Heads you lose

A couple of weeks ago I was waiting in line in the post office and ahead of me there was an elderly lady of the old-fashioned kind one sees alo tin my poart of Edinburgh. She was wearing a headsquare just like the one my mother used to wear when we went out shopping in the 1950s and early 1960s. Indeed, all our female neighbours wore similar head coverings when they went out. It was what you did. It was considered proper. It was a social norm, and clearly for some Edinburgh ladies it still is.

So why is there so much fuss about Islamic headscarves (hijabs)? I can understand why there is controversy over face veils (niqabs), but headscarves? They're no more alien to our own traditions than wearing underwear.

I would have liked to see one of our self-styled defenders of women's freedoms trying to persuade my mother that she was oppressed by a religious patriarchy. My mother had four older brothers, a husband and two sons. She was intensely Christian (in the Church of England way), highly energetic (in defence of her family and her religion) and took absolutely no crap from anyone, ever.

Here are a few good articles on the hijab:

here
here
here
and here.