Authored by Mimunt Hamido Yahia, a Spaniard of Moroccan Amazigh ethnicity, They Will Not Cover Us Up: Islam, Veil, and Patriarchy evokes the anti-fascist war cry of the Spanish Civil War – no pasarán – which means “They Will Not Pass.” It also echoes the slogan, “We Will Not Be Replaced,” the cry used by French nationalists which was inspired by Renaud Camus’s Le grand remplacement [The Great Replacement] (2011).

The title of the work demonstrates that many Westerners, with origins in North Africa, and the Middle East, feel threatened by the mass migration of Islamist Muslims in Europe. The cover of the book captures this fear clearly. It features a Muslim man and a Muslim woman in a black burka sitting on a beach and staring at a woman in a black bikini. The image and title scream: YOU WILL NOT COVER US UP! This is the context of the book.

If the title and photograph are bold, so is the content of the book. The author presents Islam’s position on the veil, emphatically and systematically rejecting it. She notes that for many Muslim girls and women, the hijab is not a choice: it is presented as a divine command. Failure to veil results in harassment in this life and threats of eternal damnation in the hereafter. The author longs for the days of Sufi-infused Islam which, since 1979, has been replaced with Islamism.

Mimunt Hamido Yahia excoriates Western Muslim female converts for serving as the advance troops of the Islamists in their attempts to impose the veil. She lambasts Islamic feminists for siding with Islamic fundamentalists instead of the women they oppress and victimize. She argues that the only thing that racial, multicultural, intersectional, and anti-colonial “feminists” do is justify patriarchal norms so long as they are imposed on women of other cultures. They expect Muslim women to tolerate the intolerable.

When faced with patriarchal control, forced hijab, child marriage, domestic violence, female genital mutilation, sexual segregation, and harassment, “anti-colonial” feminists shrug their shoulders and say: “those are their customs, and we must respect them.” As far as the author is concerned, human rights and feminism are supposed to be universal.

At 181 pages, They Will Not Cover Us Up is an easy and accessible read. Although the author is an activist, as opposed to an academic, she gives an informed overview of the history of veiling and a sound and rational critique.