From Tunis to Tehran, the great veil debate | csmonitor.com

From Tunis to Tehran, the great veil debate | csmonitor.com: "There is little hard data on how many women cover their hair in Muslim societies, but what is certain is that the rising popularity of the head scarf is increasingly bumping up against both official and societal resistance:

• In Turkey, where the head scarf is banned in government offices and universities, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer last week refused to allow women wearing the scarf to attend a ball marking independence. He said 'compromise' on the issue would undermine the secular state founded by Kemal Atatürk.

• In Tunisia, Foreign Minister Abdel Waheb Abdallah recently described the covering as 'inspired by sectarianism ... foreign to our culture and our traditions.''

• In Morocco, Islamist activists complain that women who wear the head scarf, usually called a hijab, are hounded out of jobs and schools."