"Well-intentioned cultural relativists partake in this Westing of the West; they hail the veil as offering freedom from the tyranny of fashion, if not a new form of modernity. By the same token, they brand women who question re-veiling as “Westernised”. They imply that a woman cannot think of change because it has already been achieved by women different from her. This corps à corps with imagined otherness overlooks a simple fact: no one has a monopoly over a woman’s desire for freedom in her body. No one is entitled to turn the veil into a political flag, and no one should derive satisfaction from its removal except women themselves. The veil has no intrinsic human emancipatory value. Ultimately, outside war zones where women cannot do otherwise, there is no compelling justification for veiling, not even faith. For faith, too, needs to confront the power nexus that sustains the repetition of the history of the veil."
— Marnia Lazreg, “Piety, Politcs, and the Veil,” The Times, November 7, 2009
