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Five: Modest Bodies, Stylish Selves: Fashioning Virtue in Niger
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fiVe Modest bodies, stylish selves: fashioning Virtue in niger Adeline MAsquelier You must cover your body because it is God’s command. God will send angelstolightupthegravesofwomenwhocovertheirheadswithveils. —Izala preacher, dogondoutchi, 1994 According to a hadīth, the woman who does not veil will never smell the smell of paradise. [ . . . ] Every time she comes out of her home uncovered, she shares the sins of all the men who look at her. —Izala preacher, dogondoutchi, 2006 in tHe eArly 1990s a wave of religious fervor swept through Niger, promoting the development of a “heightened self-consciousness” (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996:39) about what it meant to be Muslim. The sharpening of Muslim identity in turn translated into an unprecedented focus on dress codes and the fashioning of modest personae. Members of an emerging anti-Sufi reformist movement known colloquially as Izala1 insisted that local male and female garb be modified. While they urged men to shed their voluminous riguna (robes) in favor of the jaba—a tunic worn over short-hemmed pants, they were especially keen to ensure that women concealed their bodies from head to ankles. Women wearing “skimpy” attire were harassed, and occasionally attacked, for exposing their state of undress and by implication, their lack of religious engagement. The modesty of a “true” Muslim’s attire was a measure of her virtue, Izala preachers declared, as they grew beards and put on turbans. These attempts to define morality through the creation of virtuous women in contradistinction to (presumably morally corrupt) Western MOdEST BOdIES, STYLISH SELVES 111 womanhood do not mean that reformist Muslims are unconditionally and uniformly against fashion, however. Arguably, at a time when women’s bodies are ever more critical sites of ideological struggles about Islamic morality, the Izala movement has been remarkably successful in enforcing forms of female encompassment and sartorial control deemed essential for the preservation of moral boundaries and chaste selves. In many Nigérien households, tight-fitting, form-enhancing garments have been abandoned in favor of more modest attires. Yet attention to the specific contexts in which modest attire is worn, the various expressions this modesty takes, and the diverse meanings attached to it reveals a complex picture of Muslim sartorial trends in which piety is not necessarily antithetical to fashion and modest clothes can have decidedly “chic” implications, especially when notions of purity and cosmopolitanism are the object of ongoing, at times personalized, redefinitions. If women’s dress has been impacted by the redefinition of modesty in Muslim reformist discourses, it is nonetheless problematic to assume that the concept itself had no prior currency in the region. Women’s understanding of modesty and their experience of veiling antedates current debates over whether to wear hijabi (veil; pl. hijabai). Partly because they were more embodied than discursive, the practices through which women traditionally displayed Muslimhood have been eclipsed by the more visible presence of the hijabi. Although head coverings such as hijabi have become important markers of personal faith and communal affirmation of piety, one mustn’t overlook women’s prior efforts to fashion their bodies as Muslim. Aside from complicating the picture of veiled female bodies as signifiers of the wider moral order, a focus on the diversity of women’s sartorial traditions and trends helps trace continuities between past and present practices. Whether in the colonial imagination, in feminist discourses of various origins, or in the writings of Islamic studies specialists, the veil has born a heavy semantic load as an icon of Muslim identity. To some, it evokes restriction, patriarchal domination, and “backwardness” (El Saadawi 1980; Mernissi 1987). For others eager to recuperate women’s agency from its previous invisibility, it is an expression of female resistance and emancipation (El Guindi 1999; Zuhur 1992) or a form of “accommodating protest ,” whereby women veil as a strategy to protest restrictions of their movement (MacLeod 1991). Whether they vilify or glorify the practice of veiling, these perspectives are based on the assumption that Islam is the main determinant of women’s status, operating rigidly to set both limits and opportunities in women’s lives. By constructing Islam as a monolithic [3.81.30.41] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:41 GMT) 112 ADElinE MAsquEliEr entity existing independently of the socio-historical context within which it develops, these approaches constrain our understanding of how women selectively make use of Islamic tenets to reconcile occasionally competing societal and religious requirements. By focusing on the veil strictly in terms of identity politics, these views overlook women...