A piece in the NY Times today concerns the wearing of the niqab, the full face veil, by Muslim women in Britain. The issue has drawn plenty of controversy, in other countries as well. Here in Philadelphia, go run an errand and you’re likely to come across at least one woman covered head to toe in black — very much like the women I saw last year in Cizre, in southeast Turkey. These are not immigrants, they are African-Americans. If there’s any controversy here about their wearing of the veil, I’m not aware of it. Interestingly, in 20 years of living in Manhattan, I do not recall ever seeing a veiled woman.
As a firm proponent of secularism and women’s rights, I cannot fathom the wearing of the veil for reasons of “empowerment” and such. But I have no more problem with the veiled women in my community than I did with the Hasidic Jews in New York. I realize that the social and political dynamics in Europe are different, however.
In his book 100 Myths about the Middle East, Fred Halliday rejects the notion that Islam requires veiling, listing it as Myth No. 90:
…the practice of compulsory covering … has no canonical authority. Veiling of this kind was not associated with the time of the Prophet, but came in the ninth century with the Abbasid Empire, and probably reflects a pre-Islamic Persian influence associated with that dynasty. Of the five major legal schools of Islam, none enjoins compulsory veiling. This is a social custom that has spread with modern fundamentalism and a misconceived and illiberal “identity politics.” Needless to say, the majority of women in the Muslim world across the ages, who worked in the fields, did not cover their faces and do not do so to this day. Full veiling is an urban and largely modern institution.
The NY Times piece points out that “only a tiny percentage of women among Britain’s two million Muslims cover themselves completely.” It’s wrong, therefore, to attribute a uniform stance on veiling to the various Muslim minorities in England or anywhere else — just as it is wrong to subject fully veiled Muslim women to any sort of insults or prejudice.
It is entirely fitting, however, to question the political views of any person, Muslim or not, veiled or not. On that note, I was struck by a comment from one young woman who chooses to wear the veil:
“For me it is not just a piece of clothing, it’s an act of faith, it’s solidarity,” said a 24-year-old program scheduler at a broadcasting company in London, who would allow only her last name, al-Shaikh, to be printed, saying she wanted to protect her privacy. “9/11 was a wake-up call for young Muslims,” she said.
I have no idea what that last sentence means, but I find it deeply suspect. And it certainly shores up Halliday’s point that this is about identity politics, not religiosity.
Comments are closed.