The Veil: Resistance or Repression?

By Silja J.A. Talvi, LiP Magazine. Posted December 30, 2002.

From the black, loose-fitting chador of Iran to the dense, gridlike facial veil on the body-enveloping burqa in Afghanistan, the veiling of Islamic women has fueled fierce debate within feminist circles about the perceived role of the hijab -- roughly translated as the Islamic dress code for women -- in enforcing gender exclusion and inequality.

In the not-too-distant past, the face veils and elaborately decorated body coverings of Middle Eastern and North African women also provoked strong reactions on the part of Western colonizers. Those reactions, encompassing everything from horror and disgust to sexual exoticization, have contributed to lingering mystique and confusion that accompanies our understanding of the lives of veiled women in modern-day Islam.

Two works in recent years, "Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance" (Berg Publishers, 1999) and "Rage Against the Veil" (Prometheus Books, 2000), offer very different but compelling perspectives on the significance of the veil in Islamic society, and its role as both an instrument of resistance and repression.

In "Veil," University of Southern California anthropology professor Fadwa El Guindi lays out a fresh but sometimes one-sided analysis of some of the multifaceted uses and meanings of the veil (and other, modest Islamic dress) in Arabic-speaking Muslim societies.

From the outset, El Guindi expresses strong displeasure with the colonial-era exoticization of veiling, as well as with the critical interpretation inherent in much of past and present feminist discourse surrounding the veil.

"Western-ideology feminists (in the East and the West) have dominated the discourse on the veil, viewing it as an aspect of patriarchies and a sign of women's backwardness, subordination and oppression. This uni-dimensional approach narrows the study of the veil ... and leads to a distorted view of a complex cultural phenomenon," she writes.

In the Arabic-speaking world, "veil" has no single-word translation, explains El Guindi. More than a hundred terms exist to refer to the diverse articles of women's clothing that vary by body part and region. Furthermore, she says, modest dress is a way of life for observant Islamic men, and male veiling -- as a symbol of masculinity and virility -- is also present in various parts of the Middle East and Africa.

For women, El Guindi explains, veiling in contemporary Arab culture fulfills numerous social and religious functions. Depending on region and cultural context, veiling can signify privacy, kinship, status, power, autonomy, and/or political resistance.

Drawing on her own fieldwork, an extensive bibliography, and her analysis of religious texts -- the Qur'an (the holy book of Islam), Hadith (the prophetic narratives), and Tafsir (the Islamic exegesis) -- El Guindi argues, in particular, for the "centrality of the cultural notion of privacy" in veiling.

Veils and modest Islamic dress, explains El Guindi, grant women an important private spiritual space even in the public sphere. It is a mistake, suggests El Guindi, to presuppose that the Islamic faith denies women the right to express or enjoy their own sexuality: "Islam accepts sexuality as a normative aspect of both ordinary and religious life."

El Guindi insists that observant, veiled Islamic women should not be pitied. Instead, she says, they should be seen as free from the male gaze and from sexualized attention, and must rightly be understood to be observing -- and drawing pride from -- Islam's central tenets: Privacy, humility, piety and moderation.

Pride in such Islamic observance, in addition to support of national and women's self-determination, also lies at the heart of the adoption of the veil in political struggle, explains El Guindi. In an overview of the creation of a new Islamic political consciousness in Egypt, Palestine and Iran beginning in the 1970s, El Guindi suggests that veiling as a part of this activism "espouses egalitarianism, community, identity, privacy and justice ... Reserve and restraint in behavior, voice and body movement are not restrictions. They symbolize a renewal of traditional cultural identity."

So it was for a period in Iran. As a part of a Westernizing national effort, Iran's monarchy had banned the veil in 1936. Women who wore the veil despite the law were routinely arrested and had their veils forcibly removed. Eventually, as dress code rules were relaxed, women were allowed to re-veil, although the practice was largely frowned upon, particularly by the somewhat Westernized middle- and upper-classes.

But in the mid- to late-'70s, women began donning chadors as a form of political protest to the rule of the secular, anti-communist, Western-backed Reza Shah Pahlavi. However, with the Shah ousted in 1979 and the Islamic regime battling for -- and eventually winning -- control over the government, the hijab soon evolved from a voluntary display of solidarity to a compulsory demand on women in Iran. Protests on the part of women's groups went unheeded, and the arrests and punishments of women who dared to defy strict codes of appearance became commonplace.

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