In response to Tadin Sahak's letter that it's a 'headscarf" and not a 'tudung', I would like to say that calling it a headscarf is just an attempt to divorce this controversial piece of cloth from the very localised politics of the tudung and the very issue at stake here.

After all, the 'kain selendang', equally modest for the Malay woman, may qualify as a headscarf too. And yet, it doesn't carry the heavy symbolism of the post-70s Islam that we have come to associate with the tudung.

Obviously the police also didn't say the women could wear 'headscarfs' or selendang but specified tudung. Sure, in Greece and all those countries the writer mentioned, the headscarf was part of their culture. But the headscarf isn't part of contemporary secular Malaysian Chinese/Indian culture, so why compare oranges and apples?

As for it being part of the ceremonial uniform, several years ago when Sikh Canadian policemen were not allowed to march in the parade with their turbans on because it didn't conform with the uniform of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, there was an outcry about this as going against the multicultural policy of the state. The gesture smacked of intolerance and racism. And I'm sure most Malaysians will agree with that.

Yet when it comes to home turf...