The History of the Hijab

[Lady Macbeth]

The Headscarf Is Not the Headscarf



Headscarves are often considered retrograde and repressive in the western world. However, the significance of the hijab has repeatedly undergone radical change over the years. Sabine Enderwitz provides an overview of its history


Women wear the headscarf for a number of different reasons

The history of the women's veil in the Near East goes back much further than that of Islam. It was also a familiar part of life in Europe until recent times, albeit in a different form. Hair – and certainly not only women's hair – has been considered a source of vitality, and special powers have been attributed to it since ancient times.

This is illustrated by the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, which has repeatedly been used and varied as a theme for music and painting in Europe. Nevertheless, it has been woman's crowning glory that has solicited the greatest precautionary measures throughout history.

Women's headdress: a long tradition in Europe too

Apart from the 1920s and up until the middle of the last century, no self-respecting woman would be seen in town without a hat. Furthermore, expressions that are now gradually going out of fashion – such as the German phrase for tying the knot (unter die Haube kommen), which literally means "coming under the bonnet" – indicate the strategy of domestication to which women were subjected upon marriage.

Islam was no exception in this regard. In fact, in the form of head-to-foot veils and the institution of harems, it took the threat posed by women somewhat more seriously than Judaism and Christianity. Or was it simply that Islamic society in the Middle Ages had greater economic resources at its disposal and was therefore in a position, so to speak, to indulge in the tremendous luxury of restricting an entire section of the population to biological reproduction?

The veil as a status symbol

Despite being governed by Islam, peasant and Bedouin women neither wore head-to-foot veils, nor were they locked away in harems. Wearing the full veil was a prerogative of city-dwelling women from the upper classes; a status symbol that attracted the envy of those less privileged than themselves.

Egypt – the Islamic country that is most under the influence of the West – was the very first country to consider this luxury to be criminal and self-destructive. In 1899, the reformer Qasim Amin published a pamphlet on "The liberation of woman". Two years later, it was followed by "The new woman": his answer to the protests voiced by the conservative Azhar sheikhs.

The isolation of women puts a strain on economic power

It seemed that both the social waste of doing without valuable manpower and the damage to future generations caused by children being raised by half-educated mothers was too great. In the two decades that followed, the women of the upper classes removed their veils, took part in demonstrations and fought for access to universities.

In the decades that followed, and in particular after the 1952 revolution that made Gamal Abdel Nasser president of Egypt and the hero of the pan-Arabic, -Islamic and so-called "third" world, educational programmes for girls were organised and conditions that facilitated women's entry into the world of work were created. Cairo in the 1960s was a modern city in which a burgeoning middle class did all it could to become like its models in the West.

This all changed radically when Nasser died a few years after his devastating defeat at the hands of Israel in the Six-Day war of 1967, and his successor, Anwar Sadat, simultaneously pursued a policy that favoured the clergy so as to use them to drive back the Nasserite Left, and opened the door to foreign investors.

The headscarf as a reaction to failed modernisation

The existing and rising middle classes, up-and-coming doctors, lawyers and engineers increasingly felt they were being robbed of their future. It was out of this sector, and not the clergy, that the new "Islamist" movement developed. This movement felt that a return to basics, i.e. to the principles and rules of Islam, would resolve the social imbalance.

It was as part of this development that the veil reappeared, not only in Egypt, but also in other Islamic countries; in fact, everywhere where modernisation had begun with such high hopes and ended in such disappointment. The civil war in Lebanon, the revolution in Iran, the postponement of the Palestinian problem all meant that people increasingly saw a return to Islam as their salvation; "Islam is the solution" became the catchphrase.

The veil as a modern phenomenon

Right from the word go, Islamism (or re-Islamisation) was a reaction to the modern age. In other words, rather than being a "return to the Middle Ages", it was a phenomenon of the modern age. The same applies to the veil or the headscarf, which in terms of their appearance are a new invention and have no precedence in Islamic history.

Before then, the veil differed from region to region and from social class to social class. While only one single form is considered to be the "Islamic" standard today, there are actually countless different variants.

Above all, the modern age is evident in the veil and headscarf's modern functions, which do not fit into any retrograde mould. In addition to – and possibly greater than – the religious relevance of the veil and the headscarf is their cultural, political and social relevance.

Outwardly, to the West and within western societies, they symbolise a rejection of the alternative of non-integration or assimilation; they represent the self-confident search for an authentic "third" way.

The headscarf is also a means of liberation

Inwardly, within Egyptian, Syrian or Turkish society, they symbolise the claim to justice, a justice between the classes and between the sexes. This is an aspect that is all to easily overlooked in the West. "Islamic clothing" for men and women liberates its wearers from the pressure of having to compete (hopelessly) with people like themselves by wearing expensive clothes, cosmetics and jewellery.

At the same time, it liberates them externally from a social origin that could possibly be considered oppressive.

Furthermore, such clothing helps women and girls to make their way in the world of education and work by allowing them to exist in a nimbus of sexual unassailability in a public life that is still dominated by men.

From a functional point of view, therefore, it is indeed possible to see the headscarf as the exact opposite of an openly-demonstrative backward attitude, namely as a modern attribute. At the same time, the headscarf remains multifunctional: it is used both as a tool by fathers to deny their daughters higher education and by daughters to wring higher education out of their fathers.

Things become even more complicated when one takes Islamist discourse into account, which has placed the veil at the centre of its fight for authenticity and against westernisation.

It is an absolute novum in the history of Islam that the female body has become the battlefield of an imagined struggle between "Islam" and the (heathen) "West", whereby the former is of the opinion that the latter has put itself in a bad light as a result of its inappropriate behaviour with regard to the sexes, the generations, family and the public.

The opposite of this is an authentic Islam in its "original" purity, which cannot but have repressive traits as a result of the roles that have been imposed by its idealist character.

But these are far-reaching considerations that are of little relevance to a Muslim girl who is searching for her identity in a labyrinth of contradictory claims voiced by her parents, school, peer group, place of work, religious community and part of town.


Qantara.de - The Headscarf Is Not the Headscarf

[Lady Macbeth]

A Symbol Which Has Been Instrumentalised

The Islamic headscarf is seen by the German media and in public debate as a symbol of the oppression of Muslim women by their religion. Sabine Schiffer argues that this perception is often linked to stereotypes and prejudice, and that the media often try to read too much into the headscarf.


A piece of cloth overburdened with meaning - the headscarf

It's a paradox. We want to liberate Muslim women and they simply don't want to be liberated. One of them even goes to court to fight for the right to wear a headscarf.

Isn't the headscarf the perfect symbol of the oppression of women? Not quite, but this piece of cloth has been so overburdened with meaning that even a court of law can't deal with it in a neutral fashion.

These days, the cloth has so many meanings that, when the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe had to deal with a case in which a teacher, Fereshta Ludin, appealed against the decision of a lower court prohibiting her from wearing a headscarf in a state school, the judges were nervous about making a decision on the principle of the thing, although they'll have to make such a decision one day. But they evidently did not find it easy to make a judgement based on German legal principles.

It's much easier to look at Turkey, which is hoping to get into the European Union and where the headscarf is not allowed in any public office or even in a public building. But it's also easy to overlook that, unlike Germany, Turkey is a laicist state. That makes the comparison invalid—it only works insofar as it says it is possible to prohibit religious symbols (which is what the headscarf has been reduced to) in state institutions.

Stereotypical perception of symbols

Such a decision requires an objective discussion about all religious symbols, but that's exactly what one can't expect here in Germany. For the headscarf has a long history. Since Ayatollah Khomeini took power in Iran in 1979, the headscarf has not just been on heads—it's been on everyone's lips.

Its precise form serves as a measure of the level of freedom which those who wear it enjoy. It's a symbol for the Islamic oppression of women, and as such it's a symbol of the repression which is generally believed to be typical of Islam.

The increasing popularity of the headscarf and the beard on the one hand are confronted on the other by an increasingly stereotyped perception, which seems to have become standard since September 11th, according to which such signs are a public statement of rejection of western culture and democracy.

It's true that there are those who do indeed reject western culture and democracy, but they are not necessarily identifiable from outward signs—and anyway, in such issues it's impossible to avoid the dangers of generalisation.

From a psychological point of view, it's well known that rejection strengthens radical tendencies. And that in turn undermines the efforts of those who are trying to achieve a realistic integration of Islam into Europe.

At the same time, Muslims themselves are also guilty of the symbolic overburdening of the headscarf. Some groups use it as a measure of how far the non-Muslim majority is prepared to integrate them. And in the case of Fereshta Ludin, she emphasised the symbolic significance of her decision to wear the headscarf by linking it to her process of religious self-discovery.

But in fact it would be enough if people simply put the headscarf in the context of their cultural identity and how that affects their personal sense of modesty. If the discussion were all about modesty it would have an entirely different quality.

Instead we're having to deal with religious tolerance. And our attitude to the headscarf is a reflection of our entire view of the world, which is very culture-specific and is usually applied to other cultures quite unconsciously.

As a consequence of industrialisation and the division of life into separate areas such as work and home, the so-called West allowed the public arena to become the most important of these areas.

Functioning in this arena meant having power. That meant, for example, that the emancipation of women was linked to their conquest of the public arena.

Metaphors of emancipation and reaction

Women who were active in the public world were more visible and powerful than those who did housework or carried out less visible tasks. "Back to the hearth" was seen as metaphor for reaction. And the word "work" is almost only used to refer to work outside the home, in an occupation which, however lowly regarded, is still better than housework.

That's one reason why feminism has often used the number of women in the workforce as an indicator of the level of emancipation, without considering that this makes male values into the standard to which women have to adapt.

In the case of the headscarf, this recognition of the primacy of the public arena has simply been applied to another culture, so that a veiled woman, whom one cannot "see", who looks after a household, and is not visible in the public arena, contradicts current ideas of emancipation.

The headscarf extends the Muslim woman's "invisibility" into the public space. But it's too simple to identify freedom and emancipation simply with the freedom to wear what one likes. And it's often not the freedom to wear what one likes which is the issue when Muslim women are expected not to wear specific items. The headscarf is an easily identifiable symbol which can used economically to cover a range of issues.

When a veiled woman crosses the television screen, it immediately awakens associations which have been developed over many years. These associations are unconscious and thus they cannot easily be questioned. Assumptions, such as that the headscarf is always worn involuntarily, seem to many people to be "true."

The headscarf as a symbol of the stranger

There seems to be no way of talking about Islam any longer without reference to the headscarf, and successful women, like the Iranians Nobel peace prize-winner Shirin Ebadi, are usually shown bareheaded.

In addition, in both television news reports and newspapers, the issue of "foreigners" has for years almost always been illustrated with pictures of women wearing headscarves, so that the idea that "Islam is foreign" is reinforced. This doesn't exactly help the integration of Muslim women, who often feel misunderstood rather than "rescued."

All these assumptions about the headscarf are hovering in the background when the headscarf is presented as a threat to which we cannot allow our children to be exposed. But what risk do they run in looking at this item of clothing?

We're much less sensitive about the depiction of violence in the media and other similar issues. Aside from the questionable argument that a teacher wearing a headscarf puts over an unemancipated image of women, it might be possible instead to use the situation for the purpose of anti-racist education.

This is most successful when a child sees around it a variety of ways of living, without any special commentary, so that they seem normal. This applies to skin colour as well as other characteristics which adults may have learnt to perceive as "strange": disabilities, religious symbols, clothes, the shape of an eye or the shape of a body. The world isn't as ideal as teachers would like it to be.

To put them in context, one can use media—picture books or television programmes, for example—in which such groups of people appear. This is where the media can play a very positive role.

What's important is that these people simply appear and aren't presented as something special. Black people, Asians, people wearing various religious symbols, boys and girls in all the various situations of life and not just in stereotypical contexts.

It's even better when a child's daily life allows it to see all these different kinds of reality—and it's better still when this happens as early as possible, since that's when the differences are simply accepted as normal, and not turned into an "issue" or even seen as "odd."

So let's imagine that there are some teachers with headscarves in school. Or even better in the kindergarten. As long as it's not turned into an issue, the children will simply see it as normal and they won't make any fuss about it. That would be an ideal anti-racist education.

Just let tradition simply happen. It's enough if women wearing headscarves simply appear in the environment—without commentary and as if it were absolutely normal.

What is dangerous for our children is the polemic which surrounds this piece of cloth and those who wear it. The way such people are currently commented upon will leave children only able to perceive a woman wearing a headscarf as something requiring special attention.

Qantara.de - A Symbol Which Has Been Instrumentalised

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But these are far-reaching considerations that are of little relevance to a Muslim girl who is searching for her identity in a labyrinth of contradictory claims voiced by her parents, school, peer group, place of work, religious community and part of town.

Difficult to imagine the struggle of this girl! Especially if she does have a choice.