Dis-covering Muslim Women: A Survey of Recent Literature on Veiling

 III 
PREFACE 
 
This dissertation is a discussion about a collection of articles aimed 
to give a general view of the materials concerning the veiling practice 
available in the Internet and in the libraries. The main basis of this work 
is a database of around sixty articles found in the Internet and around 
ten essays found in the libraries. The paper material has been consulted 
in order to have a wider knowledge of the issue and obtain more 
information about the history, culture and society of the Muslim world. 
My purpose is to try to understand the ideas and opinions about the 
veiling phenomenon from different points of view. 
By analysing the articles, I found out three main ways of thinking: 
the first regards the ideas of Muslim people who live or experience the 
veiling practice from the inside. These people can be muhajabi women 
(women who wear the hijab), converted or not converted women who 
study the Islamic religion, scholars and so on. They believe the veil to be 
a protection for women rather than a symbol of oppression. 
Furthermore, they  think that through the scarf a Muslim woman can 
elevate herself to a superior level and state her identity as a Muslim.  
The main articles used in this section are:  Mackenzie Carpenter, 
“Muslim Women Say Veil is more about Expression than Oppression”, 
Post- Gazette, 2001; Al- Muhajabah (nickname for “Woman who wears 
the hijab”), “On Veiling…”, 2001;  Sehmina Jaffer Chopra, “Liberation 
by the Veil”, 1996;  Patricia J. Catto, “The Veil and the Sacred Space. 
 IV 
One woman’s Symbolic Glimpse”, The Bisbee Observer, 2003 and 
Nakata Khaula, “Veil: the View from the Inside”, Impact Magazine, 
1999 1.  
The second way of thinking concerns the opinions of Western writers 
journalists and reporters. From an outsider’s point of view, they see the 
veil as the main tool of social and patriarchal oppression of Muslim 
women. I have focused my attention on the Western media depiction of 
the veil, and the commonplaces about the veiled woman. 
In brief, these common beliefs can be summed up as follows: 
• Muslim women are oppressed by men and society;  
• they are not capable of making free choices; 
• a terrorist could hide behind the veil; 
• women must be liberated by the veil. 
 
This latter way of thinking comprehends a small number of articles 
which I voluntarily omitted in order not to lead my analysis astray. 
Some of them, indeed, contain very strong oppositions to the veiling 
practice and do not appear to offer sound scientific background on the 
issue.  
                                                
1
  The articles are available from different Web sites: 
www.postgazette.com;  consulted on 10.07.2006;  
www.muhajabah.com/onveiling.htm;  consulted on 21.03.2006; 
www.islam101.com/women/hijbene.html; consulted on 24.04.2006; 
www.bisbeemarquee.com/www/0716/003_1.php; consulted on 20.03.2006 
www.albalagh.net/women/hijab/shtml#veil#veil; consulted on 10.07.2006. 
 V 
I personally think these oppositions come from a misjudgement of 
some contemporary facts, such as the Taliban government in 
Afghanistan; so I decided not to specifically mention them, but only to 
give a general account of them 2. 
The third way of thinking still deals with the opinions of Western 
writers, but in this case their writings represent an attempt “to 
understand and let people understand” the veil phenomenon in a more 
complete way. 
Their articles always collect interviews and testimonies of Muslim 
women; they often describe the historical, religious and ethnographic 
proofs of the ancient and contemporary values of the veil.  
The authors taken into consideration are: Stanley Kurtz, “Veil of 
Fears: Why They Veil, Why We Should Leave it Alone- Afghan women”, 
National Review, 2002; Sondra Hale, “The West and Veiling”, lecture 
presented at the UCLA Forum “On Veiling and the Media”, 1998; 
Darnell Cole and Shafiqa Ahmadi, “Perspectives and Experiences of 
Muslim Women Who Veil on College Campuses”, Journal of College 
Student Development, Iowa State University, 2003; Michelle 
Rosenberg, “Muslim Women Offer a Glimpse Behind the Veil”, 
Independent, London, 2005 3. 
                                                
2
 See for instance Rose V. Lindgren “When Foreign Intervention is Justified- Women 
under the Taliban”, Humanist, 2002; Elizabeth Drevillon “Kabul: Women in the 
Shadows- Afghanistan”, Unesco Courier, 1998; “Muslim Women Arrested under Law 
Aimed at KKK”, Jet, 1996. 
 
 VI 
The main purpose of these writers is to approach the issue without 
prejudice or preconceptions and without being ethnocentric; this kind of 
approach gives the scholar the advantage of being objective and not 
influenced by his/her own culture. 
Amongst these writers of both American and European origin there 
are non-Western writers, such as Arabs in general, Egyptians or 
Iranians who helped me to have a different idea of the Muslim world 
and to refute the biases and commonplaces about Islam. 
The veil has been and still is a matter of study that generates a large 
literature: many publications regarding the veil as a practice, as a 
cultural phenomenon and as a tool of oppression  have been written, 
and each scholar or journalist has tried to give an explanation of what 
the veil is, what its meaning is and why it is worn. 
First, each author has an individual opinion of the matter: the veil 
stands for oppression, the veil stands for liberation, the veil is a matter 
of free and personal choice,  a religious or  rather a socio-cultural 
expression. Secondly, we have to consider the history of the veil, its use 
and value in different countries and contexts and the importance it has 
at present. Thirdly, the veiling issue is often misunderstood; the huge 
                                                                                                                                                                  
3
 The articles are available from different Web sites: 
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282; consulted on 21.03.2006; 
www.isop.ucla.edu/cnes/home/article.asp?parentid=14575; consulted on 
09.07.2006; 
www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3752; consulted on 22.04.2006; 
http.//independent.gmnews.com; consulted on 11.07.2006. 
 
 
 
 VII 
number of articles and essays which I found in the Internet does not 
make the phenomenon more intelligible. On the contrary, 
misinterpretations and ethnocentrisms distort the matter and provoke a 
series of cultural prejudices regarding the veil which are difficult to 
eradicate. 
 
That is why it is very important to proceed in order, considering the 
history of the veil and contemporary events regarding the politics of 
veiling, the studies of the most influential scholars, the testimonies of 
women who wear the veil, the opinions of Muslim men and women and 
those of Western intellectuals.  
Accordingly, this work is divided into three chapters.  
The first, called What is the Veil?, deals with the historical and 
religious information regarding the veiling practice, focusing on its 
ancient origin and uses.  
Chapter Two, Politics and Society, reports the past and 
contemporary political and social situations of five different Muslim 
countries (Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Algeria) together with the 
testimonies of Muslim men and women and studies of Muslim and non- 
Muslim writers and scholars. The countries are quite far from each 
other geographically and culturally and have to be considered as 
“sample areas”, because the database of articles on which my work is 
based mainly focuses on these mentioned above. 
 VIII 
Chapter Three, The Veil Today, is particularly complex and divided 
into five different sections. 
The first two Prejudices Against the Veil and The Veil Affair, analyse 
the delicate relationship between the veiling practice and Western 
culture, focusing on past events, such as the colonization of Egypt by the 
British power during the 19th and 20th centuries, and the “Veil Affair” 
occurred in France from the early 1980s on.  
The section called The Veil as a Tool of Resistance describes the veil 
as an instrument for struggle during the Algerian Revolution in the early 
1930s.  
The last two sections The Fashion and the Veil and Beauty as a Form 
of Resistance, describe two particular situations in which women find 
their way of personal expression, through their external appearance. 
Fashion, for instance gives Muslim women the possibility to match 
together the traditional veil with modern clothes, so that they can wear 
what they want and be respectful of their religion. 
Especially in those countries where political struggles and strict dress 
codes have contributed to segregate women, they take care of their 
bodies and faces in the privacy of their house; they make up and dress 
up, in order to feel beautiful and state their female identity against the 
strict rules imposed on their habits and behaviour.  
 
 IX 
This work does not want to be an exhaustive study of the veiling 
issue. I simply wanted to compare the different articles available on the 
Web, including the books and essays I have found in the libraries. 
I think I better understood the reasons and features of this 
phenomenon, even though I am not an expert of the matter and cannot 
assert that my new opinion is just or the right one.  
I really hope this work can help destroy the misconceptions about so 
controversial an item of clothing. Prejudice and “ethnographic Western 
centrism” are the main obstacles to a genuine reasoning about this 
controversial issue.  
I have tried as much as possible, to lead my analysis without 
preconceptions. I do not know if my attempt was a successful one, but I 
really hope this work could be a good premise to a further discussion on 
one of the most problematic subjects of our contemporary time.    
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 X 
METHODOLOGY 
 
This dissertation is the result of the analysis and the comparison of  
around seventy articles about the veil and the veiling practice. They 
contain information about recent and contemporary events, regarding 
the veil, and also deal with interviews, studies and opinions written by 
scholars, journalists and writers in general. 
The articles were mainly found on a specific search engine for news, 
magazines, and articles (findarticles.com). The key words of the 
research were “Muslim women and veil” and they showed about 330 
results. 
From this great number of results, I selected my articles following 
these main criteria: 
• the article must be recent in time (from 1990s to 2006); 
• it must give information about the politics of veiling; 
• it  must give information about the relationship between women 
and the veiling practice. 
 
The seventy articles were skimmed off, excluding those writings 
which did not suit the three main criteria mentioned above. So the final 
work is effectively based on about sixty articles,  details of which can be 
found in the final appendixes.   
 XI 
Other Web sites were also consulted to have a wider and more 
complete view on the matter (each of them is reported in the final 
bibliography). 
Furthermore, as far as the non-electronic material is concerned, I 
consulted seven different books (each of them is reported in the 
bibliography). 
The first two 4, Women and Gender in Islam, by Leila Ahmed (1992) 
and Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance, by Fadwa El Guindi (1999), 
are written by two important scholars of the veil. I referred to them for 
historical and ethnographic information about the veil. I also consulted 
the book edited by Bailey-Tawadros, Veil: Veiling, Representation and 
Contemporary Art (2003), which represents a good source of images 
and photographs on the veil and also contains three interesting essays 
about the veiling practice.  
In order to have a conscious view about history and religion in 
Muslim, Arab and non-Arab countries I consulted Il mondo arabo, by 
Alberto Ponsi (2005), and, particularly, read some excerpts of the 
Koran, translated and commented in Italian by Hamza Roberto 
Piccardo (1996).  
Finally, for an historical and contemporary view about the Muslim 
women’s world and their relationship with the veil, I consulted the 
                                                
4
 Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, 
Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1992;  
Fadwa El Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance, Berg, Oxford and New 
York, 1999. 
 
 XII 
Letters during the Embassy to Constantinople, written by Lady Mary 
Wortley Montagu in 1716-1718 5 and the book written by Ivana Trevisani 
Il velo e lo specchio, 2006. 
I decided to include ten photographs with their respective 
commentary, to have a direct vision of the different and topical issues 
examined in each chapter. For every picture I have written a specific 
commentary which describes the image portrayed and explains its 
meaning. 
 
 
 
 
                                                
5
   An unauthenticated edition of the Turkish Embassy Letters, supposed to have 
been prepared by John Cleland, was published after Lady Mary’s death, in 1763.  The 
original edition of the Letters was printed by Lord Wharncliffe in 1837. For my 
analysis I referred to the Letters During the Embassy to Constantinople, by Clare 
Brant, Everyman’s Library, New York, 1992.