The majority of Muslim women in Ontario who wear the niqab chose to do so after arriving in Canada and without receiving any encouragement from family members, suggests a study regarding use of the cloth face-covering veil.
Conducted by a team including Concordia University professor Lynda Clarke and the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, the study found many of the women who responded to the study were well-educated and expressed significant patriotism and attachment to Canada.
The study was prompted by a feeling by many Muslims in Canada and elsewhere that although niqab use in Canada has spurred various controversies over the years, nobody has spent much time asking women themselves why they decide to wear it.
“We were getting a lot of media calls and people asking us to speak at various conferences, but we ended up feeling guilty because we were making assumptions that we knew why these women were wearing it.” Council executive director Alia Hogben said.
Hogben will visit Guelph Feb. 16 to discuss the results of the study at the mosque on Water Street.
The study involved gathering survey responses or conducting interviews with as many niqab wearers as the researchers could find. They eventually connected with 81 mostly Ontarian women, several of them from the Waterloo-Wellington area.
The Ontario Trillium Foundation gave the Canadian Council of Muslim Women $191,000 between 2011 and 2013 to conduct research into why Muslim women in Ontario wear the veil. The council sought out women through a popular web forum they maintain and asked representatives in mosques throughout the province to encourage niqab wearers to participate.
Hogben concedes there are likely far more women in the province who wear the niqab than researchers could locate, especially in parts of Toronto.
“We tried to make inroads there but we didn’t get very far. We only had a certain period of time. It may be a partial picture, but it’s accurate and solid,” Hogben said.
Study authors wrote that the small sample size and the fact that participants had to be computer literate and proficient in English in order to participate, meant it is “not possible to draw firm conclusions from the statistics gathered in the study.”
A majority of the women who participated said they began wearing the veil after turning 18, and most foreign-born respondents said they only began wearing the niqab after arriving in Canada.
The study suggests concerns expressed by pundits that niqab wearers will use the concealing nature of the garb to avoid being photographed for identification or security purposes, such as boarding a flight at an airport, are unfounded.
“All those interviewed said they understood there were instances where they would be required to show their faces,” the authors wrote. Many interviewees indicated strongly that they would never refuse to reveal their face in an instance requiring they be identified.
The study indicates most women who wear the niqab made the decision based on a personal belief, rather than pressure from spouses or relatives.
“We thought it would be political, but it was more for them an expression of their spirituality or their journey, which we did not think we would hear,” Hogben said.
In fact, several respondents indicated they had been pressured by spouses to stop wearing the veil.
There is an ongoing debate among Muslim scholars as to whether the niqab is obligatory in Islam. The study chose to avoid the “religious or theological basis for the practice itself.”