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One of the most visible signifiers of Islam has been the veil – it covers the individual and preserves their privacy, while publicly declarin2021g the identity of its wearer. How it means and what it means has been the realm of binarized debate. Islamic dress as referred to in the title of this special issue is a term whose meaning is contested and should be understood as constituted through difference rather than homogenizing experiences of wearers. The oft-witnessed conflation of forms of Islamic dress (Scott, 2005, p. 115) points to the fact that acts of censure and governance through Islamic dress are strategic and instrumental in pursuing wider political neo-colonial aims. One of the primary features that have united the papers contained here is the failure of discussions in the public domain to include the voices of Muslim women (both those who veil and those who do not). Here the nuances of its meaning, as debated by the private wearer, are put forward through a range of papers collected for this special issue which we hope will counter the more offensive posturings broadcast by some media. Authors here challenge the dual positioning of the ‘liberated’ woman, who the occidental has stated must be unveiled, against the ‘oppressed’ woman, who veils, either by choice or by mandate (and who must be liberated). This liberation takes the form solely of uncovering the face, since then liberation will be seen to be done. Beyond the arguments for liberation, the veil has also come to be a trigger for hostility towards the individual who wears it, as well as a stimulus of collective, carefully instilled, fears around what the extreme forces, who claim a particular religious identity, have done ‘in the West’. Among these arguments of liberation and fear, it is modest Muslim women who have found themselves in the cross-hairs of our ignorance. Mouths that have been previously physically masked have been uncovered recently, sometimes by force, but they have never-the-less remained smothered.