Unveiling Hatred

Delineating Hate Crime Vulnerability of Veiled Women as a Human Rights Issue

Abstract

Although anti-Muslim hate crimes have been on the rise in most Western nations for decades, according to influential hate crime scholar, Barbara Perry, little attention has been given to the particular vulnerability of veiled Muslim females to such crimes (Perry 2013), thereby potentially disregarding a sustained source of human rights violations (Perry and Olsson 2009). This paper delves into Danish sociolegal reality to delineate the scope of such concern, attempting to ascertain any specific hate crime vulnerability among veiled Muslim women in Denmark. It identifies a number of preliminary empirical indications that resonate with Perry’s claim, reasoning that the hate crime vulnerability of veiled women be more thoroughly scrutinized in a Danish context. However, it also argues that such hate crime vulnerability is most productively addressed, at least prima facie, as a tangible and principal human rights issue (Brudholm 2016) rather than in the terms of human rights violations.