The Republican governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, has criticized Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen for a previous statement made in 2017. At the time, in the context of a debate on Islamophobia, Van der Bellen rhetorically suggested that non-muslim women might one day wear headscarves in solidarity with muslim women. DeSantis presented this remark as an example of Europe’s political misdirection and framed it as part of a broader cultural critique.

A nun without a veil as a parable for muslim women without veils, to illustrate what the headscarf ban means for muslim women.

The debate therefore touches not only on issues of freedom of expression and religious policy, but also on the role of religious women’s clothing as a visible symbol of faith.

Why believing women cover their hair

The Holy Quran explicitly states that believing women should wear a covering “so that they may be recognized and not harassed” —Sura Al Ahzab/The Troops 33:59. The covering is not a sign of subjugation, but one of identity, protection and visibility as a religious person. It draws a boundary: this woman does not belong to public access, to the male gaze, or to availability.

The same principle has existed in Christianity for centuries, particularly with regard to women. Christian nuns wear veils, habits and head coverings for precisely the same reason: to be recognized as women consecrated to God, to create distance from sexualization, and to command respect. The religious habit did not emerge by chance, but as a deliberate form of social protection.

The unspoken devaluation

Glory to the exalted One, if DeSantis now broadly attacks the muslim headscarf as a symbol of a dangerous or backward culture, he implicitly also targets the christian ideal of female piety that embodied the same logic for centuries. The nun’s veil and the muslim woman’s headscarf originate in different religions, but in the same idea: making faith visible, protecting dignity, and preventing harassment.

That a politician who presents himself as a “devout Christian” ignores or deliberately obscures this parallel is not accidental. It is political calculation. The headscarf is instrumentalized to stoke fear of Islam —even if this requires the implicit condemnation of christian traditions themselves.

Hostility towards Christianity in the guise of a culture war

Those who fundamentally problematize religious women’s clothing do not only call Islam into question, but also the christian understanding of piety, asceticism and female self-determination beyond sexual availability.

Conclusion

Attacking the headscarf worn by muslim women without considering the christian religious habit is not value-based politics, but selective morality. And those who do so in the name of Christianity hollow out Christianity itself —its history, its symbolism, and its claim to protect the dignity of all believers.

By Okay Altinisik | 9-1-2026, 21:09:22