Few garments have been as discussed as extensively or emotively as the veil, which for many in the West has become a symbol of the repression of Muslim women.
But Harvard Divinity professor Leila Ahmed, who was at the Frontline Club to discuss her recent book A Quiet Revolution: The resurgence of the veil from the Middle East to America put forward a different view of the veil, which she discovered many women in the West who had freedom to choose were opting to wear for their own reasons.
Interviewed by journalist and author Azadeh Moaveni, the women’s studies professor gives in her book an accurate and compelling account of cultural and historical evolution of the unveiling movement at the turn of the 20th century and its recent resurgence.
As a feminist, I was initially very resistant towards the hijab. It took to me 10 years of studies and this book to admit that it is not necessarily a sign of constriction and repression.
In Cairo in the 40s when Ahmed was growing up, it was considered normal for women to go unveiled and it bore little relation to their religious attitude.
In the first part of the book Ahmed explores the origins of the western conception of the Arab dress as a tool of repression. Arching back to late 19th and early 20th century, she explains how colonial officials regarded traditional forms of veiling as a sign of seclusion and “backwardness” of a culture and evidence of the inferiority of Islam to Christianity.
We have to remember that once also Jewish and Christian women wore the veil. It is only now that it is considered as a characteristic sign of Islamic culture and of its conception of the woman. Believe me, if this book were about Christianity and Judaism it wouldn’t have been published.
To investigate the current social and political implication of the veil, Ahmed provides a detailed analysis of the contemporary relationship between America and Islam.
She also argued that the return to the veil both in Western and Arab society is a clear sign of reaction following the 9/11 attacks:
It is undeniable that in many occasions the veil represents a sign of protest and often of liberation. Just think about the many women who wear it in support of the Palestinian cause or against the banning of it by foreign governments.
Bans do not work, said Ahmed, who said there was a remarkable similarity between the language used by 20th century colonialists and French President Nicolas Sarkozy when he said the veil was “a sign of enslavement and debasement”.
Bans make people feel they are being discriminated against as a minority. Let people think for themselves, that is really the most effective approach, rather than a ban.
Asked if women she had talked to were conscious of those women living in countries such as Saudi Arabia where they are unable to go out in public without a covering, Ahmed said that the women she spoke to had been opposed to compulsory wearing of the veil.
In conclusion, Ahmed acknowledged that her suggestion that the veil had been released from its traditional moorings and had taken on a variety of meanings did not apply to those countries where women were not free to choose:
I don’t want to romanticise the hijab. The things I am saying only have meaning where there’s freedom to choose. Women are deciding what the veil means to them but not all women can choose. The freedom to make it mean what you want it to is western.
Leila Ahmed, who is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, will be joining us at the Club in conversation with Azadeh Moaveni, Iranian-American writer, journalist and author of Lipstick Jihad, to discuss her new book A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence, from the Middle East to America and her surprising discoveries about Muslim women, Islamism and democracy.
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You can watch this event live from 7pm here and we will be live-tweeting on @frontlineclub. The hashtag for this event is #fcveil.
Raised in Cairo in the 1940’s, by a generation of women who never wore the veil or headscarf, Leila Ahmed set out to discover why so many women now wear the veil, and what this shift means for women, Islam and the West.
Leila Ahmed, who is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, will be joining us at the Club in conversation with Azadeh Moaveni, Iranian-American writer, journalist and author of Lipstick Jihad, to discuss her new book A Quiet Revolution: The Veil’s Resurgence, from the Middle East to America and her surprising discoveries about Muslim women, Islamism and democracy.
At a time when both Islamist and democratic forces are dramatically changing the Middle East, Leila Ahmed’s analysis of the resurgence of the veil from Egypt to Saudi Arabia challenges many assumptions about women’s rights and activism.
Leila Ahmed was the first professor of Women’s Studies in Religion at Harvard University and is author of Women and Gender in Islam.
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This is the question Leila Ahmed sets out to answer in her book A Quiet Revolution, the veil’s resurgence from the Middle East to America.
Having grown up in the 1940s in a family where the women did not wear veils and with the firm belief that to do so was "backward" Leila Ahmed looked beyond the discussions among the elites, speaking instead to "ordinary people" to discover why since the 1990s increasing numbers of women have been wearing the veil.
She will be discussing her findings with Azadeh Moaveni, an Iranian-American writer, journalist and author of Lipstick Jihad tonight at the Frontline Club.
The practice of women’s covering in public has been a subject of fierce debate in Europe, with France banning the face-covering niqab and the burqa and Germany imposing a ban on headscarves among teachers. In Britain, where a "Burqa ban" has been ruled out, the subject has been hotly disputed.
Leila Ahmed’s book demonstrates the complex roots of this debate. Her book provides a fascinating account of the unveiling movement in Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, exploring its complex relationship with colonialism and its notions of the superiority of the European male.
The Harvard divinity professor shows how the assumption took hold that Arab societies needed to follow in the footsteps of the more "advanced" West and how the veil became a potent symbol of Islam’s "degradation" of women.
"Professor Ahmed’s study quickly goes to the heart of the veil’s resurgence," says Azadeh Moaveni:
Both in the early 20th century as well as today, women’s covering has been the flashpoint in political conflicts between the West and the Middle East. Liberating women served as the pretext for the British colonial presence in Egypt, just as rescuing women from the Taliban has provided moral cover for the West’s modern war in Afghanistan.
It is striking how 21st century debates about the rights of women under Islam echo those put forward by the elites at the turn of the twentieth century for political expediency: The burqa, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in 2009, represents "a problem of liberty and women’s dignity" and was a "a sign of subservience and debasement".
Azadeh Moaveni says she is also keen to discuss the role of Saudi Arabia in the rise of the veil:
The shadow of Saudi Arabia also looms long across this book. If Saudi money and ideology propelled Islamism and the veil across the Middle East and the world, then it’s resurgence is also Saudi Arabia’s quiet success story.
Professor Ahmed deftly shows us how the veil carries dramatically different meanings in various social and historical contexts. She argues that today, the veil has become unmoored from its old patriarchal associations. Is that really the case, and if so, must liberal and secular Muslims also embrace its resurgence?
Tomorrow night’s event is fully booked but you can watch it live here.
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