Muslim Views

Muslim Views . 29 July 2011 73

A Quiet Revolution – The Veil’sResurgence from the MiddleEast to America. Author: LeilaAhmed. Publisher: Yale University Press 2011.ISBN: 9780300170955

THE Muslim veil hasremained a contentiousgarment accessory since

Islam’s encounter with colonialism.

Vigorously debated, the veilhas been defended as a religiousrequirement that safeguardsfemale modesty, and a symbol ofIslamic identity.

It has been criticised as aninstrument of female subjugation,gender inequality and a symbol ofradical Islam.

However, the typecasting ofsuch a polarised and stereotypicaldiscourse fails to capture the fluidattitudes towards the veil in Mus-lim societies and offers littleanalysis on the nature of the reli-gious revival among Muslimswherein the centrality of the veilis unmistakable for reasons notusually connected to radical reli-giosity.

Some Muslim feminists andscholars have recently questionedthe old secular-liberal assump-tions which hold to accountIslamist groups and the intricatematrix it forms with notions ofgender and politics.

Leila Ahmed’s work fits intothis mould of questioning the

long established secular-liberalnotions of the veil and investigat-ing the meaning of its resurgenceamong Muslim women.

The impetus for Ahmed’senquiry was the sight of a groupof veiled Muslim women at theCambridge Common during thelate 1990s, shortly after arrivingin Cambridge and the discussionit ignited with her visiting friendfrom Egypt.

The sight of the veil ignited vis-ceral disturbing emotions forAhmed and her friend due to itsconnections with the early Mus-lim Brotherhood in Egypt.

Ahmed traces the history of theveil from the 1940s, where it wasa disappearing phenomenon inEgypt and much of the Arabworld to its steady resurgenceduring the 1970s.

The veil took on new mean-ings, at times different from thetraditional outlook on veiling.The veil was a marker of religios-ity and an explicit sign of annoy-ance with secular dominance.

Islamist organisations, such asthe Muslim Brotherhood, were‘implanting in women the willand desire to wear hijab’.

Ahmed traces the foundationsof America’s Muslim institutions,notably the Muslim StudentsAssociation (MSA) and the Islam-ic Society of North America(ISNA), to Islamist organisationsin the Arab world.

While women were involved in

the founding of these organisa-tions, the face of these organisa-tions has changed dramatically inrespect of gender.

Muslim women head boththese organisations today. Theveil, in this instance, is both a signof Muslim identity and a symbolof leadership and activism withinMuslim society.

Ahmed also, interestingly,gives voice to the criticism frompostcolonial theorists such asHamid Dabashi and Sabah Mah-mood on the imperial nature ofthe common rationale utilised bythe West, notably the UnitedStates of America, that its moral-ly dubious wars, particularly inAfghanistan, were influenced byliberating women from the veil.

While Ahmed continues tobelieve ‘that the rights and condi-tions of women in Muslim-major-ity societies often are acutely inneed of improvement’, she won-ders ‘if the subject of “the oppres-sion of women in Islam” – com-ing to us charged and loaded withthe legacies…that are capable evi-dently of taking on renewed lifeand force in the West in fraughtpolitical times in relation to Islam– is any longer a useful or evenvalid topic.’

Ahmed’s conclusions are sur-prising. She posits that it is indeedthe legacy of Islamism – and thechildren of this legacy – who areat the forefront of ‘those whowere most fully and rapidly

assimilating into the distinctivelyAmerican tradition of activism inpursuit of justice’ and are also atthe forefront of women’s rights inIslam.

While this conclusion certainlyis an optimistic one for Ahmed,the prevalence of believers in aGod-given gender hierarchy isstill present. The investigativeargument which Ahmed putsforth is certainly interesting and isan alternate view to the dominantdiscourse on the veil.

The importance of relooking

and also rethinking the issue ofthe veil within the wider contextof Islamism, Muslim identity,ethics and gender is integral tounderstanding the current nature,motivation and purpose of theveil among many Muslim womenand the resurgent religiosity with-in Muslim societies.Review byNADEEM MAHOMEDNadeem Mahomed is a Mastersstudent in the Department ofReligion Studies at the Universityof Johannesburg.

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