“The individual is both a given and a goal of liberalism. It is a given, but one that is often unaware of its identity as an individual. All forms of collective identity: ethnic, national, religious, caste, and so on impede into an individual’s awareness of his individuality. Liberalism encourages the individual to become himself; that is, to be free of all those social identities and dependencies that constrain and define the individual from the outside […]
As for what the purpose of this freedom [from ties, identifications, and restrictions on individual will], liberals remain silent. To assert some kind of normative goal is, in their eyes, to restrict the individual and his freedom. Therefore, they strictly separate a freedom from which they regard as a moral imperative of social development, from the freedom for the normativization for how, why, and for what purpose this freedom should be used. The latter remains at the discretion of the historical subject, in other words, the individual.”
— Aleksandr Dugin, The Fourth Political Theory
Having lived in Montreal, Quebec, I was exposed to my fair share of the veil debate. In the years I lived there, the government was trying to impose (and succeeded) veiling bans - among other religious symbols - in public institutions. Like France, Quebec wishes to enshrine secularism at the state level through laïcité. This, in France, means there is to be no religion in the government such as swearing on a Bible when taking office or registering marriages that were only established through religious proceedings. When these laws came up while I lived in Montreal, there was always a commotion, some heated debate, and a slew of articles decrying or praising the policy. It was a topic that people spent a great deal of time over, and that really animated our political landscape.
More recently, in Iran, protests have erupted over Iran’s laws that do just the opposite. Women across the country are protesting for their right not to veil, and it has garnered international attention. The entire world is talking about these protests, about veiling laws, and about Iranian society in general.
What is it about veiling laws that so deeply grasp the attention of western liberal societies?