Headscarf Is Also a Scarf Over the Head By Sabine Clappaert http://www.ipsnews.net/headlines.asp

- While Belgium’s politicians, academics, business leaders and feminists grapple with the concept and reality of a law banning headscarves in public institutions and beyond, two entrepreneurial women have joined forces to rescue the headscarf from the country’s political debate. Inge Rombauts and Fatima Rafiy run the exclusive hijab boutique Noor D’Izar, which offers women, "a fashionable solution regardless of their reasons for wanting to wear a headscarf," Inge Rombauts tells IPS.

"We shouldn’t isolate Muslim women who choose to wear a headscarf or hijab, just as we shouldn’t isolate a cancer patient who wears a headscarf because she has lost her hair after a chemotherapy treatment. What we want to do is take the headscarf out of the political debate and offer modern women, regardless of whether they are Muslim or not, a contemporary new look." Speaking to the ladies at Noor D’Izar’s showroom in central Antwerp, it becomes clear that these are women with a mission. "I don’t understand why people feel so threatened by a headscarf. Personally, I am not for or against; people should be able to make their own choices," Inge says.