Why Is the Veil Such aContentious Issue?
Wearing of the veil among the Arabs, much after the spread of Islam, was more a matter of social status than a religious injunction. It was only later, when western colonial rhetoric began touting the veil as an expression of Muslim backwardness, that it began to be seen as a symbol of retaliation against colonial arrogance. Besides, is the opposition to it out of a concern for women’s rights or is it a desire to conform to western thinking?
IMTIAZ AHMAD
O
Matter of Public Debate
It was in the 19th century that the veilbecame a matter of public debate. Thepeculiar practices of Islam with respect towomen had always formed part of westernrhetoric of the inferiority of Islam. Withcolonial penetration, this rhetoric becameincreasingly central through a fusion of theearlier rhetoric of inferiority of Islam withthe language of newly emergent feminismin the west. Even though the Europeanmale establishment contested the claims of feminism back home, it redirected its language to cultures and people in thecolonised societies. With respect to Islam,the construction was that Islam was inherently oppressive to women, that the veilepitomised this oppression, and that thesepractices constituted the principal reason forthe general backwardness of Muslim societies. Veiling in the western eye became thesymbol of both the oppression of womenand the backwardness of Islam.
One of the consequences of the virulentcolonial attack on native customs and practices, including the veil in the Muslimworld, was that it provoked a strong reaction. Native thinkers argued that theircultural practices were not an expressionof their backwardness. They were rather asign of their civilisation and were not to beabandoned. They should be followed with
EPWEconomic and Political Weekly December 9, 2006 greater vigour as a means of retaliationagainst the colonial attack on their culture.What was merely a form of apparel thus cameto be vested with a symbolic significance.The veil came to symbolise in this resistancerhetoric the dignity of those customs thatwere under fierce colonial attack.
Colonial domination succeeded in producing, as Macaulay was to later articulatein the context of India, a class which had acquired attachment to colonial valuesand began to look at their own societiesthrough colonial prisms. Qassim Amin, a19th century Egyptian intellectual, calledfor the abandonment of the veil in Egyptand Kemal Ataturk administratively outlawed it in Turkey. Both came up againststrong opposition because the local populations saw them as highly influenced bywestern culture and as being in line withthe colonial attack on the veil and other practices which the colonial powersasserted reflected native backwardness.
The story has recurred many times indifferent Muslim societies and has alwaysinvoked a similar response. This has happened not because of what religion has tosay on the issue of the veil. It has happenedbecause any reference to the veil as beinga sign of backwardness or oppression ofwomen brings back memories of the earliercolonial attack and an attack on the veil is seen as coming from those who areculturally affiliated to the west and haveno roots in their own societies and social milieu. This is as true of the reaction againstQassim Amin in Egypt, Kemal Ataturk inTurkey or Shabana Azmi and other feminists, whether Muslims or others, in India.
Two Questions
Essentially two questions lie at the root ofthe opposition to those who call for a debateon the veil or would like it to be abandoned. The first is the autonomy of women. Noone can deny that as an item of dress, theveil can be relevant to women’s rights.However, the substantive question to whichmany Muslim women, whether or not theydon the veil, draw attention is: who has the right to decide whether or not the veilas an item of women’s apparel is relevantto women’s rights? Should this decisionbe made by Muslim men and women whoseopposition to the veil is founded on westernconceptions of what is appropriate forMuslim women? Or, should this decision rest with Muslim women themselves? ManyMuslim women are prone to arguing thatwhen items of dress – bloomers or bras – momentarily figured in the discourse offeminist women in the west, the decision to focus on them was that of women themselves. Why should the focus onthe veil be decided by men or womenwho have already abandoned it?
Alongside this, an additional questionoften raised by Muslim women in thisconnection is whether those committed to the abandonment of the veil seriouslybelieve in the liberation of women. Or, is what they are asking for merely substitution of an Islamic type of patriarchy witha western type of patriarchy without aradical alteration of gender relations. Sincemost Muslim reformers from Qassim Amin in Egypt, Kemal Ataturk in Turkey andReza Shah in Iran have been themselves strongly patriarchal and somewhat misogynist, this question cannot be easilybrushed aside. Many Muslim women, whoare perfectly at ease taking cudgels withMuslim clerics for depriving them or rightsguaranteed under Islam, ask whether thecall for abandonment of the veil arises from genuine concern for women’s equality or merely represent words and acts ofthose assimilating to western ways andsmarting under the humiliation of beingdescribed as backward because “their” women wear the veil. Muslim reformers need to address these misgivings beforethey can hope to succeed.
EPWEmail: profimtiazahmad@yahoo.com
Economic and Political Weekly December 9, 2006
