Here's another way of looking at it.

A version of this discussion could be boiled down to whether one believes that a free society will have a greater effect on a traditional institution than vice-versa. Optimistically, as veiling is introduced to America, our free society-values will overpower the oppressive baggage that the practice carries with it... you might say we could socially "liberate" the use of the veil.

On the other hand, many people worry that veiling will inevetably bring with it the oppressive ideas that it promotes elsewhere. I am not of this opinion, but nor am I willing to write of the possibility that this may be the prevailing trend.

How to set our minds at east and determine which way the pendulum swings? It all comes down to my above question, and how Muslim American women collectively answer it. I have been frustrated because what I have been hearing is that the concept of "choice" has been used as both the means and the end of the discussion.

Why do women here wear the veil? Because they choose to, I am told. Why do they choose? Because they are free.

These may be personally satisfying answers, but they seem absent of the self-reflection necessary to understand that the relationship between veiling and freedom is in fact a two-way street. The fact that a woman is free may be why she chooses to veil herself in America, just as the fact that a woman is not free may be why she has no choice to veil herself elsewhere.

Thus, to dwell on matters of personal choice and not confront the larger issues is to neglect the process by which the practice of wearing the veil can be fully assimilated into a free society.