Page 454 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

432 Janet Spreckels and Helga Kotthoff

symbol on the basis of a veiling requirement in some countries. In its various
and especially in its radical forms, political Islam in Iran, Afghanistan and Al-
geria is very present in Western media. As well in Turkey a conflict is smolder-
ing over university attendance for women students wearing headscarves.
In 1998, a teacher named Fereshta Ludin was forbidden to wear a headscarf
when teaching in German schools. She insisted that wearing a headscarf was
just an expression of her personality. Schöning-Kalender points out that thereby
a sign was also selected that in the meantime has come to be seen almost every-
where in the world as a sign of political Islamization. The type of scarf and es-
pecially the way of tying it, as well as generally all the other clothing worn by
Ludin in public indicated that it was not a matter of the traditional headscarf
worn, e.g., by her grandmother. In Turkey a variant consisting of a long coat and
headscarf that falls over the shoulders, leaves the face free but covers all the hair
and the neck, has since the early 1980s been referred to as Türban. With this re-
interpretation, according to Schöning-Kalender, this way of wearing a headscarf
is also set apart from all traditional ways of wearing a headscarf. In the course of
the dispute in Turkey this has resulted in the concept of Türban itself becoming
a symbol of political Islam.
Another discursive context for Ludin’s headscarf is constituted through the
perception of cultural difference as an instrument for codifying social inequal-
ity. The critique points to the fact that Turkish women wearing a headscarf were
allowed for decades to do janitorial work in German schools, but a woman
wearing a headscarf is not suitable as a teacher. Young Turkish women of the
second or third generation living in Germany suspect that the prohibition of the
headscarf expresses a fear of the majority society of the rise of the minority.
Some of them wear a headscarf with pride: “Look here, you Germans. Someone
who wears a headscarf is not born to be a cleaning lady.” Schöning-Kalender in-
troduces as a third perspective gender discourse. A few young women wear
headscarves in Turkey and in Western countries not due to pressure from their
fathers, but rather reinterpret it as a confession of the Muslim significance of
physicality and feminine identity against Western gender ideals that favor par-
ticularly for young women the maximal display of sexual attributes. With the
headscarf they demonstrate that a female identity continually focused on self-
eroticization is not their ideal. The multi-vocality of such symbols makes it
necessary to trace their location in different contexts. The dispute does not end
there; the voices of the dispute are, however, better recognizable.

2.3.2. Symbols of national identity
In conclusion, we will take a look at newly arising national identities and their
symbolization. Although ethnic labeling had never been entirely absent in post-
war Europe, its status was relatively modest. The collapse of the communist re-