Learning from the outsiders-within: wearing the niqab in Swedish teacher profession and training

ABSTRACT

This article discusses how the politics of the niqab manifests in educational settings by drawing on interviews with niqabi Swedish teachers and teachers-in-training. Participants contested dominant discourse on niqabi wearers as ‘unassimilated’ and out-of-place in multicultural education. They built on their marginal positions as outsiders-within education to affirm children’s cultural identities and religious rights neglected by mainstream educators. Contrary to the preconception that the niqab “hides teachers’ face”, participants wore the niqab up when alone with children and introduced it to pupils in intimate and hands-on interactions. Suggestively, through unfolding pupil-teacher relationships, children gained a child-centric view of the niqabi teachers, to which adults in the public space are exempt. Participants were arbitrarily included in Muslim and mainstream schools as individual educators saw fit, illustrating lack of institutional rights in the schools and universities participants attended.

KEYWORDS:

• Niqab
• higher education
• teacher profession
• anti-Muslim racism
• Sweden

Introduction

In Sweden and other European countries, there is much resistance towards the niqab in the teacher profession, employment and at public institutions more broadly (Frisk and Boyd Gillette 2019; Brems 2014; Zempi 2019). Views of the niqab as symptomatic of religious extremism, gender oppression and self-segregation, has triggered a spate of state restrictions on the wearing of the niqab in European countries (Zempi 2016). Policies attempting to entirely ban, or partially restrict, the niqab are in force in several European countries, including France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway. In the UK, Germany, and Sweden there are policies in place allowing schools and school districts to ban the niqab in certain, individually tried circumstances (Economic Times 2021). Moreover, private employers in the EU can pursue a policy of neutrality – and ban visible signs of political, philosophical, and religious belief at work – to protect their financial interests at the expense of religious minorities (van den Brink 2021).

In Sweden, justifications for restricting the niqab in education are that it can lead to social conflict, obstruct communication, identification and constitute physical safety risks (Borevi, Leis-Peters, and Lind 2016). The niqab is also said to obstruct children’s speech development, relationship-building, and children’s sense of safety and security (City of Gothenburg 2019; 2018). Restrictions and guidelines on the niqab in education have been developed and implemented seemingly in direct contradistinction to the Equality Act and without any empirical evidence support the claims (Borevi, Leis-Peters, and Lind 2016). In educational policy and political rhetoric, the niqab appears to be an impossible imposition in education. Yet, a small number of women see the teaching profession and training as viable career paths in countries where there are no national ban or general restriction of the niqab in education. This paper analyzes ways in which a small but hyper visible minority group navigate the lived experience of wearing niqab as teachers, students and private persons, and the mainstream society’s hostility towards their existence in educational settings. The article begins by outlining the public and political discussion of the niqab in Swedish society and education, followed by a review of research on niqabi wearers in Europe and North America. We then provide an analytical frame, suggesting that niqabi teachers have an outsider-within status in education which equips them with fields of vision to see a neo-Orientalist gaze and systemic anti-Muslim racism their pupils may internalize (Collins 1985; Piela, 2109; Bibi 2020). Thereafter, the paper outlines research design and methodology. Finally, through analysis of women’s experiences of wearing niqab as teachers and teachers-in-training, the paper shows how the participants contest the outsider truth-claiming about the niqab as an impossibility in their profession. Their own accounts suggest that they have a given and important part to play in a racially segregated society and education system.

The Swedish context

Public national debates on whether the face veil should and can be banned in educational settings emerged in Sweden in the early 2000s. It regarded two women in childcare training in a high school in Gothenburg, and one woman in after-school care training at a polytechnic in Stockholm. In relation to the first case, the Swedish National Education Agency (SNEA) stipulated that schools have the right to ask students to unveil if the face veil significantly obstructs social interaction and communication in the classroom (Borevi, Leis-Peters, and Lind 2016). The SNEA cautioned that forbidding the face veil was a sensitive issue given the right to religion in the Equality Act and stated that the restriction should be considered carefully on a case-by-case basis. In the second case, a polytechnic threatened a student with suspension because she wore niqab. In this case, the student lodged a complaint to the Equality Ombudsman (EO) who stipulated that preventing students from wearing niqab in education amounted to religious discrimination (Linna 2010). The EO never brought the case to court. This lack of court precedent provided a vacuous legal and policy space in which some schools, preschools and higher education institutions have come to use the SNEA position as their general guiding principle to prohibit the niqab, though formally it holds no such legal basis (Borevi, Leis-Peters, and Lind 2016). Borevi, Leis-Peters and Lind have noted that though the SNEA set out to resolve potential conflicts around the niqab by issuing guiding memorandums, the main concern ‘appeared to be whether and under which circumstances full-face veils could be prohibited in schools’ (Ibid., 2016, p. 192). During the examination of the case, the SNEA could find no evidence of instances in which the niqab constituted a real problem for interactions in classrooms and among students. The SNEA memorandums thus lack empirical evidence that prohibition of the niqab may be justified in schools and classrooms. During this study, we documented ways in which some local education authorities and teacher-training programs were able to prohibit the niqab in practice, yet also managed to avoid accusations of direct discrimination. The did not publicly announce their policy, but told niqabis in person at the point of interview. Alternatively, they had written statements but did not announce them widely and edited out the religious aspect of face-coverings in the texts.¹

In Sweden, scholarship on the niqab has concerned analysis of policymaking and the public and political discourse surrounding it (Frisk and Boyd Gillette 2019; Borevi, Leis-Peters, and Lind 2016). Frisk and Boyd Gillette (2019) analyzed some 38 attempts in Sweden between 2002 and 2018 to pass policies to restrict or ban Muslim face-veils. The authors argue that while policies on face-veil bans claim to fix problems, they instead reify and construct problems by promoting a particular version of the social phenomenon and occluding others. Policy proposals reflect a concern to uphold political notions around ‘Swedishness’, rather than based on actual evidence of the extent to which the niqab constitutes the kinds of problems suggested. In their analysis, tropes such as ‘hiding the face’ with a burka is represented as eliciting negative feelings in observers, to be un-Swedish, described as ‘foreign’ or ‘unfamiliar’ to Swedish culture and society, which is said to be open, value human rights and gender equality. Adults frequently bring up fear when describing how children experience a teacher in a ‘burka’, and express concern at the idea of leaving their child with her (Frisk and Boyd Gillette 2019, 274–276). Hertzberg (2011) attempted to research Swedish teachers’ views on niqabi pupils and colleagues but could not find anyone who had personally met them. In interviews with non-Muslim and non-veiled teachers, the author could not ascertain whether the niqab constituted a problem in teaching, communication and identification in schools. Some of the interviewees in Hertzberg’s study suggested that given the relationship they would build with the pupil over time, they would likely overcome the idea of the niqab as an obstacle for communication. They asserted that communication takes place in a manner of ways, including the voice, the eyes and body language and the face covering would not constitute the be-all and end-all of the teaching interaction.

Our brief review above indicates that knowledge on the niqab in Sweden is discursive. There is no systematic, empirical evidence available on the social interaction with niqabis on the ground and in educational settings. Guidelines, restrictions and bans of the niqab can therefore be said to reflect a social conflict position in which majority society’s aversion towards the niqab suffices as basis for policy developments (van den Brink 2021), and in relation to which the veil is discussed in complete separation from women wearing it (Chakraborty and Zempi 2012, 276).

Previous studies with niqabi women

Recent scholarship has analyzed the paradoxical existence of niqab wearers who exercise their right to religion within the liberal democratic state yet are deeply resented by majority society and often excluded from it (Zempi 2019; Piela 2019; Bibi 2020). Ethnographic studies on the experiences and perspectives of niqabi women themselves have been carried out in the USA, Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, imploding several public myths about them (Piela 2019; Zempi 2016; Moors 2014; Bouteldja 2014; Alizai 2020). The women are not usually recent immigrants who have been wearing the face veil in their countries of origin. They are born, or have lived, in the countries above for all or most of their lives, and many of them are converts. Studies show that women wear face veil out of their own free choice as part of their personal religious journey and individualist interpretations of what they consider to be ‘true Islam’. Personal piety, self-reflection, and mystical religious experiences are often at the center of those interpretations. For this reason, some authors argue, it is reductive and inaccurate to analyze the practice exclusively as a protest against Western, neo-colonial oppression (Piela 2019; Zempi 2016). Niqabis express their frustration at their misrepresentation in public and political discourse, particularly in relation to the assumption of submission and men’s enforcement. Women’s choice to wear niqab is often met with differential views on the niqab within families and close relations faced by majority society’s reproval (Bouteldja 2014). Piela (2019) argues that what silences these women is in fact the failure of the mainstream to listen to them and the hate, harassment and abuse they often face in all areas of public life (Bayrakli and Hafez 2022). Such experiences are common independently from ‘burqa bans’ debates but appear to increase in relation to them (Brems 2014). The niqabi women Bibi and Piela interviewed sometimes utilized interaction with individuals in public spaces to represent a self that challenged dominant notions of Islam. Niqabis would make such interactions into ‘educational moments’ (Piela 2019), and to become ‘ambassadors’ of their religion to ‘offset stereotypes of “oppressed” or “backward” Muslim women’ (Bibi 2020, 11). The studies provide evidence on Niqabis reasons for wearing the niqab and their responses and strategies to cope with public hostility. They do not consider the recurring and more intimate interactions in semi-public spaces such as schools, and with children. As we will show, in child- and woman dominated spaces the rules of engagement were qualitatively different to those described in the studies above. We turn to some of these issues in our conceptual framework below.

Conceptual framework: learning from outsiders-within

Dominant readings of the Muslim veil as symptomatic of the oppression of women in Islam builds on a trajectory of European and North American colonialism. It is a reading that resurges through neo-colonial and White feminist interventionist agendas and discourses in which war and state-imposed unveiling are justified in the name of ‘saving Muslim women’ (Abu-Lughod 2002). Ahmed (2004) suggests that the figure of the veiled Muslim woman stands out as hyper visible, ‘non-assimilated’ subject in liberal multicultural society, and as such provokes deep feelings of need, rejection and anxiety within the majority ‘white other’ culture. The Muslim woman’s demand to be ‘different’ (i.e. wear the veil) is seen as a rejection of the multicultural ‘host’ society. In Piela’s analysis, niqabis’ ‘covering up’ becomes threatening in the liberal democratic context because it removes Muslim women from constant scrutiny and control as secularized subjects. To this end, wearing the niqab can be interpreted as a ‘gaze- and power reversal’ in which niqab wearers are no longer seen but can still observe others (Piela 2019, 526).

Piela (2019) and Zempi (2019) show ways in which niqabi women are denied the possibility of agency and rational choice in relation to majority society’s gaze upon them. Examples are normalized views in legal and popular discourse in which Muslim women are thought to be ‘blind’ to their own oppression and claims that they must have been ‘brainwashed’ into thinking it is their choice. Piela suggests that the critics of the niqab who mobilize this argument are themselves steeped in a neo-Oriental ideology which blinds them to the possibility that the niqab wearers have agency that they may exercise through religious engagement. Bibi (2020) suggests that the incessant treatment of niqabis as ‘a problem’ for majority society results in internalized racism in ways theorized by W.E.D. Du Bois (1994). Bibi builds on Du Bois’ notion of ‘double consciousness’ through which he theorized the dissonant experience of the Black subject who is continually returned to object status. Bibi suggests that veiled British South Asian Muslims in her study experienced racial barriers which divide lives and in relation to which they sought to integrate a divided self.

In our analysis on niqabi women’s experiences in the teaching profession, we expand on the theoretical insights above in two ways. The first relates to the significance of childhood as the time in which double consciousness first occur, and the second pertains to how women use their embodied consciousness as ‘outsiders within’ in the teaching profession. Du Bois pinpoints the emergence of double consciousness in childhood and described his own splitting through an incident in his childhood when a white classmate rejected his greeting card ‘with a glance’ (Du Bois 1994, p. 8 in Phillips 2013). It is an experience through which children are forever distinguished from the normative white cultures by the new feeling of ‘being a problem’. As we will show, the niqabi women in this study build on their own experiences of racism and ‘double sight’ to empower children to be proud of their Muslimness. The niqabi teachers can be understood as outsiders-within in educational settings in Collins (1985) sense. Outsiders-within consists of a racialized group that move into a community that historically excluded them. When dominant groups assign another group an inferior status, it often involves reproducing either/or dualistic thinking and constructs of dichotomous oppositional difference. That inferior status is then often utilized as ‘proof’ of the group’s inferiority and certain tropes become significant and imbued with subtle and subjective meaning obvious to the insider group. In Collins’ work, Black female intellectuals make creative use of their marginal positions to produce black feminist thought that reflects a special standpoint on self, family and society. Her notion of ‘learning from the outsider within’, catches the central observations we make of niqabi teachers’ accounts. They sought to use their marginal positions to empower racialized children and emphasize that learning to respect and be open to difference were central aspects of education.

Study design and methods

The aim of this study was to examine the experiences of Muslim women who wear the niqab in their teaching profession in Sweden and how children and adults in educational settings treated them. We sought to avoid the types of reductionism and conjecture frequently observed in discussions about the niqab in the literature (Piela 2019), including the a priori position that it is a ubiquitous problem to wear it in educational settings. We asked participants about their motivations for wanting to enter the teaching profession; their pedagogical beliefs and practices, how children, classmates, university teachers and colleagues viewed them and treated them; and their experiences of discrimination in educational settings. Though a highly politicized and sensitive area of inquiry, our methodology begins with the assumption that the perspective of niqabis is meaningful, knowable, and possible to elicit (Bernard 2006).

The number of women who wear niqab in Sweden is considerably small, estimated at around 100 (Gardell 2011) and therefore an even smaller proportion of them are teachers and teachers-in-training. Our data set includes interviews with five of these women. It is a small but significant sample. The interviews are in-depth, and the study likely included most women who wore niqab in higher education and as teachers in Sweden at the point of data collection. Prospective participants were identified and recruited through networking and purposive sampling to include women who wore or had worn niqab during their university teacher education and/or in the teaching profession. The first author carried out in-depth semi-structured interviews with participants during 2019. The interviews lasted around two hours, and were voice recorded and transcribed. We used inductive analysis for coding the transcripts, with the intent of understanding participants’ experiences of wearing niqab in higher education and the teaching profession (Gibbs 2007).

The interview sample includes women between 23 to 37 years-of-age. Two women were students at teacher training programs, and three were working as qualified secondary school teachers. Two women were in professional leadership positions and had work-experience in preschool, primary and secondary school of ten years or longer. One participant was a newly qualified teacher and had three years of previous teaching experience. The women worked at city council schools in both racially and religiously diverse and non-diverse areas. Participants represented a wide array of teaching subjects, including the social and natural sciences, art, technology, and Swedish and English languages. All participants had worn niqab during university studies and during work in preschools or schools and their personal wish was to continue to do so. However, only two interviewees wore niqab full-time at the time of the interviews, because of the hate and harassment they had faced in educational settings. The women who had been forced to unveil wore full-length jilbabs (long robe) accompanied with hijabs (headscarves) and rarely niqabs (face veils).

The study adhered to standard ethical conduct of our university regarding participants’ voluntary participation, informed consent, and confidentiality in storing and reporting research data (ALLEA 2017). The niqab is a sensitive issue in Swedish higher education which raises concerns in education research. Our own university faculty endorses the prohibition of the niqab in the city’s local schools and preschools, where it places students for their work placements (University of Gothenburg 2021). As observed by the second author in 2018, university administrators historically pressured niqabi students to unveil and queried students about their reasons for wearing the niqab. Such experiences are not unique to our university and likely influence participants’ trust to engage with university researchers and the nature and kind of data that can be gathered and presented. Building trust with participants was thus essential and we stated our position to participants that we did not agree with university policy and practice.² We deliberately did not ask women about their reasons for wearing the niqab.

Since women who wear or have worn niqab in the teaching profession and/or as students constitute a small population, they are easily identifiable. In presenting the research material, we have used pseudonyms, omitted and/or altered identifying details such as geographical locations and biographical descriptions around individual respondents. The passing of time from the point of data collection to the disseminations of findings contribute to the anonymity of individuals.

Below we shed light on our analysis of the interview data. We show that participants frequented child- and female dominated places of work and study, in relation to which they contributed to diversifying a segregated workforce in racial and religious terms; they turned the presence of the niqab into educational moments; and attempted to wear the niqab in flexible and adaptive ways.

Wearing niqab in the teacher profession and training

The niqabi wearers in this study presented themselves not as separate to multicultural society, but as upholders of it. As outsiders-within in education, interviewees’ fields of vision enabled them to see the disidentification of self, racial stress, and trauma that Muslim and racial minority children may experience (see Stevenson 2014). They observed systemic anti-Muslim racism and discrimination in Swedish schools, reported also in the literature, which hindered Muslim teachers’ and students’ from praying during breaks, accessing halal food, fasting during Ramadan, and wearing headscarf (Poljarević, Ardin, and Irving 2022, 589). In relation to the racialization of Muslim children, interviewees seemingly became brokers of children’s cultural identities and religious rights often neglected by mainstream educators (see Rissanen 2021). Nur, a 37-year-old primary school teacher, spoke of the lack of Muslim teachers in Swedish teaching profession as one reason for choosing to become a teacher.

I saw that there needed to be some more role models for children, our Muslim children. You know that we also can become teachers and educate ourselves. We can also do a lot of things. That they [Muslim children] do not need to seek role models in others, but that we are also here. Here, and we stand up for them. … So that is what I felt … . Muslim children need to be able to relate to the adults [around them] – Nur

I saw that there needed to be some more role models for children, our Muslim children. You know that we also can become teachers and educate ourselves. We can also do a lot of things. That they [Muslim children] do not need to seek role models in others, but that we are also here. Here, and we stand up for them. … So that is what I felt … . Muslim children need to be able to relate to the adults [around them]

Respondents’ outsider-within position and own experiences of growing up as Muslims in Sweden meant that they could bring racially affirming practices and racial literacy to their teaching role. Aiba, a 28-year old secondary school teacher, attended a private Muslim school in Sweden as a child. It had shielded her from experiencing a splitting of consciousness due to destructive forces of racism. ‘I did not feel divided (splittrad)’, Aiba said. Rather, the years in the Muslim school had provided her with a firm sense of identity and Muslimness. Aiba decided to wear hijab at age ten and received approval from teachers and other pupils as she did so. These were affirming events and experiences that she carried with her well into adult life and, she held, meant that she had been able to focus on educational attainment. She said:

I would never diminish the girls because of their veils or their names or anything, never. Rather the opposite, I strengthen them and challenge them even more. And that is what they need. Young, Muslim teachers who understand this. You should be accepted for the way you are, and what can take you furthest in this world is your education.

Above Aiba can be said to relate to ‘the diminishing of girls who wear hijab’ as aspects of the double consciousness that Muslim children may come to learn through the school system. Another common experience that Aiba observed and wanted children to unlearn, was to have one’s non-Swedish name mispronounced by teachers.

‘We had a new pupil coming to school and he said his name was Abdi. “What is your full name?”, I asked. He said, “Abdirahman, but it is difficult for you to pronounce”. I said: “No, not at this school. Your name is Abdirahman and it is our task to learn your name”. Why should we diminish him when he is eight, nine years old and he has already come to understand that his name is unacceptable?’- Aiba

Manal, a 37-year-old primary school teacher, also spoke about the importance of the representation of Muslim teachers in the school system, with whom Muslim parents and pupils could feel assurance that their rights to religious observance would be respected. She recounted how her younger brother had encountered resistance in a mainstream school as he wanted to pray during the school day at the age of 13. For Muslim parents, Manal suggested, it was often reassuring to have Muslim teachers ’who understand them and their point of view, and to know that their children are accepted, simply’. Aiba’s and Manal’s accounts connect to a vast literature documenting the racialization of black and ethnic minority pupils in schools who are treated differently from their peers and subjected to higher rates of disciplining, have less access to educational resources, and experience public humiliation in schools (see Jaffe-Walter 2019, 287). Aiba, Manal and Nur sought to strengthen and build children’s positive racial identifications with themselves and others, aspects of teaching they had not formally learnt during teacher-training, and thus seemingly needs updating on this emerging body of knowledge (see Curenton et al. 2022).

Both sides now

In Piela’s analysis, niqabis’ ‘covering up’ becomes threatening in the liberal democratic context because it removes Muslim women from constant scrutiny and control as secularized subjects. To this end, wearing the niqab can be interpreted as a ‘gaze- and power- reversal’ in which niqab wearers are no longer seen but can still observe others (Piela 2019, 526). Interviewees would describe such experiences in relation to adults, but the teaching profession and teacher-training constituted child-and woman-dominated spaces in which interviewees wore the niqab up much of the time. This meant that children were privy to a dual vision of the niqab and could develop a child-centric gaze of the niqabi teachers, often overlooked by, and inaccessible to, adults in male or mixed-gender settings. Eliza, a 25-year primary school teacher, worked with children aged 7 and 8 and said that she wore the niqab up ‘whenever possible’. Eliza suggested that this was a contributing factor to why the niqab was inconsequential to her work, but also that wearing it did not constitute an imposition of any sort. Whilst wearing it down during recess, she said ‘I play football, snowball fights and I am still me’. In Eliza’s view, teaching and interaction with children were entirely contingent upon the relationship one built up with pupils. The fact the pupils saw her face most of the time, and that she had built trustful relationships with them over time, meant that the pupils knew ‘both sides’ of her, and it took only a stern look from her to communicate to them when she wanted them to settle down.

‘My pupils see both sides of me, both with and without niqab [inside and outside the classroom]. We have developed an understanding that even when I have the niqab in the canteen and need to tell them to stop messing about, I can just look at them and they understand instantly. It is enough with one look. But that can only happen if the pupils feel secure with you and there is mutual respect. – Eliza

To build this kind of mutual respect, some interviewees suggested that children needed to be given a fair chance from the very beginning to see ‘both sides’. Aiba, Manal and Eliza maintained that while they expected ‘common decency’ from adults they did not expect children to understand how to behave in relation to the niqab. They therefore took practical, hands-on approaches when they introduced themselves to children. As Aiba started work at a new school, she would joke about herself to the children and they got to touch the niqab and ask questions. Children would ask, ‘how does it feel? How do you do it? Like why do you wear it?’ In the literature, niqabis may seize interactions with strangers who approach them in an effort dispel stereotypes about themselves (Piela 2019; Bibi 2020; Zempi 2016). In schools, and through the teacher-pupil relationship, meaning around the niqab could become shared, intimate and familiar. Eliza carried out work placement in a new school and wrote a letter to introduce herself to all the children and parents. She then went around to all primary school classes (six- to nine-year-old children) to introduce herself. She said:

’I had the niqab up then and I said”:Usually you will see me like this, and at times you will see me like this [with niqab down], and that is because I cover myself for men I am not related to”. And then the children understood”,Uhu, OK, you only show yourself to your relations?””,Yes, I do”. So, when their fathers came, they understood I was not related to them. It is a simple equation in the child’s mind’. - Eliza

Eliza, Manal and Aiba maintained that children were predisposed to see beyond the niqab and focus on the personality of, and relationship with them as their teacher. In Manal’s and Eliza’s experiences, children were usually welcoming and open to them and were ‘not as set in their ways’ as adults. Nur related how children quickly caught on the practical how-to of the niqab and were sometimes assisting her with it:

’When I walk out of the classroom I close my face [stänger mitt ansikte] but when I enter the classroom I open it [öppnar den] for my pupils. You know, already in the cloakroom, already there I open [pull it up] because we are the only ones there. Parents rarely come into the cloakroom, only the children themselves. Then we go into the classroom and it has never been a problem and the pupils are so used to it that when someone comes, they tell me”, Miss, a man is coming”. “Miss!”, and pointing, really collaborating. And if a male colleague comes by, I just quickly pull it down’.– Nur

Manal suggested children were more inclined to believe ‘everyone could do their own thing’ and that it was grown-ups that taught children to think in a particular way. Eliza said that children she worked with ‘usually don’t care what you wear. It is more your inner self they care about, so to say’. She continued, ‘when the pupils know you, you can walk around in a clown suit, and they wouldn’t care because they know you’. Eliza held that the niqab taught children that ’anything is possible’. By this she meant that ’even if you wear full-covered veil, you have a right to be here and be yourself, you can get an education, the niqab does not stop you from that’.

Arbitrary responses towards the niqab in teacher-training

Sweden embraced multiculturalist governance in 1970s and introduced ‘intercultural’ education at all educational levels at the same time. Swedish universities subscribe to widening access and participation, and support marginalized and under-represented groups of students. Yet, the niqabis in this study did not seemingly have a given place in these inclusive and non-discriminatory visions. Whether universities treated them with respect or hostility was entirely contingent upon the individual lecturers they encountered. Nur encountered overwhelmingly positive responses towards her for the most part during her primary-school teacher training. The lecturers were generally respectful and oftentimes, classes and seminars were with women only and Nur would open her veil with them. At sit-in exams, a woman lecturer would come to identify her, though Nur had never requested it. She had also encountered lecturers who were entirely taken aback when meeting her. When meeting her dissertation supervisor for the first time, he was shocked by her appearance. ‘He still wanted to greet me, so he got up and I was like, “I greet like this”. [Hand on the heart]’. The supervisor asked Nur how she would identify herself for the examination. Nur responded that she would show her face to the examiner and then fold the niqab down again. During the subsequent supervision meetings, the supervisor had a hard time getting over the niqab and focus on Nur’s dissertation. Nur sought to challenge the biased perception the lecturer seemed to have of her by patiently ‘waiting him out’ and continuously attempting to steer the conversation back to the dissertation. To quote:

‘He could be joking at my expense in the beginning. I think he didn’t really mean it that way - but it was still offensive to me. I thought, “Let him calm down. If this continues, I must change supervisor, because he won’t help me”.’

There was a breakthrough in the pedagogical relationship when Nur told the lecturer that she had read his research publications and that she wanted to write her dissertation on a related topic. ‘That’, Nur said, ‘softened him up a little’, and by the third meeting, the supervisor was able to overcome his prejudice toward the niqab. At the point of the examination, the supervisor no longer thought it necessary that she showed her face to identify herself because he knew her and would recognize her. Nur suggested that the lecturer had been ‘brainwashed’ from news media and that the interaction with her over time, helped him unlearn his beliefs.

They have often built-up prejudices and have been a bit brainwashed from all you see and hear in the media, and they are ignorant about Islam. I think he realized that I was an ordinary person. You know, he no longer saw me as the one with the niqab, but he saw me as Nur.

In the quote above, Nur draws attention to the brainwashing claim sometimes attributed to women who wear niqab. She reverts it to suggest that the lecturer himself was brainwashed given that his prejudiced towards her was neither based on fact or previous experience. Nur contested a seemingly neo-Orientalist gaze upon her and her subordination of power in this way (Collins 1985, 50; Piela 2019).

Not all university lecturers were able to either overcome or hold back on their contempt towards students who wore niqab. Participants had bad experiences from preschool teacher programs in particular and changed teacher training programs for those at primary and secondary levels during their training. Discriminatory practices at university related not only to the niqab, but also to their Arab and/or Muslim names. Interviewees commonly found that at anonymous examinations they received high to very high grades, and when their identity was known at individual written assignments or group work presentations, university teachers were likely to fail them. Lecturers had singled the interviewees out at group work presentations and questioned them about their contribution and academic honesty. Participants felt that it was overwhelmingly White, non-Muslim women educators that discriminated and subjected them to such treatment. At pre-school teacher training, interviewees had experienced manipulation and pressure to unveil ‘willingly’ if they were to access work placements. Participants also experienced mistreatment at schools and preschools during work placement and trial lessons. Manal recounted that a university lecturer had failed her at her work placement course because she wore jilbab. The same lecturer had passed her first work placement course at the same preschool some months earlier, at which time Manal did not wear a veil. At the school, the children and the other teachers liked her and could not find fault in her conduct at either time she was there. The teachers at the school had observed that the university teacher tended to fail students with Muslim veils whom she did not think dressed ‘appropriately’. However, the teachers did not back Manal up at the time. Participants thus routinely fended for themselves to prevent and deal with the prejudice and hostility they faced at schools and university.

When the university assigned Sarah to a preschool for her first work placement, she anticipated that the preschool would consider the niqab a problem. Sarah therefore raised the issue with the in-house supervisor at their first meeting and told her: ‘As you can see, I wear niqab and I want you to know that I show my face to the children and pull it up the minute I enter the building, but I wear it down outdoors’. At the meeting, the supervisor said she had nothing against it. After the first day, the supervisor held that a parent had seen Sarah outdoors with the niqab and had complained. The supervisor asked Sarah to unveil because she did not want to ‘create problems with parents’. Sarah had not seen any parents the previous day and suspected that the story was a pretext to push her to unveil. She feared that if she did not comply, the supervisor would turn hostile and make sure Sarah failed the work placement course. Chakraborti and Zempi (2014) has shown that the forced unveiling of this kind is one of a wide range of types of abuse niqabi women are subjected to and that many of them compare to rape, which demonstrates the violence and psychological impact of the act. After much deliberation, Sarah finally decided that she would unveil during the work placement period of one month and then put it on again. It was not a decision she took easily. Yet, the supervisor turned hostile and treated Sarah meanly for the rest of the placement. Although she suffered greatly, Sarah withstood the treatment to pass the course. After the work placement, she wanted to drop out from university altogether and decided to tell university staff what had happened. The university staff were sympathetic and ensured that Sarah would not be assigned to the same preschool again for the second placement. As far as Sarah could discern, they took no other course of action. In these ways, participants were often withstanders of discrimination and harassment, while educators who witnessed ill-treatment often chose to be bystanders and did not intervene and challenge the relations of ruling. When faced with mistreatment at university or at schools, participants made judgement calls of whether it was worthwhile and possible to raise the issue with superiors or not, since there was no certainty that the university, staff managers or colleagues would stand up for them. However, there were also instances in which university lecturers, colleagues and managers did support them, and became up-standers as Nur had experienced. When she was about to hold a training lesson in a school, a teacher approached her in the staff room and angrily told her to leave. She told Nur, ‘You can’t be here, you have to leave, we are in Sweden, and we have laws here’. Shocked, Nur answered, ‘I know very well what the laws are here in Sweden and there is nothing forbidding me to wear my niqab. I am not going anywhere’. The teacher then became angrier and more insisting. Though there were other teachers witnessing the incident, none of them came to Nur’s assistance. Nur was shaken, but held the lesson as planned. Afterwards, she contacted the university to tell the director of studies what had happened. According to Nur, the director was appalled that the school treated one of the students that way and threatened to withdraw all collaboration with the school unless they apologized and ensured it would not happen again. One staff member of the school told Nur that the teacher was an ‘extreme feminist’ and that was why she acted that way. Nur questioned the legitimacy of this kind of feminism. She said:

Then they think they are feminist and they want to save you, but then what does feminism mean? Because for me, it means something else. For me it means that I have the right to choose and do what I want. She was very extreme.

In the quote above, Nur reclaims the meaning of feminism and extremism, pointing out the double standards inherent in the attacking woman’s feminist stance. It is a stance that some literature on Islamophobia defines as illiberal, meaning that the illiberal feminist finds it justifiable to subject a Muslim woman to violence and hate and curtail her rights to equal opportunity in education and employment (Mondon and Winter 2019). The incidents of discrimination and harassment during their university studies made both Manal and Nur question whether it was possible to work in areas with little racial and religious diversity. Though this went against their beliefs of wanting to contribute to a diversified workforce, they felt that trying to do so came at a great personal cost. Thus, while public discussion on integration is often fixated on women’s choices to cover their faces, they should, as Piela (2019) points out, rather focus on changing the majority society’s attitudes and behaviours through education and more effective prosecutions of Islamophobic hate crime.

Discussion and implications

Our paper has shown that how a strong polarity of meaning attributed to the niqab by educators of the mainstream society and the women who wear it may play out on-the-ground in educational settings. Participants contested dominant discourse on niqabi wearers as ‘unassimilated’ and out-of-place in multicultural education by building on their own observations and experiences of systemic anti-Muslim racism and discrimination in Swedish schools. They sought to affirm children’s cultural identities and religious rights neglected by mainstream educators. In contrast to the preconception that the niqab “hides teachers’ face” (see Frisk and Boyd Gillette 2019), participants wore the niqab up when alone with children and introduced it to pupils in intimate and hands-on interactions. Suggestively, through unfolding pupil-teacher relationships, children gained a child-centric double vision of the niqabi teachers, to which adults in the public space are exempt. Education were obvious places for the niqabis to work because it meant they could have an impact on racialized children, and since it was a child- and female dominated space in which they could wear the niqab up much of the time. The reception of niqabi wearing teachers in the education system was not unanimously hostile or welcoming in either Muslim or mainstream schools. Participants were included on merit or excluded on aesthetic as individual educators saw fit, illustrating lack of institutional rights in the schools and universities participants attended. The reluctance by mainstream educators to be curious about the person behind the niqab and engage in dialogue with her, is likely shaped by institutionalized ‘secular suspicion’ towards religious subjectivities, much intensified in a political climate that bestow permission to hate Muslims (Jacobsen 2017; Syed and Faiza 2021). These troublesome race relations push the women who wear niqab deeper into an outsider-within status.

The small sample in this paper clearly limits the evidence and arguments made. Yet, there are undeniable patterns of wider significance regarding long-running European-wide controversies and rulings on prohibiting different types of Islamic veils in public spaces, at work and schools. These are debates that often purport to concern the tension between restricting visible forms of religious beliefs in the effort to enforce a ‘neutral image’ in the workplace, while also reconciling the specific context of national provision on the protection of freedom of religion (Court of Justice of the European Union 2021). Yet, no rulings operate in isolation from politics. In relation to female Muslim veils, ‘neutrality’ does usually not denote the maintenance of an attitude of impartiality, but rather the urge to submit a standpoint on female Muslim religious covering of the body (van den Brink 2021). Our case shows a political struggle over unrecognized rights and equal recognition in educational settings. It shows that constitutional rights to freedom of religion, rights to equal treatment under the Equality Act, the university’s mission of widening access, participation and inclusion of underrepresented and minority groups, do not necessarily include women who wish to wear niqab – as well as other types of Muslim veils – in Swedish educational settings. At its worst, non-curiosity around the niqab dehumanizes the person behind it. We suggest that these are missed opportunities in mainstream education that should instead seek to learn about racial literacy and racially affirming strategies from these niqabi teachers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. To our knowledge, the local education administration in Gothenburg has the only written statement available that prohibits niqab in schools and preschools and it is regarded as an important precedent for other local authorities and teacher-training programs.

2. Women wearing the niqab constitute an underrepresented and religious minority student group that should be included and supported by Swedish universities under anti-discrimination law, and widening access and participation. The university and local education administration frames the niqab to be about face-coverings in general, whitewashing the right to religious freedom in this way.