers that cover the face in whole or in part (burqa and niqab in particular). For example, girls have been asked to remove their veils in order to prove their identities when sitting for state examinations and student teachers have been asked to leave their placement schools unless they comply with the request to unveil. One of the reasons frequently given in supporting the rejection of such practices in schools is that hiding the face hinders communication. On this account, the visibility of the face is seen to be necessary on the grounds that “reading” the facial expressions of others is central to sound communicative practices. Coupled with the perception of these “veiling” practices as being indicative of profound sexual inequality, the Muslim girls and women who veil bear a double stigmatization within western liberal democratic states, and especially in public institutions, such as schools. This paper explores philosophically the assumptions that underlie the claim that veiling hinders communication. I particularly focus on the themes of visibility and reading and relate these to specific examples drawn from the Swedish and UK contexts. The aim of the paper is to analyze critically, through the work of Emmanuel Levinas (1985, 1999) and Luce Irigaray (1993, 2001), the fixation with vision and the visible as a Western epistemological trope that seeks to master the other through discourse. It further discusses the phenomenon of the face in Levinas’s ethics in relation to the limits of “reading” facial expression, and draws on Irigaray’s feminist approach to elaborate on the specifically gendered nature of the demand for visibility.

This paper employs a critical philosophical approach to the assumptions underlying the claim that veiling hinders communication. It reads specific examples through the lens of Levinasian ethics and the feminist philosophy of Luce Irigaray.

Through this investigation, I seek to clarify the terms upon which Muslim girls’ and women’s veiling practices are seen as being provocative to liberal democratic sensibilities and explore the ways in which claims for visibility operate in public debate on veiling in schools. The paper concludes with a series of reflections of how we might reframe the “veiling question” to include a more self-reflective, self-critical appraisal of the demand for visibility in education.