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The headscarves worn by many Muslim women have provoked heated debate outside the majority-Muslim world, most of it about the competing values of secular society and the freedom of religious expression. Less understood are the reasons why women wear them in the first place. Blogging at Religion Dispatches, Shabana Mir <a title=”tries to correct this” href=”http://www.religiondispatches.org/Gui/Content.aspx?Page=BL&Id=152″ target=”_blank”>tries to correct this</a>, offering not one, but 17 different aesthetic, religious, and cultural reasons why women wear headscarves.<br id=”td7o” goog_docs_charindex=”531″>
–<a id=”gwkh” title=”Steve Thorngate” href=”https://www.utne.com/bios/utne-reader-interns.aspx” goog_docs_charindex=”534″>
<i id=”zx49″ goog_docs_charindex=”535″>
<font color=”#551a8b”>Steve Thorngate</font>
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<em>Image by <a title=”Chris Schuepp” href=”http://flickr.com/photos/11883362@N00/2264352319″ target=”_blank”>Chris Schuepp</a>,</em>
<em>licensed under </em>
<a title=”Creative Commons” href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/” target=”_blank”>
<em>Creative Commons</em>
</a>
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 of Headscarves){kind=link}