I read Marnia Lazreg’s Questioning the Veil on a cross-country flight, sitting next to a teenage girl who was wearing hot pink shorts and a black tank top. The girl spent the trip listening to music, applying makeup, and examining her bellybutton ring. She could not have been more of a contrast to the young women I was learning about in Lazreg’s open letters to Muslim women.
Lazreg, who was raised in a Muslim family in Algeria, compiles 15 years worth of interviews with women all over the world and presents a series of reflections on women who are reclaiming the major styles of veiling (hijab, jilbab, niqab, and khimar) as a means of liberation.
Lazreg’s letters examine how wearing the veil is more often paradoxical than religious, and the writer takes bold steps in asking controversial questions, followed by concrete answers. She gives a number of reasons why a woman should not wear a veil, showing that modesty is neither protected nor enhanced by the veil. She points out that nowhere in the Quran is there any indication that the veil is a condition of a woman’s faith.
Never does Lazreg attack women who are forced to wear the veil, but instead focuses on state supervision and control of women’s dress and bodies as a degrading and callous practice. When writing about women, though, it is often essential to write about men. And calling attention to the unrecognized psychological effect on the veil wearers, Lazreg highlights the role men play in furthering the stigma that the female body should not be seen in public.
Helpful alternatives to the veil are offered, such as pendants and bands worn as a sign of faith. Lazreg’s final solution is to ask women to take the next step in ending the politics of the veil by simply not wearing it. She argues that it is the women’s obligation to history to forge ahead as agents of social change. In presenting her observations, Lazreg takes a very tangible sign of women’s oppression and shows how easily freedom can be taken for granted by girls like the one who studies her bellybutton ring in public.
CATEGORIES: Culture, Human Rights
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I never really thought about the implications of wearing a veil when you have the freedom not to. I suppose I always thought that it was a religious mandate, but I find it extremely interesting that it’s not in the Quran. Definitely sounds like a thought provoking read…
One time I was hitting on this chick in a hijab and I was relentless in trying to make her take it off. She had the most expressive and beautiful eyes, I wanted to see more of her. After lots of coaxing (and a few weeks) she removed it, but she said, she did it for me, and not because she was taking a stand for women. After she removed the veil, I immediately regretted being so insistent on her taking it off. Woof!
this is interesting and I’m curious to see if she talks to any women who make the choice to wear the veil as opposed to those who are forced to wear it.
I drive through a heavily Jewish orthodox neighborhood every day in Los Angeles. The women wear skirts down to their ankles and cover their arms and shoulders - they seem less “media scrutinized” than Muslim women…that’s just an observation.
It does definitely feel like patriarchal bullshit to have a (theocratic) government agency tell a woman what to wear and how to look. Is it rude to suggest you simply find another country to live in, where you won’t be stoned to death for your fashion choices?
It’s complicated. Kind of like Denise Richards.
In Persepolis don’t they talk about veils and how the major problem with them is the state mandating whether they are worn? I don’t feel that women should be forced by the government or a man to wear it. However, if a woman feels that the veil reflects her modesty and is a part of her belief system, who should be allowed to tell her this is wrong? Maybe more Muslims should look towards Turkey and their ability to combine the religious and the secular.
When I travelled through North Africa one of the visions that will stick with me are the flies in the eyes of the children.
I thought the women were veiled to keep flies from their eyes.
I think I would want something to protect me if I lived there.