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THE IMAGE OF VEIL IN LEILA AHMEDS WOMEN AND GENDER IN ISLAM CMP 609 POSTCOLONIALISM AND TRANSNATIONAL ENCOUNTERS

ASIM AYDIN FATIH UNIVERSITY Comparative Literature, PhD Program

Submitted to: Asst. Prof. Agnes E. BRANDABUR

JANUARY 2012, Istanbul

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Leila Ahmed is an American sociologist as well as being a post colonial feminist writer. She is the first professor who focused on women studies in religion at Harvard Divinity School. She got her doctorate degree from Cambridge and became a professor with her studies on women and Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1940 as a daughter of an Egyptian father and a Turkish mother. She was grown up with traditional Egyptian values. She was introduced Islam through her mother and mostly her grandmother that took an important role in shaping her thinking and writings in her career. During her childhood, there were two different understanding of Islam, Official Islam of which first Islamic texts were written by privileged elite male group who believed that God had granted them superior than women, second type of Islam, Traditional Islam ,which emerged in harem culture, was oral and a way of understanding and making sense of their lives. Ahmed gained much of her identify from harem where she learnt the oral teachings of Islam. In 1952, Gamel Abdel Nasser overthrew the ruling monarch by the Free Offices Movement, and then Egypt went into a new era of Arab nationalism. Her family had some difficulties with the new ruling understanding. Ahmed began to question her identity. She became interested in Western culture and education. She faced with racism, humiliation, and oppression of English instructors. She got disappointed with the attributions about her Arab culture. After living abroad for a long time , he has reconciled her Muslim Egyptian background with western culture. She studies on the roles of women in Muslim and in non-Islamic places. Gaining the necessary knowledge on women studies, she wrote a seminal work on Islamic history, Women and Gender in Islam in 1992. It is the combination of Muslim history with the popular issues of post-colonialism including Arab nationalism. Other texts Ahmed has written are A Border Passage: From Cairo to America, A Womans Journey in 1999, and her last book A Quiet Revolution in 2011. Ahmed tries to change assumptions, myths, misunderstandings on womens role in Islam and she emphasizes that the West, especially non Islamic people are always addressing to certain

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issues like the veil, polygamy and misogyny that make up their understanding of Islam. Ahmed makes an effort to change the mindsets of the West (Biography Web. 5 Jan). Turkey and Egypt are the countries that are primarily examined as example (Ahmed 1992: 6). The purpose of this paper is to outline the images of the veil in Ahmeds Women and Gender in Islam. The text examines how gender is perceived, how Islam influenced the position of Women in Arabia and different Muslim countries, and how discourses on gender limit the freedom of both gender. Ahmed enables her readers to have a short journey from ancient times to the present from the point of a woman. Because of her background and the role of Egypt in Islamic history, she mostly handles the developments that have been made in Egypt. Among the issues that are mentioned above, the topic of veil is quite interesting considering the historical process in which it gains different meaning and symbols. In the first half of the 20th century, it was possible to see a rising abandonment of head coverings. Along Ahmets childhood, women did not wear the veil around her. Through the end of the text, she questions the reasons of the inclination towards the veil. Ahmed draws variety of perspectives on Islam and Islamic dress throughout the text. As an answer to the reasons of the changing images and meanings of the veil, Ahmed states: Throughout Islamic history, the constructs, institutions, and modes of thought devised by early Muslim societies that form the core discourses of Islam have played a central role in defining womens place in Muslim societies (1). When we turn back to Mesopotamia, thanks to the emergence of urban societies and being institutionalized, specifically in atal Hyk, there are female figures on the walls and women have privileged status even she is seen as the mother-goddess in the Neolithic. There are ancient social and legal regulations such as Assyrian Law (circa 1200 B.C.E) and Code Hammurabi. Assyrian Law allows a husband to pull out his wife, twist her

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ears while punishing her. To Code Hammurabi, it is easy to divorce wives (13). In Assyrian Law, the women who have to veil is defined in detail. Ahmed indicates Wives and daughters of seigniors were obliged to veil, concubines accompanying their mistress had to veil; former sacred prostitutes, now married, had to veil; but harlots and slaves were forbidden to veil(14). The veil as an image is aimed to mark the upper classes and mostly to make difference between respectable women and the others. Another function of the veil is to By the spread of Islam and Muslim

identify which women belong to male protection (15).

conquests of more regions, harems including more than 300 concubines became common; as a result, veiling of women spread out increasingly and became an ordinary social activity (18). Coming to the fifth and sixth centuries, in the Mediterranean Middle East, Byzantine society was the dominant imperial power with two other civilizations, Classical Greece and ancient Egypt. Middle and upper class girls were privileged and they are generally educated. Women were always expected to veil that symbolized the honest woman in the Byzantine society (26). In the early Christian era, the practice of infanticide, especially girls was quite normal. Fathers were choosing all their sons and just one girl to grow up. Due to the fact that the church affirmed abortion, female body became the symbol of shamefulness and had to be concealed. Men began to escape from women since they saw the women as a danger, because of this, the veil gained meaning as a concealing clothing (35). Going back to the time when Islam was raising first in Arabia and then the regions around it. In that period, veiling was already available that Muhammad did not introduce it into Arabia. It was worn in some groups, but mostly in the countries which were in connection with Syria and Palestine. Until that period, Greeks, Romans, Jews and Assyrians had veiled partially. As it is stated It is nowhere explicitly prescribed in the Quran; the only

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versus dealing with womens clothing instruct women to guard their private parts and throw a scarf over their bosoms (55). During Muhammads prophethood, veiling was practiced by his wives more explicitly. As a discourse, She took the veil meant that she became the prophets wife. However, how the veil spread throughout the Muslim regions is obscure. It is just an assumption that Muhammads wives were taken as models in the following years (56). Through the end of the 19th century, there was imitation of the West especially in the upper class. The veil began to disappear slowly because of the Europeanization. There were changes in the way of dressing among women. They veiled when they were in Egypt, otherwise they used to be unveiled while travelling to Europe. The veil seemed to be more transparent, a kind of fashion that belonged to Istanbul, in Turkey. Women in Egypt were wearing in different styles, veiled or unveiled joining a lot of professional activities (143). Qasim Amins The Liberation of Woman written in 1899 includes radical proposals for woman. He demands primary-school education and reforms in laws that contain polygamy and divorce that can be accepted as innovations at that time. As a symbolic reform, he offers the abolition of the veil. He emphasizes the urgency of a comprehensive cultural and traditional innovation in the country. To provide the desired transformation, abolishing the veil is rather urgent, in fact, it is the key process for a widely change (145). Ahmed indicates: the thesis of the new colonial discourse of Islam centered on women Islam was oppressive to women, that the veil was the comprehensive backwardness of Islamic society (152). Veiling was apparently the most striking signal of divergence and inferiority of Muslim countries from the view of the West. However, then it gained extra symbolic meanings such as the oppression of women and backwardness of Islam. Therefore, colonial assault was mainly on that issue. A British statesman, diplomat and colonial administrator, a British
controller-general in Egypt

Cromer believed that Islamic countries were lower than the

European ones. to him, women were the target group to convert into civilized Christian

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societies. Further, missionary-school lecturers were insulting the dress of veiling and trying to persuade them not to wear. In Cromers words, veiling and seclusion were the traditions that exercised a baneful effect on Eastern society (160). On the other side, Amin evaluates the veil as an obstacle between women and her elevation, as a result a big problem that prevents the nations advance. According to Amins analyses, the ages the girls begin to veil were twelve or fourteen which were the critical ages for their development. Amin and Cromes attack on veiling caused a counter attack and emergence of an Arabic narration depending on the resistance to colonial thinking. The veil gained a new symbolic meaning that was the resistance narrative. Fanon indicates: the Algerians affirmed the veil because tradition demanded the rigid separation of the sexes and because the occupier was bent on unveiling Algeria (164). The influence of call for unveiling reached Turkey where Ataturk introduced western reforms to his society. To Ataturk, the reflection of veil was uncivilized and ridicule. Ataturk, in one of his speech declares: In some places I have seen women who put a piece of cloth or a towel or something like that over their heads to hide their faces, and who turn their backs when a man passes byIt is a spectacle that makes the nation an object of ridicule. It must be remedied at once (164). In 1920s, Reza Shah, an active westernizer and reformer Iranian leader prohibited the veil which was affirmed by the upper class women and men. The reforms Ataturk made banned polygamy, gave women the same rights to divorce with men, and provided child-custody rights. All those reforms gave profit to the urban bourgeoisie; it was less influential in lower classes. The veil did not lose its popularity among the women outside the urban bourgeoisie and they demanded their right to veil (168). In the 50s, 60s of the twentieth century, head covering or veiling vanished in the urban areas. However, in small towns and rural areas the veil kept on being common among the women as a norm. In 1970s, after Egypt was defeated by Israel, Egyptians thought that it was Gods punishment and God had abandoned them. From then on, Islamist groups became

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widespread. Saudi Arabia and Libya used their wealth for the adoption of Islamic dress. They even made a proposal for every woman to wear a veil. It was also an important issue in education, especially among university students. The veil first appeared in urban areas in certain centers like Cairo, Alexandria, and Assiut. It gained popularity among the young students and professionals (164). In conclusion, the veil is an image of many things, rejecting the west is the most prominent one. Ironically, it was the discourse of the West since it emerged as a symbol of resistance. During Mohammed's lifetime the veil was used mainly in the Christian Middle East and Mediterranean. Before the 19th century, the veil had quite different meaning; it was something that upper-class women wore to show their honor and protection by her male partner. At the end of the 19th century the veil symbolized the oppression of Muslim women. During Lord Cromer ruling Egypt, women had to throw off the veil so that Muslim men could become civilized, As Ahmed states; The custom of veiling and the position of women in

Muslim countries becamethe proof of the inferiority of Islam to undermine Muslim religion and society (237). Those ideas were adopted by the upper classes who share the same ideologies with the colonial figures. However, young American women increasingly began to wear veil that does not mean they are fundamentalists. It also has different meaning. Some of those are extreme feminists. It can be concluded that Leila Ahmed handles the issue of veil as an image within a sophisticated historical knowledge which includes the issues of today on gender studies. The text deserves much appreciation for being an extensive overall work on women and gender.

AYDIN Works Cited Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam, London:Yale University Press, 1992. Biography/ Criticism. Last modified on June 26, 2009, http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artistpages/ahmedLeila.php