Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women

[ElPunto]

The Islamic veil

 

Out from under

Sep 3rd 2009

From The Economist print edition

 

Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women. By Marnia Lazreg. Princeton University Press; 184 pages; $22.95 and £15.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

 

LONG or short, sternly pinned or silkily draped, the Islamic veil is the most contentious religious symbol today, in the West as much as in the Muslim world. President Barack Obama argues that Western countries should not dictate what Muslim women should wear. France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, by contrast, recently declared that the burqa, the all-over Islamic covering, is “not welcome on French soil”. France’s parliament is now considering a ban on wearing the burqa in public.

 

Marnia Lazreg, an Algerian-born professor of sociology at the City University of New York, feels passionately that Muslim women should not wear the veil, as both her mother and grandmother obediently did. She is particularly bothered by the trend of “reveiling” in the West and Islamic countries, whereby the daughters of women who went unveiled decide to cover up. But she also thinks that democratic governments should not impose dress codes by law. So she has written this collection of letters to Muslim women to try to coax them out from under the veil.

 

Although uneven and with a rather weak grasp of French secularism, the book has great merit. It takes seriously the arguments advanced by defenders of the veil, female as well as male. Such views are various: that it is a form of modesty imposed by the Koran and an expression of piety; that it offers protection from sexual objectification and harassment in a loose, consumerist society; that it is a political statement and reassertion of Islam; that it is a badge of pride in an Islamophobic world. One by one, the author picks apart and punctures each argument, exposing hypocrisy and contradiction, and drawing on case studies of veiled women she has interviewed.

 

On the question of modesty, for instance, Ms Lazreg points out that the Koran can be read in different ways. Women are variously told to “draw their veils over their bosoms and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husbands”, or to “cover their bosoms with their veils and not show their finery” or to “draw their shawls over the cleavages in their clothes”. Do adornment or finery really mean the hair and face? Why is a head-covering, especially when worn with elaborate make-up, more “modest” than decorous modern dress?

 

The author is impatient with academic feminists on Western campuses who argue that the veil is a form of empowerment for Muslim women, and who dismiss charges of sexual oppression as elitist, Western concepts. Such an apology, writes Ms Lazreg, “makes good conversation”, but it is simplistic and dangerous.

 

Muslim intellectuals, particularly men, exploit such arguments to justify “reveiling” educated young girls who are confused about their identity. Attempts to present the veil as a tool of empowerment, she writes, “rest on a dubious post-modernist conception of power according to which whatever a woman undertakes to do is liberating as long as she thinks that she is engaged in some form of ‘resistance’ or self-assertion, no matter how misguided.” With her letters Ms Lazreg offers a useful and timely counterpoint.

 

 

http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14361774

[hodman]

I am so tired of this argument walaahi. The hijab is a conscious choice to those of us who want to follow our religion and is nobody's business to tell us how or when to wear it.

[ElPunto]

^Get used to it. It will be repeated endlessly. Especially by 'educated' people. I honestly feel sorry for this person. Here is another review of the book:

 

 

The first four of Lazreg’s open letters are devoted to examining the main rationales for (re)veiling: modesty, the avoidance of sexual harassment, the assertion of cultural identity, and the assertion of one’s religious conviction or piety.

 

The subject of modesty brings Lazreg to a discussion of the Quran, which, she believes, does not explicitly exhort the wearing of a veil, but only says that women should “preserve or protect your pudenda,” which has often been translated politely as “be modest.” The Quran, Lazreg also notes, “does not enjoin a woman to cover her face,” but what angers her most is that the veil “implies that a woman should humble, belittle, and feel sorry for her body.” She also adduces some telling etymology, noting that an “Arabic word for shame or modesty, haya’, is close to hayah, meaning ‘life.’ Is a woman to be ashamed of life, the life of the body?” But the Quran also exhorts men to be modest. The fact that they aren’t, Lazreg argues, is the real reason for the existence of the veil: “Men’s desire is the root cause of veils.” The custom, she adds, is not a personal act but a “social convention.”

 

That the veil is a shield against sexual harassment is dismissed as an “illusion.” “Desire can pierce through the veil,” says Lazreg, “as it can lurk unacknowledged in the man who advocates the veil.”

 

Veiling as an act of ethno-religious self-assertion, of course, became more pronounced after 9/11. But Lazreg resents that women must suffer because the male Islamic leadership depends so heavily on the custom as a marker of Muslim identity: “Feeling comfortable in one’s culture and asserting its worth is one thing. However, reducing the essence of that culture to the veil is another.”

 

Lazreg is highly skeptical of those who don the veil out of so-called conviction, calling the term “elastic” and suggesting the veil may be used “for strategic reasons.” She is at a loss to see what is gained from wearing “a symbol of gender inequality.” As for piety, Lazreg is adamant: “Nowhere in the Quran is there an indication that the veil is a condition of a woman’s acceptance of her faith.”

 

The fifth and final open letter, titled simply “Why Women Should Not Wear the Veil,” reiterates Lazreg’s multi-pronged attack in the preceding four. Discarding the veil is not a heresy like committing usury or drinking alcohol (veil laws are “made by men, not God,” she tartly notes). It is merely a historical phenomenon that has waxed and waned over the centuries and is subject to change in the future. Lazreg also notes that modern technology — cell phones and the Web — has made circumventing veil laws child’s play.

 

More philosophically, “the hajib makes a woman feel removed from her environment.” In the workplace, it has “the symbolic effect of diminishing the importance of formal [gender] equality.” More mundanely, the veil is a terrible physical inconvenience in hot climates and an impairment to hearing – a sartorial “monastery.” It is “neither comfortable nor convenient.”

 

The last pages of Questioning the Veil are devoted to debunking the neo-fundamentalist mantra that any decline in veiling is a sign of Islamic decadence or of base mimicry of that Mother of All Others, the “West.” She is frustrated that a highly personal decision (whether women’s “bodies are a source of shame or simple joy”) has been taken out of their hands — by Islamic men, of course. The veil, Lazreg finally ventures, “is the last refuge of men’s (sexual) identity.”

 

Lazreg speaks like the ardent Islamic feminist she is when she alludes at the end to the Algerian fight for independence from France: “I do not think the women who veil themselves today in Algiers, Paris, or New York are engaged in the same struggle as Algerian women were in the 1950s, when they freed themselves of the veil in order to make history.” The veil, Lazreg believes, will prevent Islamic women from making liberating history in the future: “The veil is not action, it is reaction; it is repetition of the past.”

 

 

http://www1.cuny.edu/forum/?p=4506

[Nur]

Quote:

 

" She is frustrated that a highly personal decision (whether women’s “bodies are a source of shame or symbol joy”) has been taken out of their hands — by Islamic men, of course. The veil, Lazreg finally ventures, “is the last refuge of men’s (sexual) identity.”

 

In Japan, Prostitutes are called COMFORT GIRLS! Whose Comfort? Whose pain?

 

 

When a woman exposes her body, it's her body, her business!

 

When a woman covers up her body, it's an alarming trend, the government of France needs to interfere and protect the public from the dangers of the veil! ( Paris is World Fashion Capital, billions in revenues are at stake!)

 

Do Muslim woman who observe the Hijab view it as a symbol of Shame?

 

Do Muslim woman who take off the Hijab view it as a symbol of freedom to display her body for pleasure ( The male's Pleasure of course)?

 

We all know that men, with no religious restriction can be driven by their hormones to enjoy looking at women, the more body contours in display, the more exciting, specially when intoxicated with alcoholic beverages, followed by inviting gestures for an expedient encounter, the epitome of freedom in the western sense. So, Where does Marnia get the idea that Muslim men are forcing women to wear the veil, when the opposite is true, that non Muslim men are worried that if all women cover up, the western lifestyle of enjoying the site of semi-nude women on high heels will disappear, so it needs a government intervention to stop young women wearing the Hijab, beginning with the schools and Government Offices.

 

The western culture is on decline, it has lost its moral high ground, and its sad that its taking its last breaths by employing westernized Muslim women to evangelize modest women to expose their bodies so the western man can enjoy his accustomed lifestyle of using women as sex objects as seen on billboards, car showrooms, TV ads, Cinema and the High Fashion.

 

The western women needs to be liberated, the hijab is a liberating symbol for women. Men need not see their bodies, just hear out their intelligent thoughts, which is what counts. Not the billions of revenues from make-ups and woman's apparel by fashion houses in Paris who live on the misery of the poor western women.

 

 

Nur

 

--------

 

 

 

 

Lyrics

 

 

They say, "Oh, poor girl, you're so beautiful you know

It's a shame that you cover up your beauty so."

She just smiles and graciously responds reassuringly,

"This beauty that I have is just one simple part of me.

 

This body that I have, no stranger has the right to see.

These long clothes, this shawl I wear, ensure my modesty.

Faith is more essential than fashion, wouldn't you agree?

 

This hijab,

This mark of piety,

Is an act of faith, a symbol,

For all the world to see.

A simple cloth, to protect her dignity.

So lift the veil from your heart to see the heart of purity.

 

They tell her, "Girl, don't you know this is the West and you are free?

You don't need to be opressed, ashamed of your femininity."

She just shakes her head and she speaks so assuredly,

 

"See the bill-boards and the magazines that line the check-out isles, with their phony painted faces and their air-brushed smiles?

Well their sheer clothes and low cut gowns are really not for me.

You call it freedom, I call it anarchy."

 

This hijab,

This mark of piety,

Is an act of faith, a symbol,

For all the world to see.

A simple cloth, to protect her dignity.

So lift the veil from your heart to see the heart of purity.

Lift the veil from your heart and seek the heart of purity.

 

 

------

 

High Fashion Businesses threatened by the Hijab

 

The fashion houses listed on the definitive schedule for Haute-Couture Fall/Winter 2009/2010 are:

 

Official members

 

Adeline André

Anne Valérie Hash

Chanel

Christian Dior

Christian Lacroix

Dominique Sirop

Franck Sorbier

Givenchy

Jean Paul Gaultier

Maurizio Galante

Stéphane Rolland

 

Correspondent members (foreign)

 

Elie Saab

Giorgio Armani

Maison Martin Margiela

 

Valentino

 

Guest members

 

Adam Jones

Alexandre Matthieu

Alexis Mabille

Atelier Gustavo Lins

Boudicca

Cathy Pill

Christophe Josse

Felipe Oliveira Baptista

Jean-Paul Knott

Josep Font

Lefranc.Ferrant

Maison Rabih Kayrouz

Marc Le Bihan

Richard René

Udo Edling

Ruhul Rony

 

Accessories

 

Loulou De La Falaise

Maison Michel

Massaro

On Aura Tout Vu

[bint hamid]

salaams

 

^^great vid akhi

 

how is it you can walk around in a snuggie or slippers or undies but not a veil.. unless you're a nun and then its ok cuz you're not a muslimah so you can wear it if you want

[Buuxo]

Marnia Lazreg is trying to justify her disobedience and her choice not to wear the hijab.But only makes matters worse by disbelieving in the Quranic verses.Wa'iyadu Bilah !

[Sherban Shabeel]

My belief is that everyone should be free to please God to the extent they can/want to. It isn't anyone's business what a grown woman does with her body and soul. You want to cover up, cover up. You want to reveal yourself, reveal yourself.

 

That being said, life is unfair. Can you walk around WITHOUT a veil in Saudi? Nope. Can you walk around in France wearing a niqab? Nope.

 

That's just the way it is, and perhaps we shouldn't always criticize the West as tempting as it is. Because in the West, although there is xenophobia and discrimination and hatred, there is LOTS MORE religious freedom than in some Muslim countries.

 

As I said, the French may be a**holes but at least you can build a mosque in France. Can you build a church in Saudi?

[ElPunto]

There are a couple of things you're mixing up here Sherban. Saudi Arabia does not have as its national motto liberty, fraternity and egality. On the one hand France claims that motto and that it's a democracy and then it bans an important part of a people's belief system. In Saudi the deal is that anyone who is not Saudi is a guest worker - by definition a second class position while France actively solicits immigrants and promises them a new life and citizenship. Then the French government turns around and attacks the belief system of the very immigrants it willingly imported into its country. With Saudi - you know what the deal is - you're second class citizen unless you're Saudi but in France it's a total bait and switch. You're officially a citizen but in name only. And even worse French officials then boast about the diversity in their country etc.

 

That said it is wrong for Saudi Arabia to ban churches and the practice of other religions in the whole country except for Mecca and Medina. But it's funny - non-muslims cite about the worst example of a Muslim country in terms of a closed and repressive culture in comparison to France which is a vital country in terms of much of western thinking. If a key country that is intergral of western culture and philosophy is being compared to the most intolerant and closed Muslim society - there is something deeply wrong with France.

[Sherban Shabeel]

Very good distinction there, and I agree with you 100%.

[Raamsade]

Originally posted by hodman:

The hijab is a conscious choice to those of us who want to follow our religion and is nobody's business to tell us how or when to wear it.

I find this argument deliciously ironic. The right of Muslim women to dress as they see fit is often cited to defend the wearing of Burqa or Niqab. Not the Hijab! The Hijab is banned no where (to the best of my knowledge) in any liberal democracy aside from public premises in some countries (i.e. France). Not in the Great Satan (USA) and not even in the Little Satan (Israel). But the Niqab is banned in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca.

 

The irony is none of the people who make the above argument are willing to extend it to Muslim women who decide NOT to wear the Hijab. Just about everywhere where Islamists exercise control, Muslim (and none Muslim) women are forced to wear the Hijab at the pain of imprisonment or fine or whipping or face some other draconian punishment. Where are their rights to dress as they like? Where are those great defenders of the liberty of Muslim women? Their silence is deafening.

 

I will confess to you that I personally find the Niqab and Burqa a little creepy; don't mind the hijab at all. But I will defend the right of any Muslim woman to wear them if she does so out of her free will. Just as I would defend their right not to wear any Hijab or Niqab or Burqa. Unlike the hypocrites who speak out of both sides of their mouth.

[Raamsade]

Originally posted by ThePoint:

Saudi Arabia does not have as its national motto liberty, fraternity and egality.

But it has the Quran, the Sunna, the Sharia and the Prophet Mohammed. Ostensibly superior sources of higher moral framework and system of governance that dispenses justice and bestows freedom according to Muslims. We expect Saudia Arabia to behave better (grant more freedoms and justice) than France because the former's laws and system of governance is from God unlike man-made motto of France.

 

This is a self-defeating argument for a Muslim to make. Unless, of course, you're losing faith in Islam.

[ElPunto]

Originally posted by Raamsade:

The irony is none of the people who make the above argument are willing to extend it to Muslim women who decide NOT to wear the Hijab. Just about everywhere where Islamists exercise control, Muslim (and none Muslim) women are forced to wear the Hijab at the pain of imprisonment or fine or whipping or face some other draconian punishment. Where are their rights to dress as they like? Where are those great defenders of the liberty of Muslim women? Their silence is deafening.

 

Unlike the hypocrites who speak out of both sides of their mouth.

There are only 2 states that mandate hijab for all women - Saudi Arabia and Iran. No other other state in the Muslim world does so. Are the Islamists of Hamas forcing women to don the hijab? No. There goes the gist of your whole tirade.

 

As to defenders of liberty and deafening silence - it's yet another baseless tirade. Read the posts on this forum regarding hijab and you can clearly see many people don't agree with forcing individuals to wear the hijab.

 

But I doubt any of this matters. In your zeal to denigrate and demean Muslims and Islam you will say anything that comes from the deep recesses of your bias.

[ElPunto]

Originally posted by Raamsade:

quote:Originally posted by ThePoint:

Saudi Arabia does not have as its national motto liberty, fraternity and egality.

But it has the Quran, the Sunna, the Sharia and the Prophet Mohammed. Ostensibly superior sources of higher moral framework and system of governance that dispenses justice and bestows freedom according to Muslims. We expect Saudia Arabia to behave better (grant more freedoms and justice) than France because the former's laws and system of governance is from God unlike man-made motto of France.

 

This is a self-defeating argument for a Muslim to make. Unless, of course, you're losing faith in Islam.

Clearly you haven't read my posts with much comprehension. The argument consists of citizenship and its attendant rights. There is no citizenship for non-Saudis in Saudi Arabia and consequently fewer rights vis-a-vis citizens. France gives citizenship to many but fails to accord some rights to a certain section of its citizens due to the religion they practice. That is a failing of France to live upto the contract established with citizens.

 

In general - I do expect Saudi Arabia to be a more just and peaceful place than France if it was actually living upto the Quran, Shariah and the Sunnah. But nobody has any illusions that that is the case. That is a general failing of most of the Muslim world.

[Sherban Shabeel]

Just wanted to make a little distinction here for the sake of conversation:

 

Hamas doesn't force anyone to wear the hijab.

 

Shabaab does.

[Raamsade]

^Sherban shabeel, Hamas DOES force Gazan women to wear the Hijab but they're savvy about it unlike others like Alshabaab or the Taliban. Hamas gets plenty of support from the International Left who constitute an important media ally in the West (to spread the noble message of hamas -- think of Galloway and the likes) and they are duly aware that if they get so much as a whiff that Hamas is turning Gaza into Talibanistan, they'd lose an irreplaceable ally. For that reason Hamas tries to uphold the delicate balance between the competing constituencies -- its own hardcore supporters and Islamic principles on one hand and the political objective of not wanting to appear as another Taliban-like Islamist group and to keep non-Muslim international supporters. This delicate balance came undone earlier this year when a less diplomatic and eagerly pro-Sharia Law group led an uprising against the "insufficiently Islamic" Hamas administration in Gaza. Hamas swiftly crushed the uprising (by storming a mosque guns blazing!) but that episode is a reminder that Hamas' current posture is far from stable.

 

This is why Hamas doesn't officially admit the existence of the Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (called to mutawaciin in S. Arabia) even though every body knows of their existence. This committee has its own agents that patrol the streets either warning or penalizing those they deem to be in contravention of Sharia law. Among what they can deem as being against Islam includes not wearing the Hijab. There's countless stories of Palestinian women threatened, beaten or even killed for now wearing the Hijab by Hamas thugs.

 

Don't delude yourself into thinking that there is a good/moderate Islamists. All Islamists are the same -- they're all after the implementation of Sharia Law which will force every women, Muslim or non-Muslim, to don the Hijab. The only difference between the myriad of Islamists groups is their approach and sophistication.