I was going through BBC’s Have Your Say discussing whether Turkey should ease its scarf ban at higher education institutions. I must admit I do not know a great deal about Turkish politics, but I found the thread interesting nonetheless. The mass majority of comments opposing lifting the ban stated in a way or another that it-the scarf- is a political statement at best or a sign of women’s oppression.

Living in 2008 Bahrain, a country with a high percentage of females wearing some sort of head cover, it is very hard to relate to headscarves as political statements. In Bahrain, there is no one scarf. There is no one cover. There is no one style. Females in the streets, malls, educational institutions, government bodies may have a form of head cover, but even their reasons for doing so are various. The reasoning behind it may have a correlation with its style, type or fashion.

There are those who do it- voluntarily- out of religious beliefs, and those who do so out of the religious beliefs of their families, simply because they are asked to. A female in the latter category may happen to like the scarf, hence communicate that in the way she’s wearing it, or hate it, and again that can be communicated in its style. There is also those for which it is merely a cultural dress code, one that you would wear only within the constrains of this society, where women are expected to dress modestly with a certain de facto fashion and hence those are often rid themselves of it once in foreign country. There are those for whom the scarf is simply a cultural fashion, an extra piece of accessory which can be worn in funky ways. I can go on.

I know this is how current day Bahrain is. With head cover way too spread and way too diverse in the same time for anyone to draw connections with Islamism, secularism or otherwise. In Bahrain, you find secular political societies with female members with head covers. In Bahrain, daughters of supporters of Iranian revolution – covered or not- may know nothing more than the name of Ayatollah Khomeini about that political movement.

Has this always been the case? Those who lived their adulthood in the 80s tend to think otherwise. They say head cover at the time was linked to Islamism. My grandmother would not know what you are talking about if you imply linking women’s covering up with politics. That generation of women was simply raised to think women dress modestly, with no connection to politics or icons of any sort. My mother, on the other hand, would tell you about how you had to decide between being “communist” or “Muslim”- in those terms.  She would also tell you how religious icons were fought, and how people wanted to make a statement by clinging to what they believed was their right- freedom of belief. I assume she lived what is now referred to in Turkey as political Hijab/ non-Hijab. Not covering your head was as much of a political statement as was covering it. I do not envy them.