The Fall and Rise of the Veil: Leila Ahmed

1
The Fall and Rise of the VeilLeila Ahmed

• When I wear this dress, people on the street
  realize that I am a Muslim woman, a good woman.
• (Sociology 156)

2
Islamism at the University

• Free education means enrollment skyrockets
• 1970 200,000 university students, 1977
  500,000. Number of female students rises almost
  twice as quickly as male
• Overcrowding results in mass transit lecture
  halls, placing women, many from rural areas, into
  uncomfortably close environments with men,
  subject to harassment (77)
• By 1975, Islamist groups gained control of
  important campus committees, becoming able to
  distribute literature at low cost, soon come to
  dominate student organizations
• The hijab begins to appear on university
  campuses, and is initially mostly confined there
• An internal transformation as women separated
  themselves from mainstream society via unique
  dress and strict observance of Islamic tenets and
  rituals
• Goal to bring about governance based on Quran and
  Sunna, rejecting intervening Islamic scholarship
  as deviance encrustation of original message
• Oppose Communism, Zionism, Feminism
• While the Brotherhood had advocated a domestic
  life for women, they now operated side by side
  with male activists (77-82)

3
Islamism at the University

• These organizations belonged to the broad
  mainstream of nonviolent Islamists
• Hijab, language of brother and sister
• In addition to hijab, women adopt ziyy, or zia
  Islami forms of dress, worn in limited array of
  fashions and somber colors
• Erases social and class distinctions, reinforces
  commitment to egalitarian principles
• Unmistakably modern Islamic dress, devised in
  styles and materials that signaled at once the
  modernity of its wearers and their Islamic
  commitment.
• Also signals a commitment to a different form of
  Islam Islamic society from that of surrounding
  culture
• Women so dressed appeared to be sitting in
  judgment on their society and critical of the
  way it appears to be going.
• Society, families initially respond with alarm
  It is not even Islamic. The veil truly the
  greatest enemy of civilization and progress
  (82-85)

4
Islamism at the University

• Islamic dress adopted mostly be female students
  intending to become professionals
• El Guindi The woman who takes up the veil is
  liberating herself . . . . by choosing to veil
  and not to be molested or stopped as she enters
  public space.
• 19 say they wear hijab to avoid harassment, 20
  say it brings them new respect. (87)
• In contrast to the Iranian regime, which imposed
  veiling, the quiet revolution that the Sunni
  Islamists were setting in motion in Egypt was
  seemingly rather implanting in women the will and
  desire to wear hijab. (116)

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A quiet conversion to a new way of life

• As many as 4,000 mosques built in Egypt by the
  1980s
• Fashion on the street changes
• Some men took to wearing beards as well as
  baggier, looser clothes and long shirts,
  sometimes even djellabas.
• Veil spreads from universities into the
  mainstream
• For Islamists, the hijabs growing presence was
  doubtless an encouraging sign of their spreading
  influence.
• Why were women taking on the hijab?
• Driven forward by women due to their own desires,
  or pressure from male leadership? (118-119)
• Macleod Zuhur

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Macleod

• All of the women in Macleods study (1983-88) had
  begun to wear hijab as adults
• Some said that there was a general sense that
  people in their culture were turning back to a
  more authentic and culturally true way of life.
  Others said that in the past people had been
  thoughtless and misled and now realized that
  their behavior had been wrong.
• 60 said they simply did not know why the
  change was happening
• In initial interviews, Macleod finds some fine
  peace as a result of wearing hijab
• Others did so to avoid harassment When I wear
  this dress, people on the street realize that I
  am a Muslim woman, a good woman. They leave me
  alone and respect me. (120-121)

7
Macleod

• No observable increase in religious observance
  among veiled women
• Most, veiled and unveiled, seldom performed any
  religious actions or indicated personal religious
  emotions except at holiday during Ramadan
• Nonetheless, commitment to Islam strong and
  unquestioned . . . . the foundation of their
  lives
• Decision to veil typically involved resolution of
  problems in personal lives
• Husband jealous of male attention
• Balance responsibilities at work home
• I want to quit my job but we need the money.
  When I wear this dress it says to everyone that I
  am trying to be a good wife and mother. The
  higab is the dress of Muslim women and it shows
  that I am a Muslim woman.
• The hijab had now become a culturally
  available way by which women could resolve
  tensions about their roles and make the statement
  that they were good Muslim women.
• Macleod rejects the notion that the hijab
  connotes anti-Western sentiment or extremist
  agenda (121-123)
• Nonetheless, there was a heightened social
  concerns with religious matters.

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Macleod

• Veiling primarily a voluntary movement clearly
  initiated and perpetuated by women
• But by 1988, growing social pressure to wear
  hijab
• Women report they begin to wear it due to family
  pressure to avoid constant harassment in public
  that accompanies Western dress
• Generation gap hijab more common among younger
  women
• Veil less one option among many and more the
  right thing to do, possibly initiated by women
  but co-opted by men ((124-25)

9
Zuhur

• In 1988, Zuhur finds no difference between veiled
  unveiled women on roles of men women
• Different but complimentary
• Equal opportunity equal under law so long as
  sharia respected
• Saw Islamist critiques of the West as meaningful
• But non-veiled women did not see Islamist govt
  as desirable alternative, while veiled women
  emphatically did.
• Implication that hijab worn not only to resolve
  personal conflicts, but also to signal support
  for Islamism
• Attracted to its association with cultural
  authenticity, nationalism, and pursuit of adala,
  or social justice.
• Both groups equally pious, but unveiled have an
  emphasis on inner qualities of religion, veiled
  emphasize outward, visible qualities
• Since I veil, I am religious.
• Are unveiled women secular? (126-128)

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The Veil

• Islamist male leaders conceived of veiling as
  strategically important to their movement.
• Gender segregated lecture halls transport
  helped to spread Islamist notions and practices
  of correct dress and norms of gender
  segregation.
• al-Aryan When the number of women students
  wearing the veil rises, that is a sign of
  resistance to Western civilization and the
  beginning of iltizam pious commitment towards
  Islam.
• The veil, like mass gatherings, made visible to
  the dominant society the presence of people
  committed to an ethos and vision that was
  different from and seemingly implicitly
  oppositional to mainstream society and the
  reigning political order. (132-135)

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Islamist views of women

• From survey of literature
• Before the 1970s, the Muslim Brotherhood did not
  seek to involve or recruit women
• Muslim Sisterhood mostly charitable concern
• In the 70s after, an increased concern with
  women
• Women qualify for armed jihad, but disagreements
  over when it is an obligation for them
• Activism acceptable if it does not disrupt the
  household or interfere with womens domestic
  responsibilities
• May hold any position other than head of state or
  Grand Imam
• Families must be headed by men, women devoted to
  childbirth and rearing due their special nature
• Realizing the advantages of having female
  activists for promoting Islamism, Islamists look
  to mobilize women (136-38)

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Flipping the Narrative

• Female activists part of a vanguard, exempt from
  many of the rules of Islamic feminine orthodox
  behavior until ultimate Islamist goals achieved
  (136-38)
• Women were reminded of the degradation heaped
  upon them as a result of the economic imperialism
  of the West and were cast at once as heroines
  and defenders of the fabric of Islamic society,
  and as at the center of a regenerative effort to
  restore the Muslim world.
• Turning orientalist stereotypes against the West,
  saying opposition to the veil was part of the
  Wests effort to humilate dominate the Muslim
  world
• Paints Egyptian feminists as un-Islamic, Western
  (138-39)

13
Rising Violence

• Through the 1980s 90s, Egyptian Islamists come
  to control influential professional associations
• Govt, to compete w/Islamists, emphasizes
  religion more and more
• Returning mujahedeen from Afghanistan leads to
  spike in violence
• Assassinations, church burnings
• Farah Foda, Muslim supporter of secular govt,
  murdered
• Islamist theorist al-Ghazali, who had previously
  been against violence, argues for the defense at
  trial of killer, saying that anyone who resisted
  the full imposition of Islamic law was an
  apostate who should be be killed either by the
  government or by devout individuals.
• Islamist lawyers harass non-Islamists
• Islamic Jihad (led by al-Zawahiri) massacres 60
  tourists at Luxor in 1997 (142-144)

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Spread of Islamism

• Islamist militants become deeply unpopular
• Legitimates high levels of govt repression
• Govt bans hijab for girls grades 1-5, allows on
  middle school girls w/written consent from
  parents
• Terribly unpopular, showing that for girls and
  women, the hijab and the teachings of
  conservative forms of Islam (that is, the
  practices of Islamism) had become the normative,
  expected, and even desired practices for many.
• What 20 years before had been the practices and
  beliefs of fringe groups had pervasively
  become, by the mid-1990s, the ordinary, normal
  practices of the majority of Egyptians. (146-47)

15
State Repression

• Across the 1990s, govt antiterrorism campaign
  degenerated into indiscriminate state
  repression. More than 20,000 Islamists were
  imprisoned . . . many of them had been detained
  without charges and subjected to torture.
• Restrictions on press, military courts
• Threat of imprisonment for association with any
  Islamist group, even if nonviolent
• Especially the Brotherhood (151)
• High levels of chronic coercion signals weak state

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Why does Islamism grow in popularity in the face
of repression?

• Unlike militant Islamism, not just against status
  quo but for a better alternative
• Valuable social networks
• Embodies many of the same hopes and aspirations
  for freedom from dictatorship and for social
  justice and public accountability that have
  inspired other movements
• A form of empowerment for young people, who can
  critique their elders from a religious standpoint
• Powerful forces of peer pressure powerful
  social coercion
• Isnt it proper, following the path of the
  Prophet?
• A demand for social political activism,
  political optimism
• Contrasted with a politically quietist pessimism
  common among non-Islamists (150-156)
• Webers active asceticism the believer as Gods
  tool