Western (ethnocentric) Obsessions with Islamic Veiling – Unit One

            One does not have to be an expert in popular culture or media literacy to know that in mainstream Western society, particularly the United States, a person is quickly judged on the basis of how they dress.  In the Western world, and perhaps elsewhere, how one dresses is equated with personal freedom and expression.  Americans in particular love to claim that their fashion choices are a form of self-expression.  Many believe that outfit choices represent their independence and individuality.  Expressions of and distinctions between genders through how one dresses is also stressed in Western society.  As a result of this Western notion of personal (and gendered) expression being equated with freedom and autonomy, I think it is easy to understand why so many Westerners and their institutions are so obsessed with veiling practices of Muslim women.

            I use the word obsessed because as an American who has lived more than half my life in a post-9/11 world, I believe I have seen firsthand how veiling conjures up a lot of discussion, analysis, and personal opinions from a variety of people.  Since 9/11, I believe the West’s obsession with the veil has manifest itself in academic or feminist studies/discussions, countless news reports, politics, and popular culture.  Through these various mediums I think the West has tried to understand the practice of veiling, but trying to do so it has assigned its own meaning to the practice, which may not fairly or correctly represent the real reasons or meanings behind veiling.  In general, I think Western interpretations of the veil are that of oppression toward women or religious fanaticism.  I have to admit that at times I have been quick to categorize veiled women I see as oppressed and lacking agency.  Such judgments are clearly very ethnocentric and reveal my Western upbringing because so much emphasis is placed on equating one’s outfit with independence, expression, and agency; and because we have generalized the meaning of veils as strictly symbols of oppression, religion, and imprisonment. 

            Examples of such judgments and preoccupation with the veil can be found in Western popular culture.  A recent example can be found in this clip from the 2010 film, Sex and the City 2:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxjmaIqZY5M

This scene from the movie demonstrates both how the West is obsessed with the practice of veiling and its misinterpretations of it.  In the scene, four White, American women stare at the veiled women at the hotel, and then using strictly Western understandings make judgments about the veiled women.  The judgments made are very ethnocentric in nature, and assume, based only on how the Arab women are dressed, that the covered women lack agency. 

            Within the political arenas of the Western world, there is also an obsession and ethnocentric understanding about veiling.  The most glaring example of this is probably France’s ban on the wearing of the burqa and niqab in public that went into effect in April 2011.  The French president at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, claimed that veils were an assault on French values of secularism and equality of the sexes as well as a way to isolate women.  Now, women who do not unveil in public are fined and forced to take a state sponsored civics class.  Under most circumstances I applaud the French for their commitment to secularism, and often wish the U.S. could do a better job at separating church and state.  However, on this issue I disagree with the French law and believe it does nothing more than alienate Muslims and those of non-Western descent in France. Additionally, I do not think it supports equality among the sexes, but instead, criminalizes women for not dressing in traditional Western ways.  The French law clearly does not approach the practice of veiling from an intersectional analysis that attempts to understand the various reasons for wearing a veil, particularly in a country that is not predominately Muslim.

            The French lawmakers might have been enlightened had they read the article, “To Veil or Not to Veil?” by sociologists Jen’nan Ghazal Read and John P. Bartkowski.  In this article, the authors interviewed 24 Muslim women (12 of whom veiled, 12 of whom did not) living in Austin, Texas about their reasons for veiling or not veiling.  Of interest were the reasons the veiled women gave for doing so, despite living in a non-Muslim country.  The article revealed that many of the veiled women interviewed veiled because how they interpreted certain verses in the Qur’an, which is not surprising.  However, many of the women also cited identity formation as a reason for doing so.  The article stated, “veiled respondents find comfort in the cultural and ethnic distinctiveness that the veil affords them…connected with their overlapping religious-gender-ethnic identities and links them to the broader community of Islamic believers and Muslim women” (Read & Bartkowski, p. 249).  In addition to identity, the women also veiled in order to escape the male gaze, which they believed enabled them to be more equal to men in the public sphere, especially in the workforce.  Thus, the veiled women of this article represent veiled women with agency that are not isolated or oppressed because of their veil.  Also, the article itself urges one to think about identity through an intersectional lens that not only takes gender into account but also ethnic background, citizenship, and religion; and examines how many identities both oppress and privilege individuals. 

            If such an intersectional analysis is taken of the burqa and niqab ban in France, I think one will be able to clearly see the many problems with it.  Such ban only views women through their gender and religion, and ignores other important components of their identity.  It also assumes that veiling takes away a woman’s agency, just as the comments from the Sex and the City 2 clip did.  This ban is a clear example of a Western attempt to control a practice that is foreign to it, and it does not take into account the experiences of women from other backgrounds.  This ignorance of the variety of female experiences, I believe would be a critique of the ban made by Third Wave feminists influenced by both Multicultural feminism and Postmodernism.  According to Janet Lee and Susan M. Shaw in chapter one of their book, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions, Third Wave feminism was shaped by globalization and attempts to better acknowledge the similarities and differences of women’s experiences around the world.  Therefore, the concerns of women in the U.S. are not necessarily the same concerns of women in other parts of the world.  Even on a smaller scale, a Third Wave emphasis on experience can apply to veiling in France because the issues concerning a native born non-religious Frenchwoman may be vastly different than the concerns of a Muslim, immigrant woman; so a ban that controls how women can dress will inevitably alienate specific types of women and not others. 

            At the heart of the West’s obsession and misunderstanding of veiling is an unwillingness to accept practices and traditions that challenge Western understanding of what is normal or desired.  In Western society, veiling challenges the widely accepted notion that one’s outfit is a way to express freedom and agency.  So when Muslim women cover themselves in a way that does not align with Western notions of expression, people get uncomfortable and want to suppress it, exemplified in both Sex and the City 2 and the French ban.  This is important to recognize because although you may not be around women who veil, I can guarantee that you will run into people who do not fit into Western definitions of woman, man, citizen or that do not express agency and independence in the same way societies of the West do.  However, just because these concepts may not take the same form, as you are use to, they cannot and should not be simply erased or banned.  Additionally, the intersections of an individual’s identity (including your own) function to both oppress and privilege people, therefore trying to suppress the visual mark of one of these identities effects all others.  Overall, the West’s obsession with Muslim veiling is a problem that affects all because functions to keep all people contained in a narrow definition of what is normal and/or acceptable. 

For more information about the French ban of the burqa and niqab check out:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5414098.stm

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/11/135305409/frances-burqa-ban-adds-to-anti-muslim-climate