The Veil As A Rejection Of Progressive Values

Muslim feminists of the past critiqued and repudiated the veil. Huda Shaarawi set up the Egyptian women’s union in the early 1920s. Educated Iranian women started feminist magazines and campaigned against the veil around the same time. Mernissi’s Beyond the Veil is a classic text. So too El Saadawi’s The Hidden Face of Eve. Women are told not to travel without male relatives, not to work, to be subservient, to veil. In several countries, substantial minorities say it is acceptable for a woman to not cover her hair in public.

In two verses, women are told to lower their gaze, and to cover their private parts and bosoms. One verse commands the women in the prophet’s family to fully veil, partly to protect them from enemies and supplicants.

Sahar Amer, associate professor at the University of North Carolina, has studied these sacred injunctions: “[Nowhere] is the hijab used to describe, let alone prescribe, the necessity for Muslim women to wear a headscarf or any other pieces of clothing often seen covering women in Islamic countries today. Even after reading those passages dealing with the female dress code, one continues to wonder what exactly the hijab is: is it a simple scarf? A purdah? A chador? Or something else? Which parts of the body exactly is it supposed to cover? Just the hair? The hair and neck? The arms? Hands? Feet? Face? Eyes?” 

Veils, in truth, predate Islam. All religions cast women as sinners and temptresses. Conservative Islam has revived the slander for our times. Women have to be sequestered or contained lest they raise male lust and cause public disorder. Some young muslim women argue that veils liberate them from a modern culture that objectifies and sexualises females. Women are primarily seen as sexual creatures whose hair and bodies incite desire and disorder in the public space. The claim that veils protect women from lasciviousness and disrespect carries an element of self-deception. Veiled women have provoked confrontations over their right to wear veils, in courts, at schools and in colleges and workplaces. Little girls are being asked to do hijabs and jilbabs, turned into sexual beings long before puberty.

Of even more concern are young muslim lives. Like a half-naked woman, a veiled female to me represents an affront to female dignity, autonomy and potential. Do we know how many wounded, veiled women walk around hidden among us? Sexual violence in Saudi Arabia and Iran is appallingly high, as is body dysmorphia.

In 1899, Qasim Amin warned that unless muslims embraced modernity and equality, the future would be bleak.