Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

6 2Islam i n World Cult u r e sGreek times, is a complex symbolic system that women and men have usedand understood in different ways throughout history. By the 1920s, Frencheducatedupper-class Muslim women in Egypt had begun to argue that faceveiling(the expected form of public dress for the urban upper and middleclasses) was a sign of women’s oppression. Led by Hoda Sha’rawi and others,women of the upper classes began to remove their veils and to organizewomen’s associations, agitating for changes in the laws dealing with marriageand divorce and encouraging the mandatory education of girls. Whereas inTurkey, women unveiled under legal compulsion, in other parts of the MiddleEast, the practice generally began with women high in the social scale andthen gradually worked its way downward until, by the 1950s, one would nothave found more than a handful of older women in major cities who coveredtheir hair at all. At that time, hijab, or modest dress, was perceived as a markof cultural and personal backwardness. In the Gulf countries, such developmentsnever took place, and modest dress, complete with the face veil, hasbeen enforced by both tradition and law. But in the early 1970s, with thegrowing influence of Islamic political movements in universities, some youngwomen in other parts of the region began again to cover their hair, theirarms, and their legs with full-length garments. A few began wearing face veilsand gloves as well. Today, the majority of Muslim women in most Middle Easterncountries where the veil had been discarded in midcentury—and increasinglyeven in secularist strongholds like Turkey—have since adopted variousforms of modest dress.Their motivations are diverse. For some, pressure from brothers, husbands,fiancés, or fathers involved in Islamist movements has been a decidingfactor. For others, modest dress is an adaptation to the stresses ofcrowded cities in which unveiled women experience sexual harassment orreceive unwanted attention from strangers. Veiling, in these contexts, allowsa woman to signal that she is virtuous, visually marking a separation betweenherself and others in situations—a crowded city bus, a university classroom—where physical separation is impossible. Particularly for women who workoutside the home, modest dress is a way of marking concern with traditionalvalues of family and domesticity. For some women, modest dress becomes afashion competition, for the styles have become brighter, more complex,and open to more creative possibilities than in the past. For other women,the veil is an expression of deepening piety. Several Egyptian women I knowbegan veiling in the 1980s against the express wishes of their husbands, whofeared they would be accused of pressuring their wives into modest dress andthat clients, coworkers, or others would suspect them of involvement in Islamistmovements. One of the most interesting developments with regard tothe veil, though, is a gradual narrowing of its meaning. Traditionally donnedwhen a girl reached puberty and was thus marriageable, modest dress is