Some governments encourage and even oblige women to wear the hijab, while others have banned it in at least some public settings. In many parts of the world women also experience informal pressure for or against wearing the hijab, including physical attacks.
Legal enforcement In
Gaza, there was a campaign by religious conservatives such as
Hamas to impose the hijab on women during the
First Intifada. In 1990, the
Unified National Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU) declared that it rejected the imposition of a hijab policy for women, and targeted those who seek to impose the hijab, but that declaration was argued to have come too late, as many women had already yielded to the pressure in order to avoid harassment. After
assuming the government in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Hamas sought to enforce Islamic law, imposing the hijab on women at courts, institutions and schools.
Iran transitioned from banning veils in 1936 to mandating Islamic dress for women following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. By 1980, veiling was required in government and educational settings, with the 1983 penal code imposing 74 lashes for not adhering to the hijab, though the exact requirements were unclear. This led to public tensions and vigilante actions regarding proper hijab. s in
Shiraz, Iran The enforcement of the dress code in Iran has fluctuated between strict and relaxed over the years, leading to ongoing debate between conservatives and reformists like
Hassan Rouhani. The
United Nations Human Rights Council has urged Iran to uphold the rights of those advocating for dress code reforms. The government officially promotes stricter veiling, citing both Islamic principles and pre-Islamic Iranian culture.
Ruhollah Khomeini maintained that women do not have to wear a full-body cover. He stated that women can choose any kind of attire they like so long as it covers them properly and they have a hijab. His successor,
Ali Khamenei, stated that the hijab does not hinder participation in social, political, or academic activities. The Indonesian province of
Aceh encourages Muslim women to wear hijab in public.
Indonesia's central government granted Aceh's local government the right to impose
Sharia in 2001, although that no local regulations should conflict with Indonesian national laws, in a deal aiming to put an end to the separatist movement in the province. Saudi women typically wear the abaya, while foreigners may choose long coats. During the
Taliban regime in
Afghanistan, the wearing of the hijab is mandated for women. The requirement extends to covering not only their heads but also their faces, as it was believed that doing so would prevent any perceived impropriety and maintain modesty in society. Thus, unveiling has historically been used as a
colonial strategy to assert the domination of white men over colonized populations.
Muslim world The tradition of veiling hair in
Persian culture has ancient pre-Islamic origins, but the widespread custom was ended by
Reza Shah's government in 1936, as the hijab was considered to be incompatible with modernization and he ordered "unveiling" act or
Kashf-e hijab. In some cases the police arrested women who wore the veil and would forcibly remove it. These policies had popular support but outraged the
Shi'a clerics, to whom appearing in public without their cover was tantamount to nakedness. Some women refused to leave the house out of fear of being assaulted by Reza Shah's police. In 1941, the compulsory element in the policy of unveiling was abandoned.
Turkey had
a ban on headscarves at universities in the 80s. In 2008, the Turkish government attempted to lift a ban on Muslim headscarves at universities, but were overturned by the country's Constitutional Court. In December 2010, however, the Turkish government ended the headscarf ban in universities and schools. The ban on civil servants remained in effect for a few more years. The current situation regarding the headscarf, which is problematic in terms of the principle of neutrality due to its
religious symbolism, is revealed by
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's words at an initial appointment ceremony attended by headscarf-wearing judge and prosecutor candidates also: "Regarding our headscarf-wearing judicial members… It may take some time, there may be some difficulty in accepting it, but God willing, everyone will accept the new Turkey where freedoms are applied equally to everyone." In
Tunisia, women were banned from wearing the hijab in state offices in 1981; in the 1980s and 1990s, more restrictions were put in place. In June 2024, Tajikistan's parliament passed a bill banning "foreign clothing" and religious celebrations for children during the Islamic holidays of
Eid al-Fitr and
Eid al-Adha. The upper house, Majlisi Milli, approved the legislation on 19 June, following approval by the lower house, Majlisi Namoyandagon, on 8 May. The bill specifically targets the hijab, a traditional Islamic headscarf. This formalization of restrictions comes after years of Tajikistan unofficially discouraging Islamic attire, including headscarves and bushy beards. In 2007, the Ministry of Education banned both Islamic clothing and Western-style miniskirts in schools, a policy later extended to all public institutions. Minister of Culture
Shamsiddin Orumbekzoda told
Radio Free Europe that Islamic dress was "really dangerous". Under previous laws, women wearing hijabs are already banned from entering the country's government offices.
Europe In the former
Soviet Union, a broad atheistic
Sovietization campaign known as
Hujum was undertaken by the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union to remove all manifestations of
gender inequality within
Soviet Central Asia, targeting prevalent practices among
Soviet Muslims, such as
female veiling practices. On 15 March 2004, France passed
a law banning "symbols or clothes through which students conspicuously display their religious affiliation" in public primary schools, middle schools, and secondary schools. In the Belgian city of
Maaseik, the niqāb has been banned since 2006. On 13 July 2010, France's lower house of parliament overwhelmingly approved a bill that would ban wearing the Islamic full veil in public. It became the first European country to ban the full-face veil in public places, In 2016, Latvia and Bulgaria banned the burqa in public places. In October 2017, wearing a face veil became also illegal in Austria. This ban also includes scarves, masks and clown paint that cover faces to avoid discriminating against Muslim dress. In 2016, Bosnia-Herzegovina's supervising judicial authority upheld a ban on wearing Islamic headscarves in courts and legal institutions, despite protests from the Muslim community that constitutes 40% of the country. In 2017, the
European Court of Justice ruled that companies were allowed to bar employees from wearing visible religious symbols, including the hijab. However, if the company has no policy regarding the wearing of clothes that demonstrate religious and political ideas, a customer cannot ask employees to remove the clothing item. In 2018, the Danish parliament passed a law banning the full-face veil in public places. In 2016, more than 20 French towns banned the use of the
burqini, a style of swimwear intended to accord with rules of hijab. Dozens of women were subsequently issued fines, with some tickets citing not wearing "an outfit respecting good morals and secularism", and some were verbally attacked by bystanders when they were confronted by the police. Enforcement of the ban also hit beachgoers wearing a wide range of modest attire besides the burqini. In 2019, Austria banned the hijab in
schools for children up to ten years of age. The ban was motivated by the equality between men and women and improving social integration with respect to local customs. Parents who sent their child to school with a headscarf would be fined 440 euro. The ban was overturned in 2020 by the
Austrian Constitutional Court. In 2019,
Staffanstorp Municipality in Sweden banned all veils for school pupils up to sixth grade.
India In India, Muslim women are allowed to wear the hijab and/or
burqa anytime, anywhere. However, in January 2022, a number of colleges in the South Indian state of
Karnataka stopped female students wearing the hijab from entering the campus, following which the state government issued a circular banning 'religious clothes' in educational institutions where
uniforms are prescribed. On 15 March 2022, the Karnataka High Court, in a verdict, upheld the hijab ban in educational institutions where uniforms are prescribed, arguing that the practice is non-essential in Islam. The hijab ban was condemned inside India and abroad by officials in countries including the
United States,
Bahrain and
Pakistan, as well as by
Human Rights Watch, and by figures like
Malala Yousafzai. A study published by human rights body
People's Union for Civil Liberties reported that the move to ban hijab has widened the social divide and increased fear among Muslims in Karnataka.
China In Xinjiang province, the
Chinese government has banned women from wearing veils as part of a major crackdown on what it sees as religious extremism from Muslim
Uyghurs.
Unofficial pressure to wear hijab , 2001 (image obtained by the
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) In
Srinagar, the capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, a previously unknown militant group calling itself
Lashkar-e-Jabbar claimed responsibility for a series of acid attacks on women who did not wear the
burqa in 2001, threatening to punish women who do not adhere to their vision of Islamic dress. Women of Kashmir, most of whom are not fully veiled, defied the warning, and the attacks were condemned by prominent militant and separatist groups of the region. Some
women in Jordan have reported unofficial pressure to wear a hijab in 2018.
Unofficial pressure against wearing the hijab In recent years, women wearing the hijab have been subjected to verbal and physical attacks worldwide, particularly following terrorist attacks. Louis A. Cainkar writes that the data suggest that women in hijab rather than men are the predominant target of anti-Muslim attacks, not because they are more easily identifiable as Muslims, but because they are seen to represent a threat to the local moral order that the attackers are seeking to defend. In 2015, authorities in
Uzbekistan organized a "deveiling" campaign in the capital city
Tashkent, during which women wearing the hijab were detained and taken to a police station. Those who agreed to remove their hijab were released "after a conversation", while those who refused were transferred to the counterterrorism department and given a lecture. Their husbands or fathers were then summoned to convince the women to obey the police. This followed an earlier campaign in the
Fergana Valley. After the election of
Shavkat Mirziyoyev as President of Uzbekistan in December 2016, Muslims were given the opportunity to openly express their religious identity, which manifested itself in the wider spread of hijabs in Uzbekistan. In July 2021, the state allowed the wearing of the hijab in public places. In
Kyrgyzstan in 2016, the government sponsored street banners aiming to dissuade women from wearing the hijab.
Workplace discrimination against hijab-wearing women in 2017 Discrimination against Muslims often affects women more due to the hijab making them more visible, leading to
workplace prejudice, particularly after the rise of
Islamophobia post-9/11. Hijab-wearing Muslim women face both overt and covert discrimination in job applications and workplace environments, with covert bias often resulting in more hostile treatment. Perceived discrimination can harm well-being, but may also be overcome by religious pride and community; studies show hijab-wearing women often find greater strength and
belonging despite challenges. Their association with the Islamic faith automatically projects any negative stereotyping of the religion onto them. As a result of the heightened discrimination, some hijab-wearing Muslim women in the workplace resort to taking off their hijab in hopes to prevent any further prejudice acts. A number of hijab-wearing women who were interviewed expressed that perceived discrimination also poses a problem for them. To be specific, Muslim women shared that they chose not to wear the headscarf out of fear of future discrimination. A study by Ali et al. (2015) found a relationship between the discrimination Muslims face at work and their job satisfaction. In other words, the discrimination hijab-wearing Muslim women face at work is associated with their overall feeling of contentment of their jobs, especially compared to other religious groups. Hijab-wearing Muslim women not only experience discrimination whilst in their job environment; they also experience discrimination in their attempts to get a job. An experimental study conducted on potential hiring discrimination among Muslims found that in terms of overt discrimination there were no differences between Muslim women who wore traditional Islamic clothing and those who did not. However, covert discrimination was noted towards Muslim who wore the hijab, and as a result were dealt with in a hostile and rude manner. One instance that some view as hijab discrimination in the workplace that gained public attention and made it to the Supreme Court was
EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch. The
U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission took advantage of its power granted by Title VII and made a case for a young hijabi female who applied for a job, but was rejected due to her wearing a headscarf which violated Abercrombie & Fitch's pre-existing and longstanding policy against head coverings and all black garments. Discrimination levels differ depending on geographical location; for example, South Asian Muslims in the United Arab Emirates do not perceive as much discrimination as their South Asian counterparts in the U.S. Although, South Asian Muslim women in both locations are similar in describing discrimination experiences as subtle and indirect interactions. A study in New Zealand concluded that while Muslim women who wore the headscarf did in fact experience discrimination, these negative experiences were overcome by much higher feelings of religious pride, belonging, and centrality. ==World Hijab Day==