To hijab or not to hijab

April 29, 2016 4:37 AM

What it means to be a ‘free hair’ in a predominantly Muslim society This is an edited version of a conference and seminar paper presented at the National University of Singapore in March 2016 and Australian National University in April 2016
posted by infini (38 comments total)

That was an interesting read, thanks for posting. I've seen a version of this at a workplace of mine: there was definite tension between one or two of the women who veiled and at least a couple of muslim (or, in at least one case, atheist from a muslim background) women who didn't, with the former applying quiet but constant social pressure to the latter. No formal complaints were ever made, AFAIK, but for at least a subset of the muslim women in that department (in a British university), veiling or not was more fraught than just a sartorial or even religious choice.

As a non-religious guy, it's hard to know how to react to it. Clearly people should be allowed to wear whatever they want for whatever reasons they want*, and I'm sure we all know women who veil simply because that's how they like to dress. But the normalisation of modest and/or religious dress always seems to lead to pressure and consequences for those who don't conform, and there are clearly plenty of women who perceive and experience veiling as a form of oppression. How does one balance between women who say "this is something I do for myself and is important to me" and "this is something I experience as oppression and shouldn't be normalised"?

*...with the obvious context-specific caveats for safety, hygiene, etc
posted by metaBugs at 5:31 AM on April 29, 2016 [9 favorites]

What a fascinating subject! I especially appreciated the direct quotes by women, such as "I found a new confidence to speak out & feel happier."

I'm reminded of visiting a university in Sudan. What struck me the most was that the female students apparently felt free to go without their headscarves as long as they were on uni premises. As soon as you left the grounds, you'd see all of the young women wearing them. It seemed to me that the university was seen as more or less secular terrain.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:32 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

When I visited Istanbul almost a decade ago, I was struck by the seemingly very friendly coexistence between "free hair" and hijab wearers. It gave me hope for the future. I am not sure that things are as good now.

This article just made me sad. Why should choosing not to cover your hair have to be a radical act? Why do humans consistently allow twisted, angry men to impose their perversions on the rest of society under the guise of religion?

Most of these countries face terrible problems today and much worse problems on the horizon, and yet they waste their energy hating women who don't wear a scarf?
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 6:01 AM on April 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

When I visited Istanbul almost a decade ago, I was struck by the seemingly very friendly coexistence between "free hair" and hijab wearers. It gave me hope for the future. I am not sure that things are as good now.

I found the recent article on this subject in the New Yorker by Elif Batuman interesting: The head scarf, modern Turkey, and me.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:13 AM on April 29, 2016 [6 favorites]

This was super interesting!

I like how she emphasizes the local, rather than trying to argue that there is only one way that women experience hijab/free hair decisions across all of Islam, and rather than arguing that the question is one of an abstract "freedom" versus an abstract "oppression".

Also, the way she quoted from women's self-narratives really brought home to me how often discussions of Muslim women are totally abstract - getting this sharp and immediate sense of these women made me realize what a vague and abstract feeling I usually get from most articles.
posted by Frowner at 6:23 AM on April 29, 2016 [6 favorites]

Ah! she's one of my favourite bloggers to follow - challenging at times but the past two years reading her have been very good, highly recommended. So glad to see her on the blue (if we did the mefi invites suggested recently, I'd add her to the list).

My kid's girlfriend is considering the veil, and I've been looking for more accessible pieces for her to read, both pro- and con- but with a decidedly feminist slant, so this is great timing as what I've found tends to be European-Muslim immigrant which is very different from the S.E.Asian experience.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 6:37 AM on April 29, 2016

Yay Alicia!

She goes further in an earlier piece about intersectionality as it applies to Malay women and how a lot of the rhetoric surrounding hijab use doesn't really consider the perspectives of people from Muslim-dominant countries:

Much of the criticism that cashes on the currency of agency and choice adopt the politicised stance of covered Muslim women in countries hostile to the hijab and Islam generally. The position of these women becomes a feminist act because their decision to wear the hijab is expressed as a symbolic resistance to a culture that demand their ‘exposure’ to the secular gaze. Muslim women who wear the hijab in Europe are confronted by the patronising white saviour complex of the militant activist group Femen keen on participating in the enduring crusade of ‘saving brown women from brown men’.

But in Malaysia, the pressure on women is quite the opposite. The cultural and institutional pressure on women to cover may well be a subliminal rejection of the secular gaze and its imperialistic definitions of democracy and human rights. And here I might make a provocative suggestion: the politicised articulation of women who cover for ‘feminist’ reasons, citing agency and informed choice, may collude with the Islamic sphere of action that subordinate Malay women who do not wear the tudung.

So long as the majority group of women – women who wear the tudung (and their being the majority have greater leverage to navigate spaces because of their success in fulfilling normative expectations of Malay femininity) – ignore the differential impact of the patriarchal mode of gendered and religious policing, they will continue to be complicit in the specific subordination of Malay women who do not wear the tudung.

I've long been frustrated with Western-based Muslim activists who demand that people respect Islam the way they see it but do fuck-all for their compatriots in Muslim-dominant countries. The hijab is one such place - I have seen Western Muslims decry writers in Iran or other places talking about freedom from unveiling (given the political situation in those countries) by saying that they're encouraging further oppression of Western Muslim women who want to veil up. They want us to fight against Islamophobia in the West, which is a fair fight in and of itself, but they don't really do much - if anything about people being oppressed by Muslims in power: from 'free-hair' people to atheists and apostates to LGBTQ people and so on.

It's like pulling teeth trying to get them to acknowledge that in many parts of the world, even other Muslims are fed up with Muslims in positions of power because they too, like everyone else, are dealing with systems of oppression that's using Islam as an excuse. Whenever I've tried - and I speak as someone born & raised Muslim in the same country as Alicia, though there's some weirdness around being a non-Malay Muslim - I get accused of being somehow Islamophobic myself. About the only people who care are either other Asians in Asia or the ex-Muslim contingent (who themselves are obnoxious because their entire activism is "I am no longer Muslim because Islam is TERRIBLE" and doesn't really have any space for "I am no longer Muslim because of reasons that don't have much to do with Islam" or "I am no longer Muslim but I have no hard feelings towards Islam").
posted by divabat at 7:55 AM on April 29, 2016 [23 favorites]

I have been reading a lot about this from ex-muslim and progressive muslim writers divabat, I think this is very worthy of attention and a lot more listening and respect. I will in a heartbeat stand up to abusive Christian practices threatening people or essentially using sinister teachings like "If you so much as question you are a non-believer and will go to hell for all eternity" on young people trapped in Church environments who struggle to free themselves from this religious abuse. And I call it religious abuse and I think we, whether atheist or religious, need to be willing to stand against such practices in any religion, that control behaviors that really have no basis in harms principle by appeal to spiritual damnation and resulting social condemnation and potentially harassment, othering, mistreatment or legal and physical repercussions. I was reading from a woman who said she was threatened by her parents with DEATH for not saying her prayers and asking for help.

I want these movements to be lead BY people experiencing this oppression, but when someone is asking for help in their own words it's not "islamaphobic" to help them escape persecution or wrongful mistreatment for thinking for themselves, having their own religious beliefs or being atheist/agnostics, wearing clothing that is not actually harming anyone but violates oppressive "codes". It's complicated. I think when westerners or white people are told "back off and listen more" they sometimes back off too much, like entirely, and then no longer are present to render aid when someone is saying "I am threatened with actual violence or mistreatment for not wearing the hijab and I would like advocacy and awareness".

It's complicated, yes, might we mess up if we try to be allies? Yes. But should we keep listening and trying? Yes. There are countries where simply writing about these topics bring people to death. Platforms and voice outside the country are literal lifelines.
posted by xarnop at 8:22 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Why do humans consistently allow twisted, angry men to impose their perversions on the rest of society under the guise of religion?

While I find mandatory veiling of any kind loathsome, when you read about the disputes in, e.g., France, it's hard not to take away the sense that much of the struggle is just between men on both sides over who gets to control what the women wear. It makes the dispute particularly difficult to navigate.
posted by praemunire at 9:29 AM on April 29, 2016 [12 favorites]

i'm going to go thru these all when i have more time, but currently i am with my extended family in the peninsula malaysia east coast, and i am literally the only female family member who is 'free hair' in my daily life, except, not here in the east coast. the combination of actually having family ties and the 99% muslim population whose women is practically mandated by law to cover their hair means that the moment i drive to my home village, i've got to put on a scarf.

yet, i do feel sympathetic when i hear western-based free-haired muslim activists, especially those who came to the west leaving this kind of society behind, when they try to comment on their deep reservations about the hijab, and it gets accused of being party to islamophobia, which is actually NOT untrue considering where their comments take place. on the other hand, it's becoming very apparent at where i am that western hijabi muslim arguments are being imported here too, just like every other piece of western-led identity politics... but in the service of perpetuating a lack of choice, not broadening it.
posted by cendawanita at 9:41 AM on April 29, 2016 [3 favorites]

it's hard not to take away the sense that much of the struggle is just between men on both sides over who gets to control what the women wear. It makes the dispute particularly difficult to navigate.

yes, pretty much. adding the element of (perceived) religious compulsion also makes it even more difficult to find widespread verbal support for choice. even if a hijabi is personally okay with her freehaired friend, you can never be too sure that they're not actually having the opinion that it's only a matter of time before you see the light, and cover yourself. men barely have to do anything, as individual people. the panopticon is policing itself well enough.
posted by cendawanita at 9:45 AM on April 29, 2016

I know a woman from a hijab culture who managed to escape to the United States and I am very happy for her. I have met many women in hijab cultures that seem unhappy in their cultural situations, and I wish they could be free to chose not to wear hijab.
posted by Meatbomb at 9:58 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Why so many Iranians have come to hate the hijab - Over the years the state crackdown on women’s dress has become more of a show to placate the country’s hardline base. Our correspondent shares stories from her personal repertoire illustrating the point
posted by cendawanita at 10:21 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

About five years ago, young Jordanian women told me, "Our grandmothers won't let us leave the house without covering, but tight jeans are okay because they know we're trying to get a man." Via my cable channels, Egyptian women at a conference about women's rights dismissed the choice of covering as a western perception and their greatest concern was about access to employment.

Fifteen years before, an army brat, seventeen, related Saudi Arabia differed from the US in these terms: Parties where women weren't self-conscious about men in the room were great. And she felt safer in public spheres. She didn't prefer it, but it had its advantages.

Cartoonist Malcom Evan's "Bikini vs. Burka" is a paradox to which I often return.
Lisa Wade's article for The Society Pages
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:45 AM on April 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

Women who decide to remain un-veiled or ‘free hair’ (colloquial, noun) are a significant minority within predominantly Muslim societies.

Well, that's not correct. There are quite a lot of predominately countries where the veil is not the majority. Senegal, for one very obvious example.

I don't point this out to be snarky, but just to suggest that Islam doesn't always look like this, and doesn't have to look like this.
posted by iamck at 11:22 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Do you have the cites to back that up? She has obviously done her research in this space. Most West Africans cover their heads in a variety of wraps already.
posted by infini at 11:39 AM on April 29, 2016

It seemed to me that the university was seen as more or less secular terrain.

You may well be right. In Pakistan, though, it's more that school and/or university often become de facto "home spaces," where few women would feel the need to observe their "public" level of hijab.

Women with bare heads are not uncommon enough to attract attention in the major urban centres of Pakistan; not having a scarf (either a dupatta or chadar) thrown across one's chest and shoulders is likely to draw some looks and the occasional comment.
posted by bardophile at 2:05 PM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

I come from a fairly conservative Pakistani family. I'd say about half of the women in my family cover their heads when they are in public spaces. I'm the only one I can think of who often chooses not to bother with a dupatta, and it's often a conscious choice on my part to go against the flow. Hijab is usually used, in Pakistan, to refer to this style of head scarf, so I am finding this article an uncomfortable fit, although if she were to talk about modest clothing, I'd probably not find it as square peg/round hole.
posted by bardophile at 2:14 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Donna A. Patterson "The Veil in Senegal"; Mel Bailey "Why Dakar’s Muslim women are debating their right to the niqab".
posted by progosk at 2:27 PM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Do you have the cites to back that up?

Nope, just experience ;)

Just to add, there is also not one singular West Africa. Every region is quite different. The hijab is very common in Hausa Niger and Nigeria. In Bambara Mali, not so much. Neither in Senegal. The headwraps you refer to are not really considered Islamic, but traditional clothing. The majority of young women, particularly in the more cosmopolitan centers like Dakar or Bamako do not where these, and clearly identify as Muslim.

Of course, it will be interesting to see if advances in media and communication will reign these differences in, and create a more homogenized view of Islam and standard practices.
posted by iamck at 5:10 PM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the article- it was very interesting. I work on a medical research project on Java in Indonesia, and most of my colleagues are women. Most, but not all, wear a hijab- those who don't tend to be older women in senior positions, or younger women originally from other regions of Indonesia. There have been a couple women who were 'free hair' when I first met them a few years ago and now wear a hijab. As it's a personal matter, I've never asked my colleagues why they chose one way over another, but it is something I'm curious about.
posted by emd3737 at 5:42 PM on April 29, 2016

Coincidentally, the NY Times today published an article titled "A Few Miles From San Bernardino, a Muslim Prom Queen Reigns":

But this month, Zarifeh received the ultimate symbol of teenage acceptance: She was crowned prom queen after her non-Muslim friends campaigned for her by wearing hijabs in solidarity.

It's a sweet, feel-good article with a happy ending, but obviously a more complex story than the article is meant to cover.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:51 PM on April 29, 2016

Thank you for the Senegal links! :)

not having a scarf (either a dupatta or chadar) thrown across one's chest and shoulders is likely to draw some looks and the occasional comment.

I feel naked too if I left off the dupatta while wearing salwar kameez or churidar (in Delhi, for eg), unless the kurta was with jeans. This might just be an outfit & culture thing rather than religious?
posted by infini at 12:00 AM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Thanks for the link, I enjoyed reading it!

I feel naked too if I left off the dupatta while wearing salwar kameez or churidar (in Delhi, for eg), unless the kurta was with jeans. This might just be an outfit & culture thing rather than religious?

Same here. It feels like the outfit is incomplete.

There are quite a lot of predominately countries where the veil is not the majority.

Yeah, just to add another country to that, Bangladesh is a majority-Muslim country where I would say the number of women wearing hijab or full abaya is increasing but I still would not say that they are in the majority.

I think it's very telling that an equivalent term for "free hair" does not exist in Bangladesh - to the best of my knowledge, at least. When you point a woman out in the crowd, you're very unlikely to say "that free hair woman over there" because most of the women in the crowd will be free hair. You're much more likely to say "that hijabi woman over there". More often than not, there will be few enough hijabi women in the crowd for this to be a useful way to identify an individual.

Many women do casually cover their heads with the achol of their saris when out and about, but I don't consider that to be quite the same thing as wearing hijab, which has different meanings depending on where you are in the world and which I have always understood to be a specific item of clothing tied and pinned in a specific way.

The word Hijab literally means partition and can be taken by some to just mean generically "dressing modestly" (to maintain that sense of being separate?) rather than the prescription of a particular item of clothing. In Bangladesh most women avoid wearing skimpy or revealing outfits, preferring more traditional or modest outfits like shalwar kameez, sari, or fusion outfits like kurta over jeans. While a lot of women in urban areas wear Western clothes, it's still unusual enough for them to stand out in a crowd.
posted by Ziggy500 at 2:35 AM on April 30, 2016 [3 favorites]

Somewhat related: Sheena Shirani: What it's really like to be a female TV anchor in Iran
posted by ebear at 5:00 AM on April 30, 2016

Ziggy500: "free hair" is probably more a term Alicia is devising for this argument; I've usually heard it in Malaysia not with a specific term but with a sentiment of "why is she not covering herself with a tudung".
posted by divabat at 5:39 AM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

divabat: are you sure? It's a term worded in english, sure, but in my experience, it's a very specific Malay phrase. It's true that if you're not in that milieu, you don't hear it employed a lot, because it's also very specific to Muslim women (which goes without saying when you talk about Malay people in Malay) - as a descriptor no Malay I know would use it for a non-Muslim person. It's very colloquial and slangy*, and really does mean just that, a Muslim female with uncovered hair.

*google search results for how it's employed amongst malay speakers.
posted by cendawanita at 9:57 AM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

To stay within Dr Alicia*'s paper, there's also a confluence of other socioeconomic factors that's not remarked upon in this particular presentation. There is, in Malaysia, at the same time, a growing fear of 'Arabization'. But in my reckoning, if it's a fear for the general populace it's very much tardy to the party. Arabisation is a concern now, because it's impacting the elites. Just like the practice of veiling. There used to be a very clear demarcation of socioeconomic class, between someone who would be 'conservative' and thus wear the hijab and someone who's not. For example, it used to be a prejudiced viewpoint that a Malaysian woman wearing the hijab probably can't speak English well (ie a class marker).

Also, for additional context, her Malay Mail article she referred to. It's in Malay, but from what I recall, the reception did not go over well. It rubbed a lot of ppl the wrong way, free hair or no, even myself. I had to look it up again because she didn't provide a link (to which I find myself wondering why). Regardless, I've done a quick translation here.

*and I swear I'm not being familiar. Malay Muslims aren't a community with last names. So the way we do it is [Title] + [First Name]
posted by cendawanita at 10:36 AM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

cendawanita, is it rambut percuma? I'm getting strange results but then again my bahasa is rusty
posted by infini at 12:16 PM on April 30, 2016

hahaha not at all. malaynised english (which is part of that creole malaysian languages) basically dispenses with all the tenses (per malay grammar, which you may be aware of - like chinese, it doesn't conjugate time positions), which can lead to that translation. percuma is free when free is like 'free books'. in this case it should actually be something like 'freed hair', literally hair that's free from the hijab. :D (so in this case 'free' as in 'bebas'/independent)
posted by cendawanita at 12:27 PM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Independent hair? I like that
posted by infini at 2:16 PM on April 30, 2016

my knowledge of malay isn't from book learning but immersion, so percuma would come from all the TV advertising, and so it now makes sense. bazar malay is the best that I can aspire to
posted by infini at 2:17 PM on April 30, 2016

An interesting follow up thought is the sudden memory of bebas being used sometimes disparagingly when referring to girl children... yes?
posted by infini at 2:20 PM on April 30, 2016

cendawanita: It'll likely be something very specific to Malay Muslim women then, because my family's Muslim but because we're Bangladeshi we don't get cutesy epithets like "rambut bebas", just snark about not being "Muslim enough" or whatever.
posted by divabat at 4:51 PM on April 30, 2016

divabat: well, yes and no. on one hand, the typical racial profiling malaysians indulge in would DEFINITELY explain your family's experience, because no one would have thought to describe you like that in-the-moment because, as you noted, they wouldn't even have thought you as a muslim. but, trust, if they knew you were 'supposed' to be muslims, and needed to describe you to other people (other Malays), then you'll definitely be slapped with it. in daily life, strangers don't call me free hair because i look chinese (apparently!), but ppl who know me definitely have, to my face. But, as intimated by Dr Alicia's writings, in Malaysia, the concern and boundary policing of Islamic matters tbh really only matters as how it affects the political status quo, so Malays really only care about other Malays. But tbh, this conflation has always existed. I mean, the old way (pre-independence and probably surviving amongst the older generation) of saying a person who's converted into Islam is 'masuk Melayu', or converted into Malay.

(that was one hell of a see-sawing paragraph... typical libra!)

re: infini - hah, yes! re: bebas girls. we're very deadpan, malay speakers.
posted by cendawanita at 6:16 PM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

i mean, as an example of how peninsula malay muslims get so fucking awkward talking abt other non-malay muslims is looking at the comments whenever a popular indonesian person is written/talked about. they're our ethnic and cultural brethren but Indonesia's political history and context hasn't led to clear demarcation and identity markers like in Malaysia. Therefore, the inevitable initial comments, "hey, is s/he Muslim?" (try it with google autocomplete it's #fun) then the policing starts.
posted by cendawanita at 6:46 PM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

(This thread has been a fascinating read, thanks folks)
posted by metaBugs at 6:25 AM on May 10, 2016

Asra Nomani explores a hostile phenomenon she calls “hijab shaming” - i recognise so much of the dynamic being written here.
posted by cendawanita at 9:19 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]