Unveiled: The burqa, hijab and niqab
Apparently, the burqa makes its first public appearance in the Bible. In Genesis chapter 38.14 and 15. ‘ she took off her widow’s garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto to him to wife. When Judah saw her, he thought her to be a harlot, because she had covered her face.
The Quran, apparently does not prescribe the burqa. What it commands is that both men and women must behave modestly and contains no precise prescription for how women should dress. Certain Quranic verses have been used in discussions of face veiling. Coming after a verse which instructs men to lower their gaze and guard their modesty, verse 24:31 instructs women to do the same. It says in verse 24:31: Tell the believing women to lower their eyes, guard their private parts (furuj), and not display their charms (zina) except what is apparent outwardly, and cover their bosoms with their veils (khumur, sing. khimar) and not to show their finery except to their husbands or their fathers or fathers-in-law…
Even as Muslims here justify the keeping of swords to safeguard their womenfolk, the ‘mantle verse 33:59 has been used security as the reason for the veil to fall on a woman’s face. O Prophet, tell your wives and daughters, and the women of the faithful, to draw their wraps (jalabib, sing. jilbab) over them.”
France was the first country in the western world to start the burn the burqa campaign. And in 2004 students were banned from displaying any sort of religious symbol. In 2011, the government went further by bringing in a total public ban on full-face veils. President Nicolas Sarkozy saying they were “not welcome” in France.
The burqa appears to have originated in Persia in the 10th century, before slowly spreading to the Arabian Peninsula and present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Islamic scholars who hold that face veiling is not obligatory also base this on a narration from one of the canonical hadith which are sayings attributed to Muhammad, in which he tells ‘when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this", pointing to her face and hands.
In Arabia, a variant known as the "niqab" was promoted by the ultra-conservative Wahhabi school of Islam; in South Asia, the burqa was adopted by the Deobandis, the local strand of fundamentalism.
When the Taliban captured Kabul and seized power over most of Afghanistan in 1996, they made it compulsory for all women to wear the burqa.
Elsewhere in the Muslim world, the garment remained largely unknown until relatively recently. It was the rise of the Wahhabi and Deobandi traditions which spread the burqa to areas where it was previously invisible, including West Africa.
Hardly any women wore the burqa in West Africa until two or three decades ago.
Some of the nations that have banned the burka are: Austria, Denmark, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chad, Gabon, the Netherlands, Morocco and Sri Lanka.