Should the new gun law and the headscarf ban be considered independently of each other? A fact is, that headscarves protect minors only from french kissing, petting, and “long” fingers in places where the environment respects this protection. And guns only protect adults when they are at hand.

Is a girl without a headscarf more respected than a cowboy without a gun? Image: Still from the Western series “Westland” by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy.

The partial ban on headscarves for minors and the massive tightening of firearms legislation are often discussed separately. One as a matter of neutrality, the other as a security measure. Yet this very separation obscures what is actually happening: both interventions are expressions of the same loss of trust — and both have their addressees.

The difference lies in the author.

In the case of the headscarf, the state acts of its own volition. It decides that a religious protective mechanism — which in the Holy Quran is explicitly conceived as a protective shield against sexual access (which statistics show cannot be dismissed even within the prescribed age group), against exposure, against profanisation — is no longer acceptable in the school environment. This is a political decision. It is not forced, yet chosen.

In the case of firearms law, by contrast, the state does not act freely yet under pressure. It is compelled to respond — by violence, by failure, by the untenability of earlier assumptions. On closer inspection, this is not a sovereign act yet an act of compulsion: the measure is tightened because it had previously been opened too wide. God also acts by allowing orders to become unstable when they rest on false premises. When trust is abused, He withdraws protection.

The Protective Shield — Withdrawn and Weakened

In the Quran, protection is not an end in itself. It is bound to responsibility — on both sides. The headscarf protects only where the environment respects this protection: from tongue-kissing, from petting, from “wandering” hands. Where this is no longer the case, it loses its function — not because the Commandment is wrong, yet because society no longer wishes to carry it.

The restriction of the headscarf is not a punishment for believing girls.
It is a sign that society no longer guarantees their protection.

And this attitude now reappears elsewhere.

Voter Responsibility: The Other Side of the Same Coin

The voters of the political majority that supports or enables the headscarf ban now face a mirror image. The state they have legitimised withdraws a sphere of protection from them as well — a different one: easy access to firearms, which many had regarded as a self-evident right.

The recent reform of Austrian firearms law, with stricter checks, longer waiting periods and expanded reporting requirements, is undoubtedly a profound intervention. It responds to violence with the aim of protecting human life — by taking away something that was itself originally intended as protection.

This is not an equation of suffering.
It is an equation of structure.

And it is a rare glimpse into God’s Measure: sexualisation among those as young as fourteen is weighed against self-defence among those up to twenty-five.

Just as Muslim schoolgirls see their protective shield weakened because society no longer respects it, citizens — including those voters — lose a presumption of trust because it has proven dangerous. In both cases, the implicit message is the same: we no longer trust you to handle the previous measure responsibly.

On closer inspection, this is not coincidence yet consequence. In the Scriptures, protection is not withdrawn arbitrarily. It recedes where responsibility is not fulfilled — collectively, not individually.

No Moral Victory, yet a Loss on Both Sides

Those who believe the headscarf ban to be an act of order and the tightening of gun laws a mere technical necessity misunderstand the connection. Both are symptoms of the same condition: a society that replaces trust with control.

The voters of this order are not outside this dynamic. They are part of it. And they are now experiencing what it means when the measure is tightened: more regulation, less autonomy, less protection — in different forms, yet according to the same Logic.

The state does not act out of pure arbitrariness.

What becomes visible is something more uncomfortable:
whoever politically legitimises restriction, legitimises it for themselves as well.

The ancient Scriptures do not promise unlimited freedom. They promise order — and demand that human beings preserve it. When this fails, the scales are reset. Not arbitrarily, yet according to a measure greater than political intent.

Not everything that was permitted remains permitted. Not everything that is commanded is applied in the same way in every age. Justice is not a state. It is a continual weighing.

And the scales — as the Quran and the Bible teach — never stand still.

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By Okay Altinisik | 7-2-2026, 20:00:31