Friday, May 20, 2011

A Quiet Revolution by Leila Ahmed ? review

An incisive history of the hijab reveals surprising shifts in the long political and cultural struggle between Islam and the west

In 1955, the Oxford historian Albert Hourani published an article entitled "The Vanishing Veil", predicting that the centuries-old practice would soon disappear from Muslim societies. Over the previous half-century, women in the eastern Mediterranean Arab countries, led by Egypt, had gradually abandoned their traditional coverings. By the time an isolated nostalgic called out to Gamal Abdel Nasser at a rally in 1962, asking him to reinstate veiling, the Egyptian president could dismiss him with the quip that he had no desire to "engage in battle with 25 million people" ? Egypt's population at the time.

More than 50 years later, the many forms of hijab (Islamic veil or covering) are on the rise in both the Muslim world and the west ? and so are states' ineffectual attempts to contain them. A law banning face-covering veils from public places has recently come into force in France; Germany has a partial ban on headscarves for teachers; Turkey has banned Islamic coverings from universities; and Syria recently reversed a ban on face veils for primary school teachers. Britain ruled out a proposed "burqa ban" in 2010, but Islamic dress remains a reliable staple of controversy, from the House of Commons to the Daily Mail ("Tower Hamlets Taliban: Death threats to women who don't wear veils" was one recent headline).

In A Quiet Revolution, Harvard divinity professor Leila Ahmed sets out the background to this remarkable reversal and the fierce debates that surround it. Ahmed, who grew up in Cairo in the 1940s and 50s, was part of a generation of Muslim women for whom going unveiled was a norm that bore little relation to their level of religious commitment. Exploring changing attitudes to women's dress in Egypt, the cradle of both the unveiling movement and the veil's return, throughout the 20th century, she tackles some of the questions so mauled by journalists and politicians. Why did the veil re-emerge among university-educated and professional women? Is it really a symbol of female oppression? Does it signify rejection of the west? Why can it inspire such fear and revulsion?

The most fascinating and incisive sections examine the roots of these questions in the intimate links between the veil and colonialism. To late 19th- and early 20th-century colonial officials, traditional forms of veiling and seclusion were clear evidence of women's "degradation" by Islam, the religion's inferiority to Christianity, and the absolute necessity of western rule over the backward societies that followed it. In his 1908 book Modern Egypt, Lord Cromer, the country's former consul general, contrasted such practices with the freedoms of the west. "The only restraints placed on [a British woman's] movement," he reflected piously, "are those dictated by her own sense of propriety." (At home, meanwhile, in his role as president of the Men's League for Opposing Woman Suffrage, Cromer fulminated against the horrors of "the unsexed woman visiting the polling booth". In Egypt, he put a stop to free state primary education for both sexes and denied funding to the country's only school for women doctors.)

Such anecdotes indicate how little western rhetoric around veiling has moved on. In the wrangles over the French ban, Nicolas Sarkozy described face veils as "a sign of enslavement and debasement", and former immigration minister �ric Besson labelled them a "walking coffin". Now as then, Islamic dress is enlisted to serve political expediency. In the weeks following the coalition invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Laura Bush gave a radio address on "brutality against women and children by the al-Qaida terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan" ? for which the burqa became a moral shorthand ? while Cherie Blair added that the burqa was "one of the crucial barriers [Afghan women] face". The veil is still the subject of an ideological tug of war ? as Ahmed puts it, "a sign of irresolvable tension and confrontation between Islam and the west" ? and, she could add, within Islam itself.

From the 1920s to 1960s, unveiling was a symbol of Egypt's desire to emulate western scientific, political and economic success ? the majority of Egyptians, as Ahmed points out, had accepted the western view of the veil as "uncivilised". A Quiet Revolution provides a clear and compelling summary of the changes that led to its return: the decline of Arab socialism after 1967, the expanding influence of ultra-conservative Saudi Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the failure of pro-western economic policies. By the 1970s, disillusioned students and professionals were turning to an activist Islam ? Islamism ? that promised social, moral and political renewal. Observing strict dress became one means of displaying egalitarian principles and conveying the wearer's strength and authority. From a symbol of disempowerment, the veil now, for some, became a mark of liberation.

Over the next decades, the veil gathered a range of new meanings: from an expression of personal faith, solidarity with Palestine, Chechnya or Iraq or allegiance to the ummah, to a safeguard against sexual harassment, a fashion statement, a critique of western "sexism", a call for minority rights, an evangelical tool. Ahmed does not romanticise these rationales ? she is clear about the growing pressure on women from both Islamist organisations and preachers and from families, peers and the media. But A Quiet Revolution is a timely reminder that the veil today is a symptom less of an alien fanaticism than of a long political and cultural entanglement with the unveiled west.


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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/20/quiet-revolution-leila-ahmed-review

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