A mark of separation or veiled bigotry?

Last week, British courts upheld a state primary school's decision to suspend a Muslim teaching assistant because she refused to take off her veil in the presence of men. British members of parliament openly supported the school's decision, saying it encouraged "integration." Even Prime Minister Tony Blair openly condemned the woman's voluntary decision to wear the veil, calling it "a mark of separation" that "makes other people from outside the community feel uncomfortable."

At best, these politicians' comments are xenophobic. At worst, they are bigoted. Most disturbing, however, is that the decision of this school, allegedly a place of enlightenment and enrichment, is fundamentally antidemocratic, ethnocentric and against the sprit of education.

In a free society that aims to be a model for inchoate democratic governments in the Middle East (ahem), we must respect free expression of religion. What these politicians refer to as "integration," a removal of "separation," is in fact its near opposite: assimilation. Social integration is the bringing together and intermixing of different groups. It is not the standardizing of religion, dress or mores. Multicultural integration does not mean asking nonwhites to accommodate white norms or non-Christians to accommodate Christian norms. It means allowing a multitude of cultures to coexist and interact peaceably.

British MPs, however, have argued that the school acted appropriately because the niqab, a veil that covers all of a woman's face except her eyes, interferes with her ability to communicate. Children cannot understand the teaching of 23-year-old Aishah Azmi, they argue, because they cannot see her face.

But the face is not universally crucial to communication. Human beings have a tendency to believe that a norm that exists in our culture was naturally predetermined rather than culturally constructed; we don't realize that common sense is local and man-made. In the West, we may believe that looking at someone's face is the only way to truly understand her message. But there are plenty of cultures where looking at someone's face is seen as inhibiting communication. In parts of China, for example, it is considered rude to look into someone's eyes when talking to her. Somehow people who observe this norm have found ways to effectively and meaningfully converse.

That people can communicate without the need to decode someone's facial expressions shouldn't be so hard for these MPs to figure out. Don't they have telephones in England?

Imagine for a minute that a culturally constructed communicative norm from another country conflicts with your own culture's taboo. Imagine you, a recent Princeton graduate, are a woman who has decided to teach in a foreign country. There, the locals believe that to understand someone, to better communicate, you must study the movement and "expressions" of the speaker's chest. (I know a few male students at Princeton who act as if this were the norm here too, but that's beside the point.) Suppose your supervisors order you to remove your top while teaching because "the children cannot understand you while you have your bosom covered!" Wouldn't that seem irrational and intrusive to you?

More to the point, you as a young Princeton graduate — or Ms. Azmi as a young teacher in England — would likely feel incredibly self-conscious should you obey your supervisors and expose more skin. Feeling literally naked would inhibit your teaching far more than covering up ever would.

Other opponents to the wearing of the niqab say that it is patriarchal and misogynistic. It is the white man's burden to liberate these repressed women from their overbearing, primitive culture. But Ms. Azmi, and most other British Muslim women who wear a veil, have in fact chosen to do so. News stories from Britain have shown that many if not most British Muslims are against the wearing of niqab and that most mainstream British mosques advise women that a veil covering only their hair is sufficient. Women are choosing these face veils; the veils are not forced upon them.

British politicians' real concern here is not for the wellbeing of the veil-wearers but for the comfort of non-Muslims who come into contact with these "marks of separation." And admittedly, it is off-putting to be around someone who dresses so differently from yourself. If I had a professor or preceptor who taught while wearing a veil, her uncommon dress might initially make me feel uncomfortable. But so what? Teachers who look and dress and think exactly like me leave me just talking to myself. Exposure to difference and encounters with things and people that make the student uncomfortable, is the sine qua non of education. There is no place in the world where Ms. Azmi's right to wear religious attire should be more safeguarded than in a school classroom. Catherine Rampell is an anthropology major from Palm Beach, Fla. She can be reached at crampell@princeton.edu.