What Is Veiling?

6. Veiling in the United States of America Today

112 The National Organization for Women got annoyed After some of us put on hijab, And wouldn’t let us speak at their rally, But wanted us up on their dais as tokens of diversity. —Mohja Kahf, “Thawrah des Odalisques at the Matisse Retrospective” (2003) C H A P T E R S I X Veiling in the United States of America Today When I ask undergraduate students enrolled in my “Arabs in America” or “Arabs and the West” classes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill what comes to mind when they hear the word “veil,” I am always struck by the changes in their response since the events of 9/11. Before these events, veiling systematically evoked orientalist fantasies, harems, sheer veils, Hollywood films, belly dancing, and erotic or sexual promiscuity. These images have been prevalent in the United States since the nineteenth century. They are derived from memories of orientalist paintings such as those by Delacroix, Ingres, or Jean-Léon Gérôme, as well as by early Hollywood films set in the Orient. Both paintings and films depicted the erotic promise of the harem and the imagined sexual availability of Oriental women in veils (see chapter 4). My students today are heirs to these artistic representations and to their more contemporary retellings, such as the Disney sensation Aladdin or the TV series I Dream of Jeannie. Veiling conjures up the character Veiling in the United States Today 113 of the scantily clothed Jasmine, or the belly dancers in the film wearing transparent face veils. Yet after 9/11, everything evocative of Islam and Muslims has also acquired a whole new set of associations. While images of belly-dancing women and women lounging in harems did not disappear entirely, they receded into the background. Now, new images propagated by the media and contemporary concerns come more readily to students’ minds. After a minute or two of uncomfortable silence, my students now respond that veiling evokes the oppressed women in burqa living under Taliban rule in Afghanistan. Veiling, for them, has come to mean the subordination and dehumanization of women, victims of Muslim male regulations and of tyrannical Islamic law. At best, a veiled Muslim woman is assumed to be socially, politically, and religiously conservative . At worst, a veiled Muslim woman is thought to be forced to veil and considered a victim of other forms of oppression, including genital mutilation, physical violence, polygamy, and stoning. In addition, since 9/11, veiling for my students and for the American general public conjures up the specter of radical Islam, of terrorism, and of concealed weapons. If Muslim women are forced to veil, as most are presumed to be—why else would any rational person want to be covered like that, from head to toe, especially in the hottest months of the summer?—they are likely also made to submit to radical and political forms of Islam. Muslim women’s perceived passivity is considered especially dangerous, not just because it violates women’s fundamental human rights but because it means that women can be manipulated and required to behave in violent ways toward non-Muslims, Americans especially. My students raise many questions about Muslim women’s veiling practices. Even when they end up appreciating why a Muslim woman may cover her hair, most remain “disturbed,” as they commonly report, by Muslim women who wear the full-body cloak and cover their faces. They struggle to grasp the meaning of what they perceive to be a disconcerting sartorial tradition, even as they attempt to be respectful of religious and cultural differences. They often wonder what a veiled woman might conceal underneath her cloak, and whether anyone could be sure who hid behind a woman in burqa. The fact that suicide bombers (especially those involved in the Palestinian struggle) are often shown by the media dressed in a kefiyyeh, the large white-and-black checkered headscarf that conceals both the 114 Veiling in Euro-American Societies head and the face of the terrorist, only serves to alarm students and the general public, increasing their anxiety about veiled Muslim women on American soil. They tend to conclude that veiling masks violence and is thus something to be feared. The heightened sensitivity toward any visible expression of Muslimness in the public sphere has fueled debates about the place of Muslims in America. It has helped displace the rhetoric of the...