Università degli Studi della Tuscia. Dis-covering Muslim Women: A Survey of Recent Literature on Veiling

Transcription

1 Università degli Studi della Tuscia Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere Moderne Corso di Laurea in Lingue e Letterature Straniere Moderne, indirizzo Mediazione Linguistica per le Istituzioni, le Imprese e il Commercio Anno Accademico Tesi di Laurea in Letteratura Inglese Dis-covering Muslim Women: A Survey of Recent Literature on Veiling Relatore : Professoressa Francesca Saggini Correlatore: Professoressa Fabienne Charlotte Oräzie Vallino Candidato: Valeria Palma matricola n 158

2 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. III

3 One woman s Symbolic Glimpse, The Bisbee Observer, 2003 and Nakata Khaula, Veil: the View from the Inside, Impact Magazine, 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: consulted on ; consulted on ; consulted on ; consulted on consulted on IV

4 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, 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, V

5 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: consulted on ; consulted on ; consulted on ; http.//independent.gmnews.com; consulted on VI

6 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. VII

7 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 19 th and 20 th 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. VIII

8 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. IX

9 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. X

10 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, XI

11 Letters during the Embassy to Constantinople, written by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in and the book written by Ivana Trevisani Il velo e lo specchio, 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 The original edition of the Letters was printed by Lord Wharncliffe in For my analysis I referred to the Letters During the Embassy to Constantinople, by Clare Brant, Everyman s Library, New York, XII