The controversy surrounding the niqab, or full-face covering, worn by some Muslim women is not going away soon.

This controversy ironically has come to reflect more what it means to be Canadian and multiculturalism, than about Islam and women.

In the holiest sanctuary of Islam in Mecca women are not required to wear the niqab, nor are they separated from men when circumambulating the Ka’aba, the cubicle draped in black. The core dogma of Islam is simply the affirmation of the monotheistic creed, the worship of One God, and bearing witness that Muhammad is God’s messenger.

The worship of One God in practice means, as the Quran – the sacred text of Islam – stipulates, to engage in prayers, to fast, to give charity, and to perform the annual pilgrimage. These practices, or rituals, together constitute Islam stripped to its bare essentials.

But any religion as an idea or revelation is embedded in the customary habits, traditions and politics of people where it is first revealed, as occurred with Islam in seventh century Arabia. What follows thereafter is the extent to which the core dogma becomes nearly inseparable from the culture of a people who have accepted that dogma.

The moral directive of Islam to women and men is live chastely, be virtuous, dress modestly, and strive towards moderation in all things. How the moral directive is put into practice has shaped Muslim culture, and in turn been shaped by it given the ever present tensions between those resistant to change and those accommodating change even as the world around them evolves at a dizzying pace.

Beneath the surface of contemporary violence in the Muslim world are tensions of traditional societies confronted with change.

If a Muslim woman wears niqab out of her own choosing and without coercion, she is then embracing a customary practice within her culture.

But when the ayatollahs in Iran, or the rulers of Saudi Arabia, demand women to be veiled in public, they are confronted with traditional customs in the name of religion coercively enforced by power holders. Religion then is inseparable from politics, and it turns into daily inquisition.

In Canada politics and religion are two separate realms and we can distinguish between religious belief on the one hand, and customs and conventions on the other.

When a society, or a segment of it, however, begins losing confidence in requiring its own customs be respected then confusion follows. This is what has been happening in Canada with multiculturalism as a doctrine that relativizes all cultures, and those Canadians who spurn the Anglo-French European culture in the making of Canada for being stained by the sins of “white man’s” colonial-imperialist past. Or going further, when some among the intellectual elite wishes to strip Canada’s conventions bit by bit and turn the country into a showcase of a multicultural “souk” or marketplace.

This is why so many Canadians are in a tizzy over the propriety of Canada’s customs and conventions. They seem to lack confidence in requiring those who want to become Canadian follow our convention, as in not to obscure or hide their face during public oath-taking ceremony.

Hence, we have an irony here, some Muslim women practicing the custom of wearing niqab may discard it in the holiest sanctuary of Islam; however, when asked to respect certain convention in Canada the claim is made that this would be an infringement of their freedom of religion.

And then guardians of multiculturalism rush forth to defend a Muslim woman’s right to wear niqab as an expression of religious freedom, when there is no such doctrinal requirement in Islam.

— Salim Mansur teaches in political science at Western University, London, Ontario.