Understanding Veil In Islam & History Auphirah: Understanding the history of the Veil in Islam. Muslim women are not the first in history to wear the veil because Nuns in the Catholic Church wore Veils also. Below is the history of the veil. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/veil.html Some thoughts on the Veil Max Dashu Most people think of the veil solely in terms of Islam, but it is much older. It originated from ancient Indo-European cultures, such as the Hittites, Greeks, Romans and Persians. It was also practiced by the Assyrians. Veiling had class as well as gender implications; thus, the ancient Assyrian law required it of upper class women while punishing commoners for it. The strong association of veiling with class rank, as well as an urban/peasant split, persisted historically up until the last century. Then more privileged women began rejecting the veil, as did Egyptian feminist Huda Sharawi, while poor women increasingly adopted it as a ticket to upward mobility. (A similar dynamic occurred with footbinding in modern China.) The contraposition of The West versus Islam certainly has historical roots, but these two systems have similarities as well as differences. Women in medieval Europe dressed more like women in the Muslim world than is generally realized. It was customary, especially for married women, for them to cover their hair with various kinds of headdresses. Paintings of urban women in western Europe often show everything covered except the face and hands. It two nunswas common to drape the neck and even sometimes the lower face in a wimple. This became part of the classic nun's garb that represents the most conservative style of female dress in the Christian world. It drew on the traditional head-veil of patrician Roman women, though the wimple may have Hunnic roots. Peasant and working-class women who did not cover in these ways were considered "loose" and fair game for assault. Auphirah: This non-respectable and therefore vulnerable status of unveiled women also plays out in the Muslim context, going back to a Koranic passage which specifically designates veiling as marking out Muslim women not to be molested on the streets. Its historical roots go back further, to the neighboring Byzantine empire's enforcement of veiling codes which impute high social rank to families whose women are veiled. These were in turn based on Greek and Roman values of male honor and female shame, and of public space as male space. The same codes are reflected in Christian scriptures calling for veiling as a symbol of male lordship over women. Tertullian referred to it as "the discipline of the veil," and denounced Christian women who protested its enforcement. He wrote that most Greek churches, and some North African ones, "keep their virgins covered." [On the Veiling of Virgins, III] Perhaps more to the point for the Arabian context are rabbinical sayings treating a woman's uncovered hair as "nudity." In the Tannaitic period, she could be fined 400 zuzim for it. As elsewhere, men were the enforcers: "Cursed be the man who lets the hair of his wife be seen..." Islamic theory shares this concept of women's uncovered hair as nudity, 'awra, often extended to face, neck, and arms. In the most extreme veiling, niqab, even a woman's hands must be gloved, no matter how hot the weather, when she is in public or the presence of unrelated men. But the Quran does not enjoin face-veiling, except when it calls for the wives of the prophet Muhammad to veil or be secluded. Other women were instructed simply to draw their cloths over their bosoms. However, the pressure of regional patrarichal custom was great, and became irresistable as the Arabs conquered countries where this was longstanding, as Leila Ahmed has detailed in Women and Gender in Islam. The process worked in the other direction, too, as more egalitarian cultures became Islamicized and have adopted hijab, patrilineage and Shari'a law. Indonesia has seen a very marked increase in veiling over the past century, for example, even among the matrilineal Minangkabau of west Sumatra. This change has happened in less than 50 years. |
