NEW ORLEANS, LA, 1 January 2004 — Last week, the Western press made an odd announcement — that secularism needed “protection” from Muslim women’s veils. And so French President Jacques Chirac did what radical right extremists and anti-immigrant politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen have always wanted to do, but were previously unable to do — ban the veil, this time in classrooms, and tomorrow in private businesses. Piece by piece, step by step, the French, former guarantors of universal liberty, egalitarianism, and brotherhood, have placed into motion a process guaranteed only to destroy religious freedom and chill religious speech.
It is strange that France, so renowned for its aesthetics, chose to focus its restrictions on women and one distinctive item of women’s fashion. In fact, anyone who has shopped in the Middle East knows that some of the most beautiful of the now-banned veils come directly from France, and are manufactured under the license of some of the top French fashion houses. It is also strange that France exports abroad for money the same thing that it now forbids at home. How come?
Because what is indispensible fashion in much of the Middle East is now seen as a political weapon in the West. Some Muslim women writing in the Western press wonder whether the “veil” they frequently reject wearing is an endangering badge of Islamic courage or a barrier to interfaith dialogue. But properly understood, the veil is neither.
Nor is it really a “veil.” Veils cover and obscure the female face, and nothing in Islam requires this, although sometimes veils are worn. What Islam does require, through combined readings of the Holy Qur’an, Sunnah and Hadith (narrations about the Prophet, peace be upon him, and his companions), is modesty in dressing for both men and women. And throughout much of the Muslim world, this means loose, comfortable clothing and a headcovering of some kind for both sexes.
Headcovering done in obedience to God’s will is hardly unique to Islam. Both Judaism and Christianity have long traditions of headcovering. With Western industrialization and the rise of a powerful Euro-American secularism, headcovering has been gradually dispensed with, even in church and synagogue. And yet well into the 1960s, many US Catholic women still wore chin- and shoulder-length lace mantillas to mass. Failure to wear one, or the shorter “chapel veil” or a hat, often resulted in the “nun patrol” dropping unfolded napkins on the uncovered heads of female worshipers.
One might argue that requiring a headcovering once a week is different from requiring one all the time, but Muslims believe that they are constantly in God’s presence, and so the headcovering is, ideally, a continuous and prominent feature of Islamic life, rather than just a worship “occasion” accessory.
Headcoverings also are used in Islam to help men and women learn to relate to each other apart from natural human sexual attraction. What infuriates feminists is that Islam gives to men the right and responsibility to decide what they find erotic and stimulating about women.
In cleric-ruled and influenced Islamic states, imposition of the headscarf by law is not so much a tool of oppression as it is a guarantee that women will be protected from presumably unwanted male attention.
Western feminists may scoff, but hair is a sexual “turn on,” as every salon and shampoo company knows, and to preserve everyone’s dignity, many Muslims consider hair to be at its safest for both sexes when it is covered up.
Not all Muslim women throughout the world “cover up,” but many do. Politics may certainly be one factor, pride in Islam another. But for devout Muslims, doing that which is believed pleasing to God should trump these considerations. But there is also much more mundane female discussion about whether “covering up” will attract a good husband seeking a pious wife, or cause a woman to miss out on a better catch who can be seduced by a shiny, bouncy head of uncovered hair. Men in turn wonder whether a woman with a beauteous mane would agree to cover up after marriage, saving that mane solely for him.
Covering up in marriage is nothing less than obedience to the Qur’anic injunction that “the righteous women...guard in (the husband’s absence) what Allah would have them guard,” mainly, their own virtue and, correspondingly, their husbands’ personal reputation. But covering up in general is really the oldest of religious acts, going back to Adam in the Garden, who was stripped of his “raiment” of honor and innocence by Satan to “expose (his) shame.” In mercy, God then bestowed new “raiment” upon Adam’s children “to cover your shame, as well as to be an adornment to you.” But the Qur’an admonishes that “the raiment of righteousness, that is the best.”
— Sarah Whalen taught Islamic Law at Temple Law School in Philadelphia, PA, and now teaches at Loyola University School of Law.
