AMMAN, 16 June 2003 — Jordanian housewife Umm Suheib covers her face under a veil even in the privacy of her own home but is willing to reveal her features when she casts her ballot in next week’s legislative vote.
Jordan’s electoral law insists that women must unveil when they go to the polls on June 17, to prove their identities, an issue that has angered Islamists, who accuse the authorities of violating their civic rights.
“They want to create obstacles for us so that we will not vote but I will remove my veil in order to cast my ballot,” said Umm Suheib, a preacher who gives Qur’anic lessons in the central Amman area of Mahatta.
Jordan’s key opposition party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), is fielding 30 candidates, including a woman for the first time, in the election.
The party had boycotted the last election in 1997 and is threatening to do the same this time.
Hundreds of Jordanian women who want to participate actively in the vote will have to follow Umm Suheib’s example or stay at home, authorities have said.
This means they will show their faces to male election monitors when they head to the polling booths in 45 constituencies across Jordan tomorrow.
“The law says that women voters must show their faces and those who refuse will not be allowed to vote,” official elections spokesman Faisal Shboul said.
“Who can guarantee that the woman wearing a burqa is the one and the same as the person registered on the electoral card?” said Shboul, referring to the ID bearing the photograph of the voter, in which women can wear scarves over their heads but must show their faces.
“They want us to be transparent in the election and yet at the same time they ask us to violate the standards,” Shboul told AFP.
IAF party leaders, however, are crying foul.
“My wife does not wear the burqa but there are others who consider that it must be respected in line with Islam,” IAF Secretary General Hamza Mansur said.
“There are tens of thousands of female teachers in addition to policewomen who can be used as election monitors” instead of men, he said, adding that this would be a solution to spare veiled women voters any embarrassment.
But the authorities say this is simply out of the question.
“There will be 4,170 ballot boxes across the kingdom. How do they expect us to place a woman at the very least by each box?” Shboul said
Shboul accused the Islamists of raising an unnecessary storm just days before the election, saying: “This shows that they have nothing else to worry about”.
But Mansur insisted that forcing veiled women to reveal their faces “will increase the feeling of frustration of voters at large and mean that fewer people will head to the ballot boxes.”
Election organizers say, however, that a majority of religious leaders consider that nothing in the precepts of Islam suggests that a woman must cover up her face.
“There are different views concerning this issue but the strongest one says that the face of a woman is not something taboo that has to be hidden,” Jordan’s Mufti Sheikh Saeed Al-Hijjawi told AFP
Hijjawi said “solutions” within Islamic law will be taken to satisfy both parties and ensure the transparency of the election.
Islamic candidate Nawal Al-Fauri complained that forcing women voters to remove the veil “will contribute to ill-founded suggestions that say that women’s participation in the election is not necessary.” Fauri, who only wears scarf, added however that women who go on the annual Haj pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia must show their faces and their hands.
Sociologist Sirri Nasser said the debate reflects “the power struggle between the Islamists and the government,” which is taking advantage of the global anti-Islamic sentiment to challenge hard-liners.