A Quiet Revolution (20 page)

Egypt was the first country in which the new hijab and Islamic dress had begun to appear, along with other signs of an evidently rapidly ris- ing Islamist movement. These trends attracted the interest of many scholars, among them academics interested in political and militant

Islam (in the
1970
s and
1980
s the term Islamism had not yet come into

use) and also—thanks to the rise of feminist scholarship in America— academics interested in focusing on the veiling trend and on issues of women’s motivations and agency, topics that were gaining theoretical importance in American feminist scholarship.

These researchers, studying the rise and spread of Islamism and the veiling trend from various perspectives, would come up with quite dif- ferent and sometimes seemingly contradictory findings. There would be those, as I will describe, who would see the conclusions of those study- ing these phenomena from different perspectives from their own as cat- egorically incorrect. The dividing line fell between those who saw veiling as essentially a trend being driven forward by women for their own spe- cific reasons and those who saw it as emanating from male Islamist lead- ers for whom the veil was critical to their overall strategy of spreading Islamism.

In this and the following chapter I review and draw together the findings of these researchers who, through different lenses and perspec- tives, set out to understand the spread of Islamism and the veil during the critically transformative decades of the
1970
s to the
1990
s. I endeavor to

create an overview of the various and multiple forces that gave rise to this dynamic Islamist movement, a movement that would become a force in global history and that would carry along with it wherever it took root its imprint and emblem, the hijab.

I begin by describing in this chapter the findings of two scholars who set out to study women’s consciousness, agency, and motivations around the issue of the hijab. Both researchers would interview women who wore hijab, as well as women who did not. The first of these is Ar-

lene Elowe Macleod, who began her research in
1983
, and the second is Sherifa Zuhur, who conducted her research in
1988
, the year Macleod brought hers to a close. Macleod studied a group of eighty-five working women, twenty-nine of whom wore hijab when she began. By the time she completed her research—and indicative of the rapid march of the trend—sixty-nine of the women wore hijab. Without exception, all of the women in Macleod’s study who wore hijab had begun to do so as adults, typically after leaving college and upon entering the workplace. For all of them, therefore, taking on hijab and/or Islamic dress marked, as Macleod put it, a “dramatic” as well as recent change in their lives.

Both Macleod’s and Zuhur’s findings are illuminating regarding these crucially important years in Egypt, when the Islamist movement and veiling were at a point of dynamic growth and change. In addition, their studies are also illuminating by virtue of the intimate details they provide. The women relate a variety of reasonings, rationales, and indi- vidual circumstances as influencing and shaping their decisions to veil, and their stories notably foreshadow some of the explanations and mean- ings of the veil that are emerging today in Western societies. It was in these decades, and as the veil began to be explained as dress that was freely chosen and whose meanings could be rationally articulated, that the veil would begin to break free of its historically bounded meanings.

Among the questions Macleod posed to the women she studied was why it was, in their opinion, that some women were beginning to wear hijab, and why, “after wearing western dress their whole lives, women would suddenly decide to alter their dress so radically?”
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Some said they thought that there was a “general sense that people in their culture were turning back to a more authentic and culturally true way of life.” Others said that in the past people had been “thoughtless and misled” and now realized that their behavior had been wrong. As one woman put it, “in the past people didn’t understand that these val- ues are so important, but now everyone has come to see that they are good and strong. So we know now we have to act like Muslim women, that it is important.” One woman who had adopted the hijab explained, “Before I did not know what I was wearing was wrong, but now I realize and know, thanks be to God.” A number noted that Muslim women in

general held to certain beliefs and followed patterns of behavior that were different from those of Western women. In the words of one woman, “We Muslim women dress in a modest way, not like Western women, who wear anything . . . Muslim women are careful about their reputa- tion. Egypt is not like America! In America women are too free in their behavior!”

Other responses (all of which offer a snapshot of the kinds of ideas and explanations that were in the air at the time) explained the trend in terms of hard economic times. “Everyone is more religious now,” said one woman. Another opined that “everyone is realizing that life is diffi- cult now and that we must return to the true values of our religion and way of life.” Overall, these responses resonated with those reported by Williams and Radwan, as they resonated with the Islamist narrative (as Macleod noted) disseminated in Islamist pamphlets and other publica- tions, which were widely available and which declared that a return to Islamic values was “necessary for times to get better.” There was a wide- spread feeling among Macleod’s interviewees that life was hard and needed answers “beyond the confusion and commercialism of the every- day grind.”

Also informative about contemporaries’ experience at this moment is the fact that the majority of the women in Macleod’s group (
60
per- cent) said that they “simply did not know” why things were changing

and why the trend was happening—even as they recognized that they themselves were part of it. “I don’t know why everyone wore modern dress before and now we do not,” said one woman, “but this is the situ- ation.” Many of them (
56
percent) suggested that it appeared to be a mat-

ter of fashion. As one woman put it, “I don’t know why fashions change in this way, no-one knows why, one day everyone wears dresses and even pants. I even wore a bathing suit when I went to the beach . . . then sud- denly we are all wearing this on our hair!”

When Macleod asked women who wore hijab why they had adopted it, the responses she received initially echoed the stock responses that Williams and Radwan had earlier reported. Some said, for example, that on donning it they had found “peace.” One woman explained that she had felt “very troubled” before deciding to wear it and that afterward she felt “completely different” and that she now “knew who I was.” Oth-

ers noted that the hijab protected them from harassment. “When I wear this dress,” one woman explained, “people on the street realize that I am a Muslim woman, a good woman. They leave me alone and respect me.” In following the women’s lives, however, and continuing to inter- view them over five years—years through which more and more of the women began wearing hijab—Macleod was able to collect information on the specific circumstances in which they made the decision to wear hijab, as well as on other matters relating to veiling about which she had questions. Among these, for example, was the question of whether don- ning hijab correlated with an increase in religious observance—and on this point Macleod found essentially no correlation. Only a “tiny mi- nority” of women, veiled or unveiled, prayed daily the five prescribed prayers or “concerned themselves with fulfilling their other religious du- ties.” A few women (both veiled and unveiled, apparently) performed religious duties such as prayer about a “third of the time,” while the re- mainder, whether veiled or unveiled (as Macleod this time specifies), “seldom performed any religious actions or indicated personal religious emotions, with the exception of fasting during Ramadan or celebrating

the various holidays, such as the birthday of the Prophet.”

This did not mean, though, that the women did not consider them- selves to be practicing Muslims. On the contrary, Macleod found that among the largely lower-middle-class community she studied, Islam typically formed the “strong and unquestioned . . . foundation of their lives.” Although there were variations in people’s personal commitments, overall Islamic beliefs and rituals nevertheless formed a “foundation for society in a way perhaps difficult to understand in secularized, commer- cialized America.”
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Nearly everyone prayed on Fridays. Generally they all observed the Ramadan fast and hoped one day to go on pilgrimage. There were dif- ferences, though, Macleod found, between the ways in which men and women typically practiced their faith. Men often attended mosque on Fridays, whereas women usually prayed at home. Women were also likely to offer prayers to “special saints” whose shrines they visited—particu- larly in times of stress and need. Sometimes a group of women would set forth together to visit a shrine, such as the ancient and revered shrine of Sayyida Zainab, our Lady Zainab. Zar ceremonies, practiced by some

in Egypt, were often viewed as “lower class” and were not typically at- tended by women of this community.

Regarding the specific circumstances and reasons for which women decided to veil, Macleod found (once more in part echoing Williams) that the decision to veil typically resolved specific problems in their own lives, problems usually arising from tensions around issues of family and work or of being able to move freely in the public world.

Macleod substantiates this conclusion with many examples. One woman, for instance, explained that her husband “did not like the way men at the bus-stop would talk to me as I left for work. You know, they would ask me the time, or how are you or whatever. It is very innocent, but my husband is a jealous man. Well I guess he loves me and that is all that is important, and so I decided to put on the higab [Egyptian pro- nunciation] to prevent him from these strong feelings. Why should that come between us?” Another woman who loved her job broke off her first engagement because her fiancé wanted her to quit work. Becoming en- gaged a second time, she declared that she would wear hijab when she married. This would help “balance” matters between home and work, she said. A third woman decided to adopt Islamic dress a few months after the birth of her first child. “Many factors influenced the decision,” Macleod reported, “her sense of increased family responsibilities and her husband’s discomfort with the compliments men paid her at work and her feeling that her proper place was at home with the children... cou- pled with the realization that she probably could not afford to stop work- ing.” As the woman explained, “I want to quit my job but we need the money. When I wear this dress it says to everyone that I am trying to be a good wife and a good mother. The higab is the dress of Muslim women and it shows that I am a Muslim woman.”

In effect, donning hijab allowed women to go about their lives and keep their jobs while affirming their identities as Muslim women and presenting themselves as women who were conforming to conservative Islamic notions of women’s roles. Thus, concluded Macleod, women could affirm community belonging and respect for community values and make public by their dress their commitment to their families and their roles as wives and mothers. Hijab also allowed them to retain their jobs and move freely in public. In short, it had now become a “culturally

available way” by which women could resolve tensions about their roles and make the statement that they were “good Muslim women.” The hijab’s popularity, Macleod argued, arose from its ability to offer a “sym- bolic reconciliation” between these areas of tension.

Macleod concluded that, among the women she studied, the “essence of the meaning of their veiling” was that it was a response to the local and specific circumstances and relationships in which the women were immersed, rather than a response to “larger questions of politics and international relations.” Consequently, Macleod takes a po- sition that is strongly opposed to any notion that the “new veils are . . . sign[s] of support of the Islamic resurgence.” The evidence she had gath- ered simply did not support the idea that women adopting the hijab were joining a movement “directed against the West or against the state,” or that they were linked to Islamist groups and their “oppositional poli- tics.” Quite the contrary, her observations indicated that for these women “the idea of being Muslim has more to do with their role as wife and mother in the family, rather than with expressions of nationalism or anti-Western feeling,” and that “we should be most cautious about assuming such oppositional politics or religious militancy among the majority of veiling women,” as well as about assuming that they were “part of some militant or political movement which has a settled pro- gram of behavior . . . such as fundamentalist groups or political organi- zations.” Such interpretations were, said Macleod, simply “misguided.” To be sure, though, Macleod observed, the veiling trend was oc- curring in the context of a resurgence in “fundamentalist Islam,” a resur- gence that was undoubtedly creating a heightened preoccupation with religious matters. Men in particular, she found, were likely to “debate religious matters and sometimes follow the arguments in the newspa- pers by prominent religious thinkers.” Women took less interest in the discussions and tended to “regard this religious interest as a public and political matter, one out of their realm of real interest, the family.” Over- all, men and women in the community she studied tended to regard “fundamentalist groups . . . as political organizations, better avoided.” Often they characterized the militants as “crazy people,” and many “em- phatically point out that Islam does not countenance violence. Politics,

not religion, is seen as the concern of such groups.”
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Altogether, then, the veiling trend among the women she studied was under way, said Macleod, because the veil offered a way of symbol- ically reconciling tensions around, in particular, issues of work and gen- der roles. These findings also led Macleod to conclude that veiling was “primarily women’s idea and women’s decision,” and that its spread was unrelated to militant or oppositional Islam. The spread of hijab was es- sentially a manifestation of a “voluntary movement,” a movement that was clearly “initiated and perpetuated by women” and under the control of women.