Kanye 2020 | Page 15

Religious Intolerance or Racial Intolerance?

Western countries are imbued with discourse of “saving and protecting” Muslim or brown women from their men, religion and culture. However, the issues and moral problems projected by these western reporters and politicians fail to adjust their viewpoint or reframe the issue to properly evaluate and examine the other side. The final two chapters of…

Varied Tolerance

While the vehement push for secularization which brought upon Turkey’s nearly century-long headscarf ban is distinct from the sluggish withdrawal of overt religiosity in American society, the disposition of the Dutch in their own debates provides a telling juxtaposition to America’s attempts at religious tolerance. As Korteweg and Yurdakul explain, the Netherlands’ tolerance is borne…

When Meaning Varies

“The Headscarf Debates” is true to its name in the way that it examines the arguments that headscarves can be symbols of oppression, or symbols of cultural heritage and religious pride. The writers note that there are certainly ways in which the headscarf is perceived as a symbol of domestic and gendered oppression, but they…

It’s not enough, France.

While reading The Headscarf Debates I connected it to the European Migrant Crisis, it will be interesting to compare this book to the current policies these countries are adopting. The pressure on European countries to accept more migrants is being accelerated by the European Union. In May, German and European Union leaders proposed a quota…

A Discussion on Interpretation

I had the opportunity to attend the event “The Flag: Navigating Southern Identity, Race, and Symbolism” last Wednesday evening in Wait Chapel. Melissa Harris-Perry, professor at Wake Forest University, led the discussion regarding how a woman, Bree Newsome removed the confederate flag outside the South Carolina Statehouse, with a man, James Ian Tyson watching her…

The Confederate Flag and American National Belonging

In their study, The Headscarf Debates: Conflicts of National Belonging, Anna Korteweg and Gokce Yurdakul “show how such seemingly individual statements and actions have reverberated through national debates in ways that have enabled vigorous rearticulations of the meanings and conflicts of national belonging.” Thus, the actions of three French teenagers, who showed up wearing headscarfs…

One Woman’s Symbol of Oppression is Another Woman’s Expression of Religiosity

The event “The Flag: Navigating Southern Identity, Race, and Symbolism” demonstrated the malleability of the meaning of cultural symbols. Bree Newsome’s assertion that the flag has been a symbol of slavery, racial violence, and racial discrimination to her and much of the African American population throughout her entire life sharply contrasted with a comment of…

We Don’t Always Mean What We Say

The French government seems to contradict itself in terms of their ideologies and the acceptance of headscarves. Korteweg and Yurdakul begin the headscarf discussion by identifying that the term “headscarf” is loosely used to identify a variety of head garments such as the hijab and burka. This means that every head garment is not equal,…

Idyllic Ideality

The first two chapters of The Headscarf Debates frame the expression of identity – as conveyed through the Muslim headscarf – within the ever-evolving narrative of nationality. In doing so, Korteweg and Yurdakul locate within the French quest for anti-communalist unanimity the concerted suppression of individuality. Ideally that unanimity would be characteristically bland in nature,…

The Struggle

In The Headscarf Debates, Anna C. Korteweg and Gokce Yurdakul discuss the politics of wearing a headscarf in four European countries and how this impacts national belonging. The authors define belonging “as the subjective feeling of being at home in one’s country…(3)” Chapter two addresses France’s actions toward banning headscarves in schools and the burka…