{"id":446,"date":"2018-04-30T11:31:49","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T15:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/?p=446"},"modified":"2018-04-30T11:31:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T15:31:49","slug":"the-fight-between-the-veil-and-secularity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/imorgens-rel195a\/2018\/04\/30\/the-fight-between-the-veil-and-secularity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fight Between the Veil and Secularity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Many Westerners view modest clothing as the ultimate sign of Muslim women\u2019s oppression. They assume that the concept of the veil, whether a headscarf or a full-body covering, is based on the outdated idea that women\u2019s bodies are overly sexual and must be hidden.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As I was scrolling on Facebook recently I came across an article titled \u201cMelania Trump in Saudi Arabia: Hijab-free and Proudly American.\u201d As if one couldn\u2019t be proudly American and wear the hijab at the same time… The article went on to describe Melania\u2019s fashionable outfit that included pants<\/em> and, importantly, a bare face. The article closes with the author calling for a familiar narrative- Trump to implement a burqa ban in the United States. All across the globe bans of the burqa and hijab have been, and continue to be, implemented. For example, in 2016 the Dutch parliament approved a partial ban of the burqa<\/a> in public places. Such bans are often put under a guise of a broader ban of \u201cpublic displays of religiosity,\u201d or as a precaution\/need for security– like the ban just mentioned, which claims to be for \u201csecurity reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, it seems quite evident that these various bans are underwritten by an ethos of Islamophobia. The veil is portrayed more often than not as in tension with nebulous concepts of \u201cmodernity\u201d and \u201csecularity.\u201d This is evident in the bans of the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, France and Bulgaria where the bans being employed are seen as a promotion of \u201csecularity\u201d and therefore in contrast with religiosity- or at least the public display of it. Yet, in reality, they are not much more than uninformed discrimination as we see evidenced through narratives of the \u201cIslamic threat\u201d to \u201csecularism.\u201d[2]<\/a> The whole argument has a Samuel Huntington Clash of Civilizations[3]<\/a> vibe and while this argument is clearly racist and problematic, it persists. And, although Islamic women all over the world are proving that they view themselves as religious and simultaneously secular is not an issue, the rest of the world continues to perpetuate the idea that the two simply cannot coexist.<\/p>\n

But why do Islamic women seem to be at the center of the debate? Associate Professor of Geography at UNC Chapel Hill, Banu Gorkariksel, notes that \u201cClothing may be the most visible and easily identifiable corporeal marker of religiosity or secularity.\u201d[4]<\/a> So while some Christians have no visible markers that make them visibly Christian, Muslim women, and especially those who are veiled, are visibly religious. And while Gorkariksel also argues that to the Western and secular eyes the veil is seen as hiding women\u2019s bodies or making them invisible in public spaces, I believe that this invisibility inversely makes them hyper visible. It is in this way that Muslim women\u2019s veiling, and modest clothing in general, becomes the ultimate sign of Muslim otherness. I hope to show here the ways in which Muslim women use their clothing to communicate a variety of things from fashion to religiosity. The issue that the women, like those discussed in Jeanette Jouli\u2019s book,[5]<\/a> are facing is that while they see themselves as being visible, distanced, members, \u201ctheir orthodox piety [cannot] easily be rendered intelligible through a mainstream (liberal-secular) discourse\u201d[6]<\/a> — and therein lies the biggest issue. Secular society has got it wrong. By looking at Islam through an ethnocentric, etic, lens one completely misjudges and umbrellas a whole religion. Rather than viewing Muslim women\u2019s clothing as a problem that needs fixing, we ought to be aware of the multiplicities accompanying this pious fashion.<\/p>\n

In her book titled Pious Fashion[7]<\/strong><\/a><\/em> Elizabeth Bucar explores how the veil and fashion are articulated and lived in Iran, Turkey, and Indonesia. She shows us that in all of these locations pious fashion is influenced by standards of beauty, has a variety of meanings and is expressed in a multitude of colors and textures which express \u201cindividual tastes and challenge aesthetic conventions.\u201d[8]<\/a> In this way the idea of fashion is encapsulated in the conversation surrounding the veil. For some women pious fashion may look like a hijab in the form of a stylish scarf paired with Doc Martin boots, designer jeans and a top. For another woman this may mean something completely different. What is notable is that it is all<\/em> pious fashion.<\/p>\n

It is the Indonesian stay-at-home mom who decides to wear jilbab<\/em> and share her experiential learning through her blog. It is the Tehrani youth who stands up to the morality police who harass her for wearing jeans as part of her hijab<\/em>. It is the recent college graduate in Istanbul who critiques the styling on the cover of an Islamic fashion magazine. These women are all pious, even though they do not agree about what modest entails\u2026They are pious because they are using clothing and adornment to cultivate their own characters, to build community, and to make social critiques.[9]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fashion can be pious. Fashion is pious! Project Runway contestant Ayana Ife<\/a> shocked the judges when she was able to make modest clothing look modern. But why?!<\/p>\n

It seems that the most notable contention promoters of secularity and modernity seem to have with Islam is the supposed oppression and invisibility marked by the burqa. Public discourses name female Muslim subjects through European \u201cmeta-values and self-descriptions, such as freedom or autonomy\u201d labeling such women as premodern. Women who choose to wear the veil are assumed to be forced or conceding to male pressure.[10]<\/a> The interlocutors of Joulis\u2019s book recognize this and are actively aiming \u201cto prove their compatibility\u201d with European modernity not in spite of <\/em>but because <\/em>of their Muslim-ness.<\/p>\n

Do Muslim women need saving? Do they need to be liberated? These are the questions liberal feminists and secular societies are asking. Perhaps these women are already liberated, maybe not- either way these women are full modern individuals who are choosing the constraints in which they are living. Perhaps they are even more modern because they understand both the secular and the religious and are choosing one over the other. Either way it seems abundantly clear they they do not <\/em>in fact need saving.<\/p>\n

Rather than oppressive, the veil\/burqa is seen as a liberating and freeing force- in Abu-Lughod\u2019s book she notes the shock of one of her informants at her suggestion that she was oppressed by her religion in any way.[11]<\/a> \u00a0The veil has a force of \u201ccultivation of self-confidence or pride\u201d for the women of Jouli, Abu-Lughod, and Gorkariksel.[12]<\/a> It seems in fact that the biggest imposition and constraint present in the lives of the Muslims who choose to wear the veil is that of secular society. Muslims dressed in the burqa are denied jobs, education and access to everyday things- this appears to be more oppressive for those women.<\/p>\n

In the complex geography of the secular world, these Muslim women are forced to [re]signify what the female Muslim body is in a world with increasing pressure to secularize. What happens here is an ethical labor involved with the \u201ccreative employment of body, space, and time, as subverting in multiple ways the constraints of secular public spheres that seem to render impossible the public exercise of \u201cillegitimate\u201d religious practice.\u201d[13]<\/a> The idea of the foreign, over there vs over here, alien \u201cIslamic society\u201d is not a new concept, and there seems to be an \u201cunbridgeable gap between the West and the \u201cRest;\u201d\u201d where Muslims are presented as the most troubling of the Rest. Muslim women, in this sense, have come to symbolize \u201cjust how alien this culture is.\u201d[14]<\/a><\/p>\n

What is important to recognize is the violence that is being done to these women with narrative such as these. By assuming the veil equals ignorance and oppression we are forcing Muslim women to suffer the psychological and socio-economic consequences that accompany these views. Young Muslim women are being forced to invest energy in establishing themselves as thinking, rational, literate students.[15]<\/a> In essence, we are taking away their agency, which is somewhat ironic as these Muslim women see the veil as giving them agency.<\/p>\n

There is an intertwining or entanglement of \u201creligious\u201d and \u201csecular\u201d powers in real time marked by place and time, and formed through specific \u201csets of political and social relations, ideologies, and practices in particular sites\u201d[16]<\/a> that needs to be remembered. And Wendy Brown reminds us in Abu-Lughod\u2019s book that secularism has not brought women\u2019s freedom nor equality in the West, and our views are based on the \u201ctacit assumption that bared skin and flaunted sexuality is a token if not measure of women\u2019s freedom and equality.\u201d\u201d[17]<\/a> In general, our views are largely shaped by \u201cthe perpetual bombardment of negative, or at best incomplete, representations of Muslims in the media.\u201d[18]<\/a> If we are to ever recognize the fallacy of binaries such as “religion” and “secularity” we must<\/em> recognize the variety of expressions of religion and secularity and how such experiences are not confined to bounded spaces, but lived as part of everyday life in a multitude of spaces and scales.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Bucar, Elizabeth M. Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress<\/em>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2017. Page, 1.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Gorkariksel, Banu. “Beyond the Officially Sacred: Religion, Secularism, and the Body in the Product of Subjectivity.” Social and Cultural Geography,<\/em> Vol. 10, No. 6 (September 2009): 657-74. doi:10.1080\/14649360903068993. Page, 665.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72, (3) (Summer): 22, https:\/\/search.proquest.com\/docview\/214280190?accountid=14679 (accessed April 26, 2018).<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Gorkariksel, 660.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Jouli, Jeanette. Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe<\/em>. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Jouli, 187.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Bucar, Elizabeth M. Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress<\/em>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2017.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Bucar, 2.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Bucar, 190.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving?<\/em> Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. Page, 17.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Abu-Lughod, 4<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Jouli, 162<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Jouli, 176<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Abu-Lughod, 6<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Hoodfar, Homa. “The Veil in Their Minds and on Our Heads: The Persistence of Colonial Images of Muslim Women.” Resources for Feminist Research<\/em> 22, no. 3\/4 (1992\/1993): 5-18.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Jouli, 154<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Brown in Abu-Lughod, 19<\/p>\n

[18]<\/a> Peterson, Kristian. “Representation and Muslim Identity.” Journal of Religion and Society<\/em>, 13th ser. (2016): Page, 116.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Abbas. 2004. FRANCE. Veiling Paris. http:\/\/library.artstor.org.ezproxy.uvm.edu\/asset\/AMAGNUMIG_10311553095<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving?<\/em> Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.<\/p>\n

Bucar, Elizabeth M.\u00a0Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress. <\/em>Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.<\/em>\u00a02017.<\/p>\n

Gorkariksel, Banu. “Beyond the Officially Sacred: Religion, Secularism, and the Body in the Product of Subjectivity.” Social and Cultural Geography,<\/em> Vol. 10, No. 6 (September 2009): 657-74. doi:10.1080\/14649360903068993.<\/p>\n

Hoodfar, Homa. “The Veil in Their Minds and on Our Heads: The Persistence of Colonial Images of Muslim Women.” Resources for Feminist Research<\/em> 22, no. 3\/4 (1992\/1993): 5-18.<\/p>\n

Jouili, Jeanette Selma. Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe<\/em>. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015.<\/p>\n

Peterson, Kristian. “Representation and Muslim Identity.” Journal of Religion and Society<\/em>, 13th ser. (2016): 113-23.<\/p>\n

Wheeler, Kayla. “It\u2019s \u201cBeen\u201d Cool to Cover: Why Ayana Ife Matters.” Sapelo Square. November 21, 2017. https:\/\/sapelosquare.com\/2017\/11\/21\/its-been-cool-to-cover-why-ayana-ife-matters\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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