Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks

Sahar Amer

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781469617763
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología islámica

Ranging from simple head scarf to full-body burqa, the veil is worn by vast numbers of Muslim women around the world. What Is Veiling? explains one of the most visible, controversial, and least understood emblems of Islam. Sahar Amer's evenhanded approach is anchored in sharp cultural insight and rich historical context. Addressing the significance of veiling in the religious, cultural, political, and social lives of Muslims, past and present, she examines the complex roles the practice has played in history, religion, conservative and progressive perspectives, politics and regionalism, society and economics, feminism, fashion, and art. By highlighting the multiple meanings of veiling, the book decisively shows that the realities of the practice cannot be homogenized or oversimplified and extend well beyond the religious and political accounts that are overwhelmingly proclaimed both inside and outside Muslim-majority societies. Neither defending nor criticizing the practice, What Is Veiling? clarifies the voices of Muslim women who struggle to be heard and who, veiled or not, demand the right to live spiritual, personal, and public lives in dignity.

Part One: Islam, Politics, and Veiling

This section focuses on why veiling has become associated with Islam, and with Muslim women in particular. It also examines how the governments of some Muslim-majority societies have at times emphasized and implemented particular interpretations of core Islamic texts.

In chapter 1, I investigate what the three sacred Islamic traditions (the Qurʾan, hadith, and Islamic law) say about veiling and how these traditions have been interpreted by orthodox Sunni Muslim scholars and schools of Islamic law from the ninth to the thirteenth century.

In chapter 2, I explore how these same core Islamic texts are being reinterpreted by contemporary progressive Muslim scholars and how these new interpretations differ from those maintained by classical and medieval Muslim theologians.

In chapter 3, I discuss why the governments in some Muslim-majority societies have followed particular interpretations of Islamic texts and the legislations they have enacted to enforce what they believe sacred Islamic traditions prescribe to women.

The goal of this first section is to give the reader a richer sense of the complexity and ambiguity of Islamic discourses on veiling and of the tenuous relation between conservative discourses on veiling and contemporary Islamist and pious injunctions that Muslim women veil.

Chapter One: Understanding Veiling in Islamic Sacred Texts

[Headscarves] create a tent of tranquility. The serene spirit sent from God is called by a feminine name, “sakinah,” in the Qurʾan, and I understand why some Muslim women like to wear their prayer clothes for more than prayer, to take that sakinah into the world with them.
—Mohja Kahf, “Spare Me the Sermon on Muslim Women” (2008)

Muslims and non-Muslims alike commonly believe that Muslim women are required to veil and that Islam prescribes veiling in no uncertain terms to its female adherents. Indeed, most veiled Muslim women I have met report that they cover primarily because the Qurʾan prescribes it. And when asked whether they feel hot with their entire body and head covered, many reply with a smile that they do indeed feel hot, but that “the heat of Hell is even hotter.” This observation is echoed by many Muslim men who consider veiled women more pious than those who do not veil. Similarly, many non-Muslims attribute veiling to strict religious observance, and at times to familial or political pressure.

It thus makes sense that we should begin our exploration of the meaning of Muslim veiling by looking at how and what Islamic sacred texts tell us about Muslim women’s clothing.

Three main textual sources can help us investigate this. The central source for answers to anything to do with Islam is of course the Qurʾan, the holy book of Islam that observant Muslims consider the direct word of God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad beginning in 610 ce. Muslims believe that the Qurʾan has been preserved in an unaltered form since it was standardized in the Arabic Quraysh dialect by order of the third caliph, Uthman, in the middle of the seventh century.

Even though the Qurʾan is indeed Islam’s sacred text, its poetic language often makes it difficult to understand even for educated native speakers of Arabic. It is thus accompanied by a lengthy tradition of commentary (tafsir) that has for centuries provided dominant modes of interpretation. These commentaries have today circumscribed the meaning of the Qurʾan and given rise to a community of practice that delimits all possible interpretations. In other words, it is not just what the Qurʾan itself says about veiling that must be taken into account to understand Muslim women’s veiling but also how some of the Qurʾan’s key commentators have interpreted the text.

The second main textual source that can shed some light on the general rules of Muslim women’s dress is the multivolume collection known as hadith. The Islamic scholar Barbara Freyer Stowasser has defined hadith as “both a record of what Muhammad actually said and did and also a record of what his community in the first two centuries of Islamic history believed that he said and did.”¹ In other words, hadith provides brief eyewitness reports of some of the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions. It represents a major source of information about Islam, and it is the place where the idea that pubescent Muslim women must start veiling is most clearly articulated.

The third source of information about Muslim veiling is Islamic jurisprudence. Since its formal establishment more than one thousand years ago, the goal of Islamic jurisprudence has been to translate the Law of God (sharia) contained in the Qurʾan and hadith into a practical legal system for the Muslim community. It is thus another important tradition in which to search for clues on Muslim veiling practices.

Taken together, the Qurʾan with its exegesis, hadith, and Islamic jurisprudence are the three sacred Islamic traditions establishing the rules and ethical principles that Muslims consider fundamental to their religious identity, to their ritual and spiritual practice. It is these three traditions that I invite you to explore with me to understand why Muslims invoke religion first to explain veiling practices.

LOOKING FOR VEILING IN THE QURʾAN

Because the English term “veil” has no simple or direct Arabic equivalent (see introduction), a discussion of discourses on veiling in the Qurʾan must focus instead on a variety of other Arabic terms. It is worth beginning with an investigation of the Arabic word hijab, which today is perhaps the most widely and commonly used one to refer to veiling and appropriate Muslim dress. How is the term hijab used in the Qurʾan?

The term hijab occurs a total of seven times in the Qurʾan (Q 7:46; Q 17:45; Q 19:16–17; Q 33:53; Q 38:32; Q 41:5; Q 42:51). Surprisingly, in five of these occurrences, the term hijab describes situations that have nothing to do with women and that do not treat the subject of a dress code.

Rather, the primary meaning of hijab in these five Qurʾanic verses is a separation between people, a division or a distinction between groups or categories. The word hijab in Q 7:46, for instance, designates a separation between the inhabitants of Hell and those of Paradise; in Q 17:45, it separates the believers from the unbelievers; in Q 38:32, it refers to the sunset, thus the separation of day and night; in Q 41:5, the term hijab refers to the veil that the polytheists have on their heart, which prevents them from hearing and understanding the preaching of the Prophet; and in Q 42:51, hijab describes the shield that God uses to speak to humans to protect them from His divine light.

Only on two occasions (Q 19:16–17 and Q 33:53) is the term hijab used in relation to women, though it refers to women’s clothing in neither case. In Q 19:16–17, hijab refers to the space of seclusion and silence that the Virgin Mary seeks when she learns of her virginal pregnancy. In Q 33:53, hijab again points to a spatial separation: this time, it describes a screen between the Prophet’s wives and other men.

Veiling to protect the privacy of the Prophet’s wives (Qurʾan 33:53)

Q 33:53 is a very important sura often cited by scholars and Muslims to assert veiling as an Islamic duty. In fact, it is sometimes referred to as “the verse of the hijab” and is considered as the earliest revelation on the subject of Islamic veiling.

I provide two English translations of this Qurʾanic verse because each translation comes with its own biases and set of exegetical assumptions. The first translation is by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem and the second one by Arthur Arberry, both of which are well-respected renditions assigned in introductory Islamic studies courses. The word hijab is highlighted in each translation below:

Q 33:53: Believers, do not enter the Prophet’s apartments for a meal unless you are given permission to do so; do not linger until [a meal] is ready. When you are invited, go in; then when you have taken your meal, leave. Do not stay on and talk, for that would offend the Prophet, though he would shrink from asking you to leave. God does not shrink from the truth. When you ask his wives for something, do so from behind a screen (hijab): this is purer both for your hearts and for theirs.

Q 33:53: O believers, enter not the houses of the Prophet, except leave is given you for a meal, without watching for its hour. But when you are invited, then enter; and when you have had the meal, disperse, neither lingering for idle talk; that is hurtful to the Prophet, and he is ashamed before you; but God is not ashamed before the truth. And when you ask his wives for any object, ask them from behind a curtain (hijab); that is cleaner for your hearts and theirs.

Contrary to what we might have expected, the word hijab is not used here to describe or prescribe a particular dress code for Muslim women. In this verse, hijab refers to a physical partition or a dividing curtain between men and the wives of the Prophet—a separation between people or groups, as when the word appears elsewhere in the Qurʾan.

The context of this Qurʾanic passage sheds further light on the specific meaning of hijab in this case. According to a hadith compiled by al-Bukhari (d. 870) and Muslim (d. 875), Q 33:53 was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad while he was in Medina, about to celebrate his marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh. The wedding guests overstayed their visit, delaying the long-awaited moment of the couple’s privacy. To aid the Prophet, who was unsure how to encourage his guests to leave, this Qurʾanic passage addressing the value of household privacy was revealed to him.

Hijab in Q 33:53 is therefore above all a physical, spatial marker (equivalent to the Indo-Persian notion of purdah) intended to safeguard the Prophet’s privacy and that of his wives. It is important to note that the responsibility of observing hijab as a spatial curtain is placed here on men, not on women. They are the ones who must speak to the Prophet’s wives from behind a curtain, (presumably) to maintain the wives’ privacy and to preclude any type of inappropriate sexual desire. This passage thus stands in contrast to contemporary practices in some Muslim communities that place such responsibility on women.

Because this Qurʾanic revelation refers specifically to the Prophet’s wives, considered exceptional among humankind, Muslims continue to debate whether this physical hijab or the hijab as a spatial divider between men and women is also required of other Muslims. The Qurʾan, in fact, never specifically addresses this question. It thus remains subject to discussion and interpretation.

Some conservative interpreters of the Qurʾan invoke this verse to assert that all believers, not just the Prophet’s wives, are expected to avoid mixed-gender interactions. According to this view, Muslim men and women must keep separate quarters, or a spatial visual partition must be installed to ensure the separation of the sexes, thus emulating the model of the Prophet and his wives.

The same sura has also been invoked to justify the separation of Muslim men and women during ritual prayers in mosques. This partition, which always places the men’s prayer quarters in front of women’s, sometimes takes the form of opaque curtains that divide the prayer hall; at other times, women are relegated to a basement or a different floor or section of the building. In some countries, and in some mosques in the United States and around the world, no space is allotted to women, in effect banning them from ritual prayers at the mosque.

Although the Qurʾan never uses the word hijab to refer to women’s clothing, some passages do treat the attire of women using other terms. The verses below continue to be regularly cited by Muslims to justify their veiling practices; they are also some of the passages that have generated the most controversy concerning their exact meaning. Every word of these excerpts matters, since they influence the style of veiling some Muslim women adopt.

The first passage uses the Arabic word jilbab to speak of women’s clothing.

Veiling to distinguish and protect free women (Qurʾan 33:59)

Q 33:59: Prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and women believers to make their outer garments [jalabib, sg. jilbab] hang low over them so as to be recognized and not insulted: God is most forgiving, most merciful.

Q 33:59: O Prophet, say to thy wives and daughters and the believing women, that they draw their veils [jalabib, sg. jilbab] close to them; so it is likelier they will be known, and not hurt. God is all-forgiving, all-compassionate.

This passage encourages all Muslim women, not just the Prophet’s wives and daughters, to draw their jilbab around them to be recognized as Muslim women and not be harassed. Once again, the context of the sura helps us understand the historical setting of this passage, sometimes referred to as “the mantle verse.”

In his al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, ibn Saʿd (d. 845), an early biographer of the Prophet Muhammad, reports the following: “When the wives of the Prophet of Allah, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, had gone out at night by necessity, some of the hypocrites used to prevent them and molest them. They [the people] complained about it. But the hypocrites said, ‘We do it to the ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• What is Veiling?
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part One: Islam, Politics, and Veiling
• Part Two: Veiling in Euro-American Societies
• Part Three: Veiling in the World and Words of Women
• Epilogue
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series