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The Fall and Rise of the Veil:
Leila Ahmed
“Why are they dressed like that?”
The Hijab
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The Hijab
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The Hijab
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The Hijab
• The hijab had almost entirely vanished from Egypt by
the mid-20th century, but by the 1970s had become
popular in Egypt and is today common on Muslim
women throughout the world
– Both in countries where Muslims are a minority religion
and where they form a majority
• Why?
– “Understanding what brought women to this mosque, and
what their goals and interests were in attending mosque
[and in donning the hijab], would clearly entail careful
observation well beyond just listening to sermons.” (6)
• Verstehen
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The Hijab
• “One young woman, an African American,” said. “When
people stare at me on the T, I find myself thinking that if
there’s just one woman out there who begins to wonder
when she looks at me why she dresses the way she does
and begins to notice the sexism of our society—if I’ve
raised just one person’s consciousness, that’s good enough
for me.”
• Another woman, “of Arab-Caucasian descent, and a convert
to Islam,” said she wore hijab “for the same reason as some
of my Jewish friends wear a yarmulke: as a way of openly
identifying with a group that people have prejudices about
and as a way of saying, ‘yes, we’re here, and we have the
right to be here and be treated equally.” (8)
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The Hijab
• Key questions: “how and why the veil has spread,
why women had accepted it, why women were
drawn to Islamism and came to serve among its
footsoldiers and activists” (12)
• In the 1960s, the hijab “was distinctive enough to
cause me to ask, as a child, ‘Why are they dressed
like that?’ Because, was the answer, they are
women of the Muslim Brotherhood.” (4)
– Historically, the hijab was returned to prominence by
the female members of the Egyptian Islamist
organization, the Muslim Brotherhood.
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Islamism
• “Islamic fundamentalism,” “‘radical’ or ‘political’ Islam”
• A highly politicized version of Islam, in which the teachings
of Islam are believed to believed to provide the proper
regulations of politics, economy, and society
• “To be an Islamist, it is by no means sufficient to be a
Muslim.” “An Islamist must be committed to active
engagement in the quest for a more Islamic and just
society. All Islamists will share this ultimate aim.”
– The regulations of these spheres of activity directly regulated by
the tenets of the faith, not merely informed by them
• Denial of a border between religious and secular worlds
• An organized and highly visible minority of Islamists
embrace tactical and strategic violence (9)
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Historical Background
• Oxford historian Albert Hourani argued in 1956 that
“the veil had virtually disappeared in Egypt, although,
he admitted, veiling lingered among the ‘lower middle
class, the most conservative of all classes.’ Similarly, he
reported, the veil was disappearing from most other
‘advanced’ Arab countries.”
– “It was only in the Arab world’s ‘most backward’ regions,’
he continued, and specifically ‘in the countries of the
Arabian peninsula—Saudi Arabia and Yemen,’ that the ‘old
order’—and along with it such practices as veiling and
polygamy—‘still persist[s] unaltered.” (20)
– Note ‘stadial,’ teleological view of modernization
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Historical Background
• In the 19th century, it was common among
Egyptians to see “European civilization as
representing the pinnacle of human achievement
in the hierarchy of civilizations”
– A colonial ideology, “useful in this era of European
colonialism in that it cast European man in his role as
colonizer as one who, by virtue of his imperialist rule,
was not only bringing civilization to backward peoples,
but also saving local women from the oppression and
degradation imposed on them by native men.” (22-23)
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Historical Background
• Widespread sense that Egypt had to “catch up” with Europe
– The Napoleonic invasion of 1799 “vividly brought home to both
Ottomans and local rulers how far the Ottoman Empire and the
Islamic world had fallen behind Europe in military might.”
• Egyptian rulers import European expertise and technology
– Egyptian elites begin to imitate European fashion & culture
• This process accelerates under the British occupation of
Egypt, 1882-1954
– Egyptian officers rebel against European puppet ruler, Britain
occupies Egypt
– Lord Cromer (consul general) installed to govern Egypt in 1883,
rules for 24 years (28-31)
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Historical Background
• Under Cromer, a political division emerges in Egypt
• Liberals:
– In some ways saw British rule as preferable to local autocrats,
cultivate good relationship w/occupying gov’t
– Wanted to move Egypt culturally toward Europe, particularly
w/regard to women
– Sometimes backed by Cromer
• Amin’s The Liberation of Woman wins praise from British press
• Nationalists
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Opposed Westernizing of Egypt
Pan-Islamic Unity
In opposition to Cromer
Preserve the veil(34-36)
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Historical Background
• “Whether to wear the veil was, for the women of the day, a
matter of fashion and of wearing proper and appropriate
dress.”
– In Muslim majority countries, until the colonial era, Jewish,
Christian and Muslim women wore the veil
– “Most at this point considered the custom to be a ‘cultural norm
rather than a religious imperative.’”
– Only during the colonial era does the veil become specifically
identified with Islam
• Modernization in Egypt became associated with unveiling
– Democracy
– Women’s rights
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Historical Background
• Post-WWI, a nominally independent, nominally democratic
Egyptian government comes into being
– Dominated by Cromer’s westernizing protégés, hobbled by UK gov’t
– By the 1940s, “Pious as well as less religious women typically wore no
veil. [...] There was no suggestion whatsoever that women’s unveiling
signified their rejection of Islam or their secularism.”
• “With the rise of the West to global dominance, Western views of
the world would come to supersede local meanings in a vast range
of matters, including the veil.”
– “It is noteworthy that the process of unveiling occurred initially
because of the Western meaning of the veil—as a sign of the
inferiority of Islam as religion, culture, and civilization—trumped and
came to profoundly overlay the veil’s prior indigenous meanings
(common to all three monotheistic religions in the region) of proper
and God-given gender hierarchy and separation.” (42-45)
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Return of the Veil
• By the end of the Nasser era in the late 1960s, unveiling had
become so much the norm among women of all classes that a
generation had arisen which had “never unveiled, because, in fact,
they had never veiled.”
– Veil remains in rural areas
– Some women wear European scarves, which signals that that they
were “‘like us’ but more conservative,” adopting Western style
• “The dress of the women of the Muslim Brotherhood seemed
distinctly to signal that they were definitely not ‘like us’ and were
perhaps even opposed to ‘us’ the Westernizing current that we—
the dominant in society—were part of.”
– Women of the Brotherhood wore a new style of more fully-covering
veil, and “modern-looking Islamic style robes that, like their head
coverings, differed from traditional styles of dress.”
– A symbol of commitment to a particular form of Islam and opposition
to the dominant classes and their direction for society (45-49)
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The Muslim Brotherhood
• Founded 1928, initially composed of the urban
working class and recent rural immigrants,
support later spreads to middle class
• Opposed incompetent, corrupt colonial gov’t,
took a strongly anti-imperialist stand
• Built mosques, schools, hospitals, provided
support for the poor, ambulance service, all for
free to the general population
– Provided services gov’t would or could not
• Supported Palestinians after foundation of Israel
– British prohibited gov’t from doing so
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The Muslim Brotherhood
• Goals
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To free Egypt & other Islamic countries from colonial power
Reinstitute Islamic law, eventually the return of the caliphate
Purify society of immorality (gambling, prostitution, alcohol, etc.)
“Universal Brotherhood of mankind and the global hegemony of the Islamic
nation
– Rejected national identity based in geography, promoted pan-Islamic unity
– “Emphasized its own stance of activist social responsibility and its work in the
service of promoting a just social and economic order grounded in Islamic
principles.”
– Jihad = “the struggle” to promote their form of Islam & oppose imperialism
• Initially non-violent
• Saw itself as distinct from Muslim masses, a vanguard
• Banned by gov’t in Dec. 1948, founder, Hasan al-Banna, assassinated by
gov’t agents in Feb. 1949 (52-55)
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Nasser
• July 1952, coup by Nasser & the Free Officers
– Defeat by Israel in 1848 had delegitimized the gov’t
– Bans the Brotherhood
• Ideology of pan-Arabism, national pride, socialism
– Free education through university to all who qualify
– Allied w/Soviet union
– “The trend toward socialism in Egypt was not, however,
accompanied by a Soviet-style rejection of religion. On
the contrary, the Nasser regime was well aware of the
importance of religion and of laying claim to and acquiring
legitimacy and authority through appeals to religion.”
– Secular, not secularist (52-59)
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Arab Cold War
• Tension w/ rising Saudi Arabia results in Arab Cold War
– Egypt allied with Soviets, Saudi Arabia w/US
– Saudi Arabia welcomed many highly educated exiled members of the
Brotherhood
• Nasser denounces Saudi Arabia as supporting “imperialist causes,”
practicing a “reactionary and stifling” form of Islam that would lead to
“retardation and decline.”
– Opposition to class barriers, commitment to equality results in commitment to
women’s equality, opposition to the veil. Majority of women unveiled.
– Lack of veil on women in senior gov’t positions “implicitly proclaimed and
affirmed the national ideal of women as equal citizens.”
• In response, SA founds & funds the Muslim World League
– Pan-Islamic, not pan-Arabic
– Condemn socialism & Arab nationalism as “un-Islamic”, accuse “irreligious”
Nasser of leading people away from Islam into “secular” ideologies
• Tension remains in contemporary Egypt
• SA backs the Brotherhood in Egypt (60-64)
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1967: The Six Day War
• Nasser had privileged the military, promised to never again be
defeated by Israel after 1948
– High prestige & funding
• In period of high tension, Israeli surprise attack wipes out the air
force in minutes, inflicting 12,000 fatalities.
– Catastrophic defeat for Egypt, Syria, Jordan
• Officer:
– “The Egyptian officers and soldiers saw their colleagues burned by
napalm. We saw the army of our country destroyed in hours. We
thought we would conquer Israel in hours. . . . I discovered that it
wasn’t Israel that defeated us, but it was the [Egyptian] regime that
defeated us, and I started to be against the regime. . . . there was an
earthquake in the Arab-Islamic personality, not only in Egypt but in
the entire Arab world.”
• Nasserism discredited (65)
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1967: The Six Day War
• After the defeat, a wave of religiosity sweeps Egypt
– An apparition of the Virgin Mary was seen, miracles reported, thousands of
Muslims & Christians gather to see it
– Quaranic study groups multiply, monasteries deluged with applicants
• Confidence in gov’t shaken, and people “began to see its promises as false
and its ‘secular’ ideologies as empty.”
• Conservative Muslims say the defeat reveals that “the ways of ‘Islamic
socialism’ were not the ways of God.”
– “A total renunciation of man-made ideologies and a reorientation towards an
unwavering commitment to the realization of Islam in the world” was needed.
“God used Israel to punish His errant nation an allowed the forces of evil to
conquer the Muslims because they had strayed from the Straight Path.”
– Saudis: defeat a “divine punishment for forgetting religion”
• Nasser: “Allah was trying to teach Egypt a lesson, to purify it in order to
build up a new society.”
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