Behind the Veil: Understanding the Meaning and Representation of the Muslim Veil in Different Contexts

GUSTE GURCINAITE

In high school, I was an active member of our debate club. There, I engaged with many global issues which were often overlooked in the public discourse of my home country. It was in this environment several years ago, in 2015, that for the first time I encountered the question of the Muslim veil ban in Western Europe. At the time, the ban was only enforced in France and the Netherlands. One debate round, which I now recall, started with a motion proposing to ban the full-face veil in the EU. In this round, I proudly opposed the motion, defending democratic and feminist values, though I did not join the opposition side by choice but by the chance of a coin flip. Just like any other debate taking place in a debate club, it was merely a creative exercise lasting for forty minutes. For us at stake were not the lives of real people, but rather a win or a loss and a chance to participate in another tournament. Our arguments too were generalized, lacking informed understanding and personal interest. In fact, one could say that in Lithuania, lack of awareness on questions where Islam is concerned is taken for granted. Muslims in Lithuania only constitute 0.1% of the population and teachings on Islam or the history of the Muslim countries are not a part of our school curriculum. Hence, my personal lack of engagement with these topics comes as no great surprise.

Nevertheless, when not so long afterwards, one by one, regional and federal authorities across Europe began implementing veil bans in 2016, I, at the time already considering myself a feminist, felt deeply puzzled. Unlike my debating experience, this time I struggled to align myself with either the proposing or the opposing sides. Measuring the question by my liberal European standards, I lacked an intuitive understanding of why Muslim women were expected or even themselves chose to veil. But even more so, I could not grasp why

the authorities in parts of Europe were so troubled by veiled women that they needed to ban this custom. To me, neither of these standpoints were associated with feminism, which I saw as the right of both genders to choose freely and be treated as equals.

My current pursuit to understand questions about the Muslim veil, gender equality in Islamic communities and the veil ban in Europe is a challenging journey. With my personal position fluctuating along the spectrum between the two mainstream sides, locating and fixing it requires me to ask questions about both the origin of the veil and the interests of the European leaders. This essay, therefore, is my attempt to answer questions that puzzle me in the debate on the Muslim veil and reflect on my changing understanding. To inform my understanding of this nuanced issue, I first ask, what is the relationship between the past, Islam and the veil? A potential answer could be that it is complex and oftentimes misinterpreted by parts of the Western nonMuslim audience, as well by some modern Muslim communities themselves. This view is supported by Moroccan writer Fatema Mernissi in her book “The Veil and the Male Elite” and by an American scholar Samina Ali in her speech “What does Quran really say about a Muslim woman’s hijab?” These two women, who both identify themselves as Muslims and feminists, argue against the view that the Islamic veil has a religious origin that is allegedly secured by the Islamic scriptures. To support her position, Samina Ali stresses that there are only three verses in the Quran which discuss a woman’s clothing, however, none of these are specific to the veil and none of these are definite (Samina Ali 2:07-8:30). If a reader of a non-Muslim background, like myself, was to double-check her claim and look at the mentioned verses, it may even come as a surprise how abstract these verses appear to be. For instance, the Quran says “the best garment is that of nice, modest conduct” (Quran 7:26). More specifically, the scriptures also order Muslim women to “cover [their] chest” (Quran 24:31) or “draw a shawl around your persons when outdoors” (Quran 33:59). By looking at these, it could be argued that even in foreign cultures, such as that of Western Europe, these verses would be compatible with dress norms that are freely followed by the majority of the population. This could already be seen as proof that in Islamic scriptures there is nothing

written on women’s dress that would fundamentally differ from the content of religious scriptures of faiths that are more popularly endorsed in the West. Moreover, the Quran does not single out women but also gives some general guidelines to men on how they should dress. Interestingly, the guidelines for men, just as those for women, focus on modesty, yet are not explicit (Musharraf 29).

Hence, drawing from this evidence, I intuitively ask why then, has the veil through time become associated with Islam and piety? In her book, Mernissi endeavors to answer a similar question. Using historical narratives from the formation of the caliphate after Prophet Mohammed’s death, she seeks to prove that through later years, the male Muslim clergy used their exclusive power to interpret the scriptures without restraint which resulted in rewriting of their original meaning (Mernissi 49-81). According to her argument, guidelines on women’s dress underwent a process just like that, turning it into a measure of a woman’s piety. Samina Ali more boldly argues that the interest of the male clergy was to reinforce male control of women in an already patriarchal society (Ali 2:09-17:40). Building on Merissi’s and Ali’s arguments, it could be held that the origin of the veil is political and in the historical context of the Arab world, its affiliation with the scriptures has locked Muslim women in a patriarchal power structure.

Many scholars, nevertheless, have upheld divergent views from those of Mernissi and Ali. An American anthropologist Lila Abu Lughod who has written on the topic of agency of Muslim women in her book “Do Muslim Women (Still) Need Saving?” is one of the authors holding a different view. Unlike Mernessi or Ali, Lughod claims that historically the veil has given Muslim women “portable seclusion,” allowing them to move out of segregated living spaces in the ancient Arab world (Lughod 36). This view suggests that the veil empowered women in their social realities, where the masculine already was the public and the feminine was domestic. Nevertheless, Lughod’s argument could be seen as more applicable to modern or more recent historical times. Importantly, Lughod disregards the historical sequence of events that scholars such as Mernessi so rigorously studied to trace back the relationship between the veil and Islam. Firstly, Lughod’s notion

of pre-existing patriarchy is weakened by narratives about independent Muslim women in Prophet Mohammed’s times, which both Ali and Mernessi bring out. Images such as that of Mohammad’s first wife Khadija, who was a successful businesswoman, or his third wife A’isha, who led an army after Mohammed’s death, help to disprove the idea of pre-existing patriarchy. Moreover, Mernessi’s and Ali’s previously introduced claim that the Muslim clergy and their interpretation of religious norms on women’s dress have undermined the position of women in the past is strengthened by the nature of the clergy’s parallel interpretations of the scriptures. Samina Ali stresses that just like comments on the veil, other teachings such as that a woman should be sexually submissive to her husband or that she only needs to finish primary schooling before marriage all serve to cripple women’s agency (Ali 12:09-17:40). Consequently, it seems most convincing that the relationship of the veil, Islam and the past is a political one.

Nevertheless, the context in which a modern veil-wearing Arab woman lives clearly differs from the context of a veil-wearing Arab woman in the eighth century. Beyond time, many other significant variables impact the life of a Muslim woman, including her geographical location and the socioeconomic and political conditions in which she is situated. Hence, I now ask why do individual Muslim women (still) veil? With experiences of modern Muslim women being so diverse, it becomes apparent that the veil has significantly progressed from its origin. Consequently, I begin to skeptically view the practice of treating the veil as a symbol, as symbolism presupposes a singular meaning behind it. To support my view, I attempt to deconstruct several symbols that are commonly attached to modern-day veiling practice. Firstly, as reflected in some pro-veil-ban arguments in Europe, such as that made by French authorities, the veil is oftentimes interpreted as a symbol of women’s oppression in Islam. Abu Lughod is one scholar who has written with a purpose to show that the veil does not represent a Muslim woman’s position in society. Lughod’s work can be seen as relevant when discussing the veil in a modern context specifically because she uses empirical evidence from her anthropological fieldwork in modern-day Egypt to support it. Through a narrative of one Egyptian Muslim woman’s life, Lughod shows that historical,

political and economic conditions are the primary cause of her hardship. Meanwhile, neither the fact that she is Muslim nor the fact that she’s a Muslim woman gives her a disadvantage in her community. By musing “why so many… presume that just because the Muslim women dress in a certain way they are not agentic individuals,” Lughod criticizes the supposed link between the veil and a woman’s condition as a hasty generalization (Lughod 9). Armed with this awareness, as I look around, I find evidence of Lughod’s criticism in the Western media. Ironically, some Western media sources are highly critical of appearance-based discrimination that takes place in its cultural contexts, such as racism or face-based appearance discrimination of women and youth in the workplace. Nevertheless, the same media struggles to get rid of the notion that Muslim women are represented by their dress. Lughod strengthens her argument by questioning mainstream assumptions, such as how can one “distinguish dress that is freely chosen from that which is worn out of habit, social pressure or fashion” (Lughod 19). Hence, acknowledging the presence of numerous assumptions in this debate, I take a stance that using the veil as a symbol of Muslim woman’s social condition is faulty. Alternatively, as discussed earlier, in some contexts the veil is treated as an exclusive symbol of a woman’s piety. While some Muslim women seem to have internalized the latter meaning of the veil due to the generated common knowledge in their communities, this symbol is also far from universal. Valerie Behiery, a scholar with a focus on culture, gender, and the Middle East, also criticizes the practice of treating the veil as a measure of a woman’s piety. Similar to Lughod, Behiery explains that as a merit of such symbolism, the veil falsely becomes a “site of analysis” for the Islamic way of life, whereas its meaning for individual veiled women is actually unique (Behiery 405). Behiery supports this argument by citing studies that reveal that not all women who veil are practicing Muslims (Behiery 405). Another unique piece of evidence which she brings in is the “New Veiling Phenomena,” a movement where young Muslim women choose the veil as a symbol to reject traditional control of women in the family and patriarchal society (Bahiery 404). Wearing the veil gives these women autonomy to pursue education and employment in the public arena. In this case, the veil obtains a unique political meaning which again disproves the pious symbol of

the veil. Therefore, the apparent lack of consistency in both of these symbols of the veil causes me to embrace the fact that each veiled Muslim woman develops her own meaningful connection to the veil. This makes me reflect that the motive and the meaning behind the choice of a Muslim woman to veil are variable in different contexts.

Having the aforementioned complexities in mind, I ask, why some Western European countries are so troubled by the Islamic veil? Since 2016, the federal veil ban has been enforced in six European countries, and even more have passed the veil ban on local levels. Scholars studying this recent development such as Valerie Behiery and Asif Mohiuddin notice that some of the greatest proponents of the ban are former colonial empires, such as France, Netherlands, and Denmark. With debates taking place on religious freedom, gender equality, secularism and even fear of terrorism, it, hence, can be argued that proponents in the veil ban debate are using the language of contrasts to strengthen their modern Western self-identity. In her book “Short History of the Veil,” Valerie Behiery attempts to trace back the historical relation of Western European states, Islam, and the veil, and show that some Western European leaders have been persistently constructing an artificial Muslim identity in their home countries. Using evidence of scholars Kahf and Ahmed, Behiery shows that through history, in Western Europe narratives about Muslim women have not been consistent. For instance, in medieval period Europeans saw Islamic world as culturally superior, and popular literature depicted the Muslim woman as a powerful figure, a “queen or a noblewoman” or even as someone “intimidatingly sexual,” which did not conform with “European idea of normative femininity” (Behiery 389). However, with the onset of the colonial period, the language describing the veil as a “manifest of female oppression in Islam” was evoked (Behiery 388). Such evolution, Behiery suggests, “demonstrates that representations are constructions, contingent upon time, place and culture” and that they are inseparable from questions of political and economic domination (Behiery 389). Building on her argument, it could be claimed that the premise of modern-day construction of the image of an oppressed veiled Muslim woman or, more recently, the dangerous veiled Muslim woman, in the West is related to the desire of Western leaders to remain at the forefront of globalization.

A Bangladeshi activist and a scholar, Asif Mohiuddin, in his work “Islamophobia and a Discursive Reconstruction of Religious Imagination in Europe,” supports this view and suggests that in Europe, arguments favoring the veil ban are constructed in a way which projects Muslims as a threat to the values and identities of the local society. He claims that a language of “positive-self,” read liberal-minded Westerner, and the “negative other,” read traditional-minded Muslim, portrays the veil as incompatible with Western values of human freedom, democracy and, more recently, feminism (Mohiuddin 136). As an illustration, the former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls promoted the burkini ban in France, stating that the traditional Islamic women’s dress is “the expression of a political project, a counter-society, based notably on the enslavement of women” (Kroeat). Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel strongly supported the partial ban on burqa and niqab in Germany, claiming it “has to be spelled out clearly” that German laws “take precedence over codes of honor, tribal or family rules, and sharia law” (Oltermann). Evidently, statements of both Valls and Merkel portray Islamic tradition as backward and incompatible with superior Western values. It is also noteworthy that their language implies singular and exclusive interpretations of the meaning behind the Muslim veil, namely, women’s enslavement and religious command, overlooking the individual motives of women. I become aware of a similar tone that is adopted by some European leaders not only with regards to the Muslim veil, but also with regards to the more recent refugee crisis and the rise of the terrorist threat. Although these questions are related to intrinsically different realms, the lenses through which some European authorities look at them, nevertheless, remain the same. On that account, I embrace the view that some Western European leaders strive to lead the globalization movement by any means. It may be that by seeing Islam and Islamic countries as a threat to their influence, they discriminate against Muslims to downgrade their culture. On a similar note, regulations on Muslim women’s dress in Europe can be seen as a tool of neocolonial agenda aiming to promote the narrative that the Muslim society is alien and inferior.

The immediate question which follows from this observation is how the Muslim veil ban affects the positions of Muslim women in the European

societies. It would be erroneous to think that political processes take place in a social vacuum. Therefore, it can be argued that the top-down dismissal of the legitimacy of the veil influences views of the broader European society, spilling over Islamophobia to the public. Importantly, regulations on Muslim women’s dress seem to create derogatory stereotypes of the Muslim “other.” A scholar in law and gender studies, Kimberley Brayson, in her work “Of Bodies and Burkinis: Institutional Islamophobia, Islamic Dress, and the Colonial Condition,” supports this view. She writes that veiled Muslim women “act as ‘avatars’ in the public-political imaginary, as the body of the Muslim woman is made responsible for perpetuating gender oppression and a threat to national security” (Brayson 68). To deconstruct the process of how the society adopts similar projections of a veiled Muslim woman’s identity, the argument of Rey Chow could be applied here. A cultural critic specializing in the post-colonial sphere, she explores a similar question in her text “Where Have All the Natives Gone?” Considering that some European authorities provide the public with a readily available narrative about the veiled Muslim woman, the audience is asked “to stare at the world as though it was a naked body,” whereas the woman herself, or, the other, “is turned into an absolute entity in the form of an image” (Chow 325, 329). It then could be argued that in this constructed image, the veil serves as visual proof of the Muslim woman’s oppression by both patriarchy in the Muslim society as well as Islam in general. Provided that the authority is seen as credible by the public, many people, therefore, may accept such biased representations which lead them to “foresee the image before it appears” (Chow 326). While the relationship between the authorities and the public oftentimes is more complicated than this, some strong evidence nevertheless supports the argument that similar processes take place. Importantly, constructed Islamophobic representations cause many Muslim women in Europe to experience instances of hate crimes and discrimination in various public spheres. For instance, analyzing the burkini and full-face veil bans in France, Kimberley Brayson argues that “law produces spaces where some subjects belong, and others do not by assuming that French public space is always already white and non-Muslim” (Brayson 79). She further claims that veiled Muslim women who deviate from the French “univocal, assimilationist concept of citizenship” becomes vulnerable

to racism (Brayson 79). Several occurrences such as an incident that took place in a beach in Nice, France, in August 2016 seem to confirm her claim. In this case, French policemen felt empowered by the recently evoked burkini ban to strip a Muslim woman off her Islamic dress on a beach. Strikingly, a witness to the scene reported that onlookers on the beach shouted “go home” and some also applauded the police (Quinn 2016). The praise by the onlookers of the unveiling and the claim that the Muslim woman was not at home seem to confirm the acceptance of the politically-promoted “stranger danger” narrative by the general public. Moreover, systematic Islamophobiabased discrimination also takes place in various public spheres, including employment and education. For example, an empirical study on a workplace discrimination against veiled immigrant Muslim women in Norway found that employers are less likely to consider woman as “well-qualified for the job” if she is a veiled Muslim, regardless of her educational background (Strabaca et al. 2679). An empirical study by Itaoui further complicates the understanding of the social effects of Muslim discrimination by European authorities. The author claims that “Islamophobia as a form of racism experienced by young Muslims affects mobility and the use of public space by creating mental maps of exclusion” (Itaoui 264). Given the case of the legal veil ban and considering that veiled Muslim women can be easily identified as Muslims because of the visual veil, it can be claimed with certainty that their mobility is affected the most. Evidently, a clear pattern emerges suggesting that social conditions of veiled Muslim women in Europe are strongly disturbed by the Islamophobic narratives promoted by some legal European authorities. In light of this evidence, I also accommodate a stance that the veil ban in Europe is detrimental to the feminist cause, which should aim for equality of genders, regardless of their religion, culture or, even more so, dress.

Conclusively, by tracing back the origin of the veil and following its evolution through time and location, I come to see the question of the Muslim veil as an extremely complex one, comprised of multiple layers in which political power, culture, and religion intertwine. As I realize that a single metanarrative about the veil, a veiled woman, and Islam does not exist, I am now more critical towards the sources that claim otherwise. Most importantly, this exploration has helped me to overcome my own biases towards the Muslim

veil and the Western values of democracy, freedom, and feminism. Rather than taking Western values for granted, I now attempt to discern between an informed impact agenda and ideologically-motivated discourses. The latter are best reflected in the arguments of some European authorities favouring the Muslim veil ban which, however, are discriminatory towards Muslims and only distort the social conditions of their lives in Europe.

WORKS CITED

Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Harvard University Press, 2015.

Ali, Samina. What Does the Quran Really Say about a Muslim Woman’s Hijab?, Tedx

Talks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J5bDhMP9lQ [accessed 2

December 2019]

Behiery, Valerie. “A Short History of the (Muslim) Veil.” Implicit Religion, vol. 16, no. 4, 2014.

Brayson, Kimberley. “Of Bodies and Burkinis: Institutional Islamophobia,

Islamic Dress, and the Colonial Condition.” Journal of Law and Society, vol. 46, no. 1, 2019, pp. 55–82.

Chow, Rey. “Where Have All the Natives Gone?”, pp. 125-51 in Angelika

Bammer (ed.), Displacements: Cultural Identities in Question, Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1994.

Itaoui, Rhonda. “The Geography of Islamophobia in Sydney: Mapping the

Spatial Imaginaries of Young Muslims.” Australian Geographer, vol. 47, no. 3, 2016, pp. 261–279.

Kroet, Cynthia. “Manuel Valls: Burkini ‘Not Compatible’ with French Values.”

POLITICO, POLITICO, 25 Aug. 2016, https://www.politico.eu/article/ manuel-valls-burkini-not-compatible-with-french-values/ [accessed 6

December 2019]

Mernissi, Fatima, and Mary Jo. Lakeland. The Veil and the Male Elite: a Feminist

Interpretation of Womens Right in Islam. Basic Books, 2006.

Mohiuddin, Asif. “Islamophobia and the Discursive Reconstitution of Religious

Imagination in Europe.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, vol. 39, no. 2, Mar. 2019, pp. 135–156.

Musharraf, Muhhamad Nabeel. Dress Code for Muslim Women - A Detailed

Analysis of Relevant Quranic Verses and Prophetic Traditions. 2018, https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/327714996_Dress_code_for_Muslim_ women_-_A_detailed_analysis_of_relevant_Quranic_verses_and_ prophetic_traditions [accessed 2 December 2019] Oltermann, Philip. “Angela Merkel Endorses Party’s Call for Partial Ban on

Burqa and Niqab.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 6 Dec. 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/06/angela-merkel-cdupartial-ban-burqa-niqab-german [accessed 6 December 2019]

Quinn, Ben. “French Police Make Woman Remove Clothing on Nice Beach

Following Burkini Ban.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 23 Aug. 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/24/french-policemake-woman-remove-burkini-on-nice-beach [accessed 6 December 2019]

Strabac, Zan, et al. “Wearing the Veil: Hijab, Islam and Job Qualifications as

Determinants of Social Attitudes towards Immigrant Women in Norway.”

Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 39, no. 15, June 2016, pp. 2665–2682.

The Quran. Translated by Khan, Maulana Wahiduddin, edited by Farida

Khanam, Goodword Books, 2011.