Shabina Begum and the Headscarf Girls

Abstract

The issue of headscarves has generated much cultural and political commentary in recent years. It has also been the subject of recent legal proceedings in the UK in the case of SB. The purpose of this article is to examine this case within its broader cultural, textual and interdisciplinary context. The article opens with a discussion of SB. The second part then introduces some of the broader debates which oscillate around the issues of headscarves and their cultural implications. Subsequently, the third and fourth parts argue the case for a specifically narrative intervention in these debates, one that resonates with the poetical aspirations of ‘law and literature’ scholarship. The final part includes a focused discussion of headscarves as a central theme in Orhan Pamuk's recent and much admired novel, Snow.

Keywords:

• Headscarves
• Begum
• Orhan Pamuk
• narrativity
• multiculturalism

Notes

¹ The full case reference is R (on the application of SB) v Headteacher and Governors of Denbigh High School [2005] ECCA Civ 199. The customary short reference is SB.

² For a relatively early example of the complexity, and heat, which the debate can raise, see Galeotti (1993) and Moruzzi (1994). The latter is damning of the former's attempt to present a nuanced, but still committed, defence of the liberal argument in support of laws banning headscarves, in this particular instance French laws.