The question of clothing: No, Muslim women still do not need saving

Last week, in an essay published in Newslaundry, writer Noamankhan Pathan drew upon his mother’s experience as being indirectly or directly forced to adopt the burqa upon her marriage, and the resulting disjunction between her desires and the injunctions placed upon her. He also argued that a prevailing culture of patriarchal imposition of clothing, such as the burqa, is both contrary to the principles of feminism and, more broadly, freedom of choice.

My response to this piece neither seeks to invalidate his mother’s experience nor that of any woman unwillingly wearing hijab or any piece of clothing. This response is not a “rebuttal” on the interpretation of the Islamic verses quoted in his essay. On the contrary, I believe that rebuttals are not the most conducive way to frame these debates. But, in the spirit of deepened understanding, one must go beyond limited explanations of Muslim women’s lives and allow a multiplicity of voices on the subject. 

What is the “burqa paradox” being invoked at all? First, let us unpack the terms being collapsed together and interchangeably used. 

A lesson in vocabulary

While hijab is essentially the idea of a partition or barrier, or a curtain in its physical manifestation, it is now understood broadly as the minimum injunction of modesty that the Islamic tradition lays down for men and women in different ways. This can include norms of respectful gender interaction or avoiding seclusion, as well as the clothing that one must adopt in public when in the company of certain men and women. Both men and women are ordained by Islamic tradition to lower their gaze and cover up certain parts of their body in the presence of those who are not mahram, or people with whom marriage would be lawful, and to observe norms of interaction. 

However, the hijab is also used specifically in sartorial terms as a placeholder for the “headscarf”  that Muslim women use to cover (the Quran mentions the khimar and the jilbab) their hair and the rest of their body. This can also culturally manifest as different things – the dupatta in South Asia worn along with salwar kameez or other traditional clothing, the shayla in Arab cultures, or the modern styles of the hijab that can be worn with any clothing that fulfils the norms of “hijab”. 

Niqab, on the other hand, essentially refers to veiling the face and the cloth used to do so. On niqab, there exist varying Islamic opinions on whether it is mandatory or not. Many Islamic scholars acknowledge that both opinions are valid and a woman may choose to cover or uncover her face. This differs from the hijab (covering the body and hair, leaving the face open), where near-universal consensus exists. 

The burqa referred to in the article is essentially an over-cloak, also called an abaya in other parts of the world. It can be worn while covering one’s face or without. Women often wear this over their usual clothes. Like other forms of clothing, abayas are essentially local interpretations of the Quranic injunction of hijab. These interpretations are also often based on convenience, financial constraints, climate-appropriateness or ease. 

For example, abayas or burqas can be reused repeatedly, with many poorer women only being able to afford one or two at a time; they can be used to cover up on clothes that may not otherwise fulfil the norms of modesty in public and allow the wearer to save time and quickly change into a standard attire which hide clothes that may be worn, old or faded. In fact, many of my women friends also wear abayas to college or classes when they are in a rush and wish to cover up quickly without investing too much thought into what they wear inside. Any cultural dress, as long as it fulfils the norms of hijab and modesty, which includes covering the body, is non-transparent and loosely fitting, and there is no requirement to wear black or the burqas only. 

To this effect, in different cultural contexts, a variety of modest women’s clothes exist, from the Malaysian tudung or scarf accompanied by a dress, to the Sudanese thobe, a loose, flowy cloth wrapped around the body. It is a misconception that only the burqas or the abaya is appropriately Islamic.  

Therefore, it is important to consider these differences and be aware of the actual Islamic injunctions and what may be culturally imposed or assumed. 

A discussion on the wrong question

This brings me to my second contention, which is precisely this gap between what is cultural and what is Islamic. The author acknowledges that his father hailed from a family with a “rigid adherence to customs”. Often, families impose practices embedded into their everyday lives on new family members or their children; this is no different. 

As I wrote above, Islamically, the burqa is not the only manifestation of Islamic modesty. Therefore, it is not the burqa that ought to be at the centre of discussion here but the fostering of a culture of healthy choice-making within families on actual Islamic lines rather than cultural norms. It is also not a problem limited to Muslim families – whether educational choices or the choice of a career, such things are often imposed rather than discussed freely. The hyper-fixation on the burqa generalises the problem to that of modesty rather than as a broader manifestation of imposition and freedom. It presumes that people are generally free to make their choices without constraints and only Muslim women are limited by the manifestations of their faith. This could not be further from the truth. 

It also loses focus on the issue at hand – a lack of choice in an individual case which ought to be addressed as such – and instead trains its gaze on modesty and clothing, even ending on a wishful note of the burqa “vanishing” from society in a century. 

Although the author seeks to argue in the end that feminism would ensure that choices are free from coercion, he fails his premise by concluding that the burqa is inherently embedded within a patriarchal framework and that it does not align with equality or autonomy. Here, he reifies a single definition of equality or autonomy and does not take into account or explain why the idea of hijab fails this test. Is it because it is anti-feminist? What singular vision of feminism is being propounded here? Do feminists not wear hijab? Is it because it controls women’s movements? It has been historically disproved that hijab is an impediment to movement. Is it because it is imposed from time to time? If so, the imposition is the problem, not the fabric!

Additionally, the closing fantasy of the burqa vanishing from history and society again seeks to impose the very same conformity of vision that he argues is being challenged by the removal of the burqa. Although the article could have explored the complex and different ways women are denied choices or have fought to make them, it ends on a tiring note of a male fantasy where burqas (inherent vehicles of “outdated ideologies”) vanish. 

As Lila Abu Lughod wrote astutely, Muslim women do not need saving. We are tired – from the media demonising what we wear, the courts making us choose between our education and our clothes, and from people telling us that we need to be saved, constantly, and from such fantasies of control over our clothing. 

The problem with generalisations

Another point that deserves analysis is the author’s misreading of the burqa as “mobile prisons” that restrict one’s choices, movement or life trajectories. 

The precise function of the hijab only comes to life in the public sphere. In short, the hijab – in all its forms – is only relevant because Islam and the Islamic tradition holds space for the need and reality of Muslim women living, existing, working and moving in public. If we were constrained to our homes, hijab would not be necessary. The hijab forms a kind of demarcation, an announcement that we are in public, as Muslim women, and seek to be identified as such. It also serves as a reminder for us to conduct ourselves with dignity. 

In short, rather than limiting us, it is connected to identification, rather than any sense of objectification. 

The idea of hijab as restriction is a collapse of its definition into the idea of pardah – the kind that was practised by all communities in the subcontinent, one that proscribed women’s presence in public. But the Islamic tradition has always encouraged the presence of Muslim women in social, political and cultural participation, as the eight-volume book by scholar Abd-al Halim Abu-Shuqqah will tell you, as he traces how Muslim women took part in all important social and political engagements from the time of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ himself. 

In his essay, the writer offers no evidence to back up his statement that the burqa “was originally imposed as a means of controlling women’s bodies and interactions with the outside world”. A cursory glance of the rich history of Muslim women’s lives will reveal that the practice of hijab has never constrained their public engagement, but enabled it. 

Secondly, one should distinguish between what the Quran and the Sunnah (the life, traditions and practices of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ) say about hijab and modesty and what “people” say. Nowhere does the Islamic tradition claim that the burden of preventing sexual harassment is on women, nor does it blame women who do not observe hijab for any ill-actions against them. On the contrary, men and women are held responsible and accountable for their actions, gazes and interactions. 

It is also disingenuous to connect the negative connotation of the burqa that he invokes to the Karnataka hijab protests. If anything, the girls in Karnataka were precisely rejecting this imposition made upon them to dissociate from their faith and the hijab. They did not see the hijab as an impediment to education, but those who were attempting to take decisions for them. 

Thus, this ought to help us re-focus on the problem – the need to cultivate a culture of informed choice-making for both men and women without imposing upon them – not a hyper-focus on the hijab or the tradition of Islamic modesty. 

Scholars like Heidi Safia Mirza, among others, have traced the idea of “embodiment” with regards to hijab and Muslim women – how identities are experienced in the Islamophobic political atmosphere surrounding Muslim women and can be understood through Muslim female subjectivity. These identities are often mediated by the bodily experience of ‘being’ visibly Muslim.

Saba Mahmood, the pre-eminent scholar on the idea of ‘piety’ in the context of Egyptian social movements among Muslim women, had also argued that this embodied religious agency exercised by Muslim women – for example, in donning the hijab or undertaking religious practices – is a form of religious self-fashioning in an ethical prism which goes beyond the Western imperialistic understanding of liberation and a predetermined set of ideas of resistance/dominance. 

In simpler terms, one should not impose frames on such forms of embodiment but attempt to understand them within the prism of piety, which secular logic may not fully capture. We can understand this idea of embodiment more acutely if we recall the pain and anguish of the girls in the Karnataka schools who were forced to take off their hijabs to enter their classrooms. To demand one take off the hijab or the burqa is not very different from being asked to strip off other clothes; for believing Muslim women who are used to wearing it, it is an essential part of their being, their self. 

None of this is to say that Muslim women may have difficult or even complicated experiences of modesty. They may have different journeys and go back and forth in choosing, removing or embracing varied forms of clothing. But such tired, overarching narratives erase the rich legacy of Muslim women’s self-representation and pious self-fashioning, which is already highly surveilled in an atmosphere of global and domestic Islamophobia obsessed with what we wear. 

Shayma S is a freelance writer and a PhD researcher at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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