Historical Perspectives On Islamic Dress - Essay from Women in the Muslim World - Spiritual Forum - Ashtar Command

Historical Perspectives On Islamic Dresswww.womeninworldhistory.comI am not placing this information here to promote Islam or the Muslim Culture or any other for that matter.I am placing it here for all to read in an attempt to promote UNDERSTANDING of a different culture and religion.If we agree "WE ARE ONE" we must understand one another before we can even hope to reach that ultimate goal. Things in societies change with the progression of time. Even among Muslims there may not be true understanding for the reasons behind the traditional dress. While in Egypt, I was told by a Muslim that the traditional female garb came about following a period in history where pillage and rape were commonplace. According to that gentleman's understanding - the hajib came to be in order to protect the women of that time.I have not included any photos of women here - they prefered not and I honor their request. The young man does not disagree under the circumstances.Please feel free to speak your mind after reading this - if you so choose BUT PLEASE do not beat me up for posting it or the Muslim/Islamic peoples for following it - those that do. You may note that men also have their traditional dress and no one questions that. The other issues are just that - other issues.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------In December 2001, Nicholas Kristof reported in the New York Times that although Afghan women were no longer require to wear the burqa, they did so anyway. And that "accosting a female stranger to interview her is a shocking breach of protocol... 'We obey our husbands...that is our culture' said a 23-year-old." Most husbands, he wrote, believe the Pashto phrase: 'A woman belongs in the house - or in a grave.'This age-old belief is not exclusive to Afghan culture but, in varying degrees, historically can be found within the ideology of many cultures, including those in the West. In the Muslim world in some areas it is reinforced by the belief that the honor of the family resides in the conduct of its women. Honor depends on a woman remaining chaste; should she be violated in any way, the men of the family risk being seen as weak and perhaps even being ostracized. Thus, in order to be respected by men, and protected from them, in public a woman should not flout her looks. Of equal importance is the stated Qu'ranic principle which requires women to dress modestly in public. Although definitions of what this entails vary regionally, many Muslim women cover themselves to some extent in deference to their religion.Women activists in the Muslim world are less preoccupied with what women wear than with securing other freedoms such as access to education, better health care for their families, or wider opportunities for work. Commonly they argue for women's rights under the supposition of a culture-specific struggle, focusing on the implementation and activation of human rights claimed to be granted by Islam. Feminist consciousness and action may indeed exist in greater measure with the wearer of Islamic dress than with one who wears up-to-date Western style clothes!Rather than offering unasked for advice, non-Muslims might educate themselves with regard to local customs and religious belief, and offer support when it is requested by people within the culture itself. Following is an excerpted essay from a section in the curriculum unit Women in the Muslim World. The essay provides an historical look at Islamic dress. The section contains primary source accounts on the topic from a variety of times and places.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------ISLAMIC DRESSMost Muslim women today do not wear a full face veil. It is more common to see women in hijab, loose clothing topped by a type of scarf worn around the head and under the chin. Women don't share a common style nor have the same reasons for wearing hijab. For many it reflects the belief that they are following God's commandments, are dressing according to "the correct standard of modesty," or simply are wearing the type of traditional clothes they feel comfortable in.A Complex History of the VeilWhat constitutes modest clothing has changed over time. Like most customs, what women wear has reflected the practices of a region and the social position of the wearer. The veil itself predates Islam by many centuries. In the Near East, Assyrian kings first introduced both the seclusion of women in the royal harem and the veil. Prostitutes and slaves, however, were told not to veil, and were slashed if they disobeyed this law.Beyond the Near East, the practice of hiding one's face and largely living in seclusion appeared in classical Greece, in the Byzantine Christian world, in Persia, and in India among upper caste Rajput women. Muslims in their first century at first were relaxed about female dress. When the niece of Aishah Bint Abu Bakr (the Prophet’s wife), Aisha bint Talha was asked by her husband Musab to veil her face, she answered, "Since the Almighty hath put on me the stamp of beauty, it is my wish that the public should view the beauty and thereby recognized His grace unto them. On no account, therefore, will I veil myself."As Islam reached other lands, regional practices, including the covering of women, were adopted by the early Muslims. Yet it was only in the second Islamic century that the veil became common, first used among the powerful and rich as a status symbol. The Qu'ranic prescription to "draw their veils over their bosoms" became interpreted by some as an injunction to veil one's hair, neck and ears.Throughout Islamic history only a part of the urban classes were veiled and secluded. Rural and nomadic women, the majority of the population, were not. For a woman to assume a protective veil and stay primarily within the house was a sign that her family had the means to enable her to do so.Since nomad women rarely veiled, in the early stages of those Islamic countries with nomadic roots, women often were allowed to go unveiled, even in town. In the years of the early Safavid dynasty, women were unveiled, although the custom was changed by late Safavid times. Among the Turks, who came into Anatolia as nomads, Ibn Battuta in the fourteenth century saw what he called a "remarkable thing. The Turkish women do not veil themselves. Not only royal ladies but also wives of merchants and common people will sit in a wagon drawn by horses. The windows are open and their faces are visible."The Middle AgesThe veil did not appear as a common rule to be followed until around the tenth century. In the Middle Ages numerous laws were developed which most often placed women at a greater disadvantage than in earlier times. In some periods, such as under the Mamluks in Egypt, repeated decrees were issued, urging strictness in veiling and arguing against the right of women to take part in activities outside their home. One commentator, Ibn al-Hajj, claimed this was a good thing because a woman in Cairo would "go out in the streets as if she were a shining bride, walking in the middle of the road and jostling men." He cautioned shop keepers to be careful when a woman came in to buy, "for if she was one of those women dressed up in delicate clothes, exposing her wrists, he should leave the selling transaction and give her his back until she leaves the shop peacefully..."The Nineteenth CenturyBy the second half of the nineteenth century, intellectuals, reformers, and liberals began to denounce the idea of women's protective clothing. This group was sensitive about the advances western nations had made, and wanted to push their countries toward a more western-style society. One way of achieving this, they felt, was to change the status of women. To them this meant abandoning traditional customs, including protective covering and the veil which they saw as a symbol of the exclusion of women from public life and education.In the early years, men were in the forefront of this effort. Qasim Amin, who in 1899 wrote The Emancipation of Woman, called for new interpretations of the Quran with regard to limited divorce, polygamy, and wearing the veil. He argued that such practices had nothing to do with Islam, but were a result of customs of peoples who had become Muslims. Enormous debate followed his work. Some of his detractors were women. Egyptian writer Malak Hifni Nassef worried about women "moving from that dark and familiar state" before they were ready. She said that first women needed a "true" education and better knowledge of the world, and men needed to learn not to harass unveiled women. She resented men telling women what they should do: "If he orders us to veil, we veil, and if he now demands that we unveil, we unveil. There is no doubt that he has erred grievously against us in decreeing our rights in the past and no doubt that he errs grievously in decreeing our rights now."The Impact of NationalismThe ideas of Qasim Amin reflected those who closely linked the emancipation of women and rejection of veiling to national movements for independence. For this group, the changing roles of women in society were important ways to convince the overseas colonial rulers that their subject nations were ready to govern themselves. Women were encouraged to be symbols of the new state. Those who resisted these ideas of social progress were mocked. Turkish elites, for example, mocked women covered in black, calling them "beetles." Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who began to build a secular nation-state in 1923, denounced the veil, calling it demeaning and a hindrance to civilized nation. But he did not outlaw it. Shortly after, in Iran in the 1930s, Reza Shah Pahlevi did, issuing a proclamation banning the veil outright. For many women, this decree in its suddenness was not liberating but frightening. Some refused to leave home for fear of having their veil torn from their face by the police.Male leaders of nationalist movements encouraged women to join them and appear more freely in public. Slowly some women did. In 1910, a young Turkish woman attracted attention by daring to have herself photographed. At about the same time, educated women in Turkey began to leave the house unveiled, but still wearing hijab. The most dramatic public unveiling was undertaken by Huda Shaarawi in Egypt in 1923. Following suit were Ibtihaj Kaddura in Lebanon, Adila Abd al-Qudir al-Jazairi in Syria, and much later Habibah Manshari in Tunis. Moroccan scholar Fatima Mernissi remembers the fight her mother had with her father about replacing her heavier traditional veil with "a tiny triangular black veil made of sheer silk chiffon. This drove Father crazy: 'It is so transparent! You might as well go unveiled!' But soon the small veil, the litham, became the fashion, with all the nationalists' wives wearing it all over Fez - to gatherings in the mosque and to public celebrations, such as when political prisoners were liberated by the French."Women's organizations also played an important role in transforming dress, although this was a minor issue in their struggle for women's political rights and for legal reforms. It should be stressed that for many women it was not the fact of wearing the veil that was the issue, but that the veil symbolized the relegation of women to a secluded world that did not allow them to participate in public affairs...Revival of HijabAs the century progressed, a revival of veiling and introduction of more modest dress reasserted itself. Opposition to Islamic required clothing had never been truly universal. Among the lower middle classes it had always tended to be defended in the face of change. Even in Turkey where the state had pushed the idea of reform, new ideas and styles of dress did not reach women in the hinterland.In areas where Islam was resisted and believers felt threatened, like Indonesia and the Philippines, Muslim women began to dress more conservatively as a way to assert who they were. During militant struggles for independence, such as that against the French in Algeria or the British in Egypt, some women purposely kept the veil in defiance of western styles. It meant they also could take part in veiled and silent demonstrations, or could hide weapons under long robes.There were other reasons for taking up and defending hijab. One was the growing reaffirmation of nation identity and rejection of values and styles seen as western. In response to Egypt's catastrophic loss to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, and the seeming failure of secularism, there also was a push to return to Islamic laws which had been abandoned. Modernization was seen as negative, a phenomena which encouraged people to reject not only Islamic but all indigenous traditions. Wearing hijab came to symbolize not the inferiority of the culture in comparison to western ways, but its uniqueness and superiority.The real surge toward donning hijab came with Iran's revolution. Women were seen as key elements in achieving changes in public morality and private behavior. Unveiled women were mocked, called unchaste "painted dolls," and were punished if they appeared in public without proper covering. In countries beyond Iran in the 1970s, demonstrations and sit-ins appeared over opposition to the required western style dress code for university students and civil servants.TodayWith the trend to revive or create Islamist movements, women have continued to take up the modest covering of the hijab. Within women's groups the debate over its use also continues. Some progressive groups, such as the Women's Action Forum (WAF) in Pakistan, explicitly condemn all attempts to impose a dress code on women. They argue that those who do not conform to it are stigmatized. They say that it denies women the freedom to decide on their own appearance. Women's groups endorsing a strict interpretations of Islam, on the other hand, aggressively promote dress codes, putting out information sheets listing its requirements...For women wishing to pursue professional and public social lives, wearing hijab allows freer movement outside the confines of the home. In leaving their homes, this upwardly mobile group is actually defining new roles for themselves, not defending traditional ones. In the same way, students who take up hijab are able to move into areas that were once closed to them, such as attending classes, discussion groups and religious activities. Wearing conservative clothing protects them from sexual harassment and objectification. An Iranian school girl states, "We want to stop men from treating us like sex objects, as they have always done. We want them to ignore our appearance and to be attentive to our personalities and mind. We want them to take us seriously and treat us as equals and not just chase us around for our bodies and physical looks."

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Historical Perspectives On Islamic Dress - Essay from Women in the Muslim World

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