Re-associating the Veil: Diverging from Islamophobia and Orientalist Histories

It can be difficult to disassociate the Muslim woman from the idea of oppression. When I close my eyes and picture a Muslim woman, I see a woman in a hijab, her eyes filled with sorrow and longing. If she could speak, she would say ‘get me out of here,’ or’ get me out of this.’ In reality, this image is an Orientalist stereotype that has been ingrained in the minds of many Americans and many Western women because of the history of the West’s colonial past and its presence in cultural discourse. The hijab, burqa, and burkini are contested articles of clothing worldwide because they are viewed to represent oppression, something antithetical to the superior and liberated West. Many people of the West also immediately associate the veil with Islam, a religion that has taken the blame for modern terrorism. Because Islam is viewed as so dangerous, many Western women and feminists feel they have an obligation to save Muslim women who veil from the perils of the East, their oppressive religion, and convert them to the ways of the West, where women are more empowered. So, at the same time that the veil is seen as a symbol of Islamic women being oppressed by their culture, it is also seen as a symbol of a culture that poses a threat to Western values.

If we examine this tension through the lens of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, the Western view of veiling practices becomes more clear. The portrayal of Islam in the media immediately following the events was strategic. The US blamed Islamic culture for 9/11 instead of investigating historical and political reasons why it might have happened in order to avoid taking any kind of responsibility for the events. As anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod writes, “knowing about the ‘culture’ of the region, and its religious beliefs and treatment of women, was more urgent than exploring the history of the development of repressive regimes in the region and the U.S. role in this history” (Abu-Lughod 784). Creating a narrative that would paint Islam as the bad guy became most important for US political interests. The US wanted to preserve their image as victims of terrorism and find a scapegoat they could unify the country against. They waged a battle that pitted the West against the East. It was Islam that directly threatened US national security and infringed upon the liberties of US citizens by depriving them of safety and security.

This narrative created widespread Islamophobia in the US which changed the lives of Muslim Americans and put them in danger. This was arguably more true for veiled women, who sported a religious symbol of Islam day to day. As Muslim scholar Dalia Mogahed explains in her TedTalk “What it is Like to be Muslim in America,” after 9/11 “somebody else’s actions had turned [her] from a citizen to a suspect” (Mogahed). Suddenly, all Muslims had been grouped into the category of terrorist. The fact of the matter was that it was really “those people who attacked our country who attacked our country” not the Islamic faith (Mogahed). But suddenly Mogahed was afraid for anyone to know she was a Muslim. The veil she recently decided to start wearing became an explicit symbol of her faith. Her veil made her an identifiable threat as she was driving across the country to grad school following the attack. she heard about attacks on Muslims on the news, where they were beaten in the street and cases in which mosques had been blown up. To this day, Mogahed observes that “80% of news coverage about Muslims is negative” and most people do not even know a Muslim, making it nearly impossible to dismantle the dangerous stereotype of the Muslim person.

Muslim women are seen as threats to Western values at the same time that they are also seen as victims of the evils of Islam. In fact, Muslim women’s victimhood was used as a means to justify the war on terror. In her article, Abu-Lughod references Laura Bush’s 2002 address where she argued that ‘because of our recent military gains in….Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment” (Bush qtd.in Abu-Lughod 784). It was the civilized world’s duty to go in and liberate the oppressed women under the “terrorists-and-the-taliban” and to strip them of “the ultimate sign of their oppression….that they were forced to wear the burqa” (Abu-Lughod 785). In Bush’s speech and throughout the war on terror, Muslim women were portrayed as less human than Western women and in need of their help and saving. This follows the Orientalist narrative of Western superiority to the East.

This is the reason why Mogahed not only postulates that people might see her as a terrorist at the beginning of her Ted Talk, but that they also might see her as oppressed and in need of saving. In fact, many Western women ask her why she is oppressing herself by forcing herself to wear the veil (Mogahed). They wonder why she still wears the veil if she lives in a free country like the US. And, along these lines, Western feminists were shocked when women liberated from the “taliban-and-the-terrorists” did not immediately rip off their veils. For Mogahed, the veil represented a defiance against feeling like she had to attain an unattainable standard of beauty. It was a feminist declaration of independence from beauty standards (Mogahed). And, for the women newly liberated, the veil was a symbol of status and having a strong family, and in their cultural frame, it would not make sense for them to just disown their system of beliefs (Abu-Lughod 786). Muslim women are seen as oppressed because they do not adhere to Western beauty standards and do not sport symbols of Western women’s freedom like showing more skin. But, they are actually oppressed because they are seen as a threat to the nation and can face real danger in their lives from Islamophobia and the judgemental Western woman’s gaze.

The real oppression faced by women who veil is particularly evident in France under the veil ban. In 2011, France was able to enact a ban on the burqa, the veil that covers the entire face, and some “municipalities have since succeeded in banning the burkini….citing an array of justifications ranging from the preservation of French national values such as secularism and gender equality, national security, as well as hygiene” (Failure to Resist 3-4). Just as Mogahed was seen as a threat to US liberty at the same time that she was seen as in need of saving in the post-9/11 cultural landscape in the US, Evolvi finds that French women who veil are “paradoxically portrayed as being simultaneously victims of their patriarchal religion and threatening to Western values” (Evolvi 3). Muslim women who veil are subject to state violence for not adhering to this law. In one notable case, a woman was forced to undress on the beach and remove her burkini. This was a public humiliation that violated her personhood. It was a moment that was reminiscent of France’s colonial past in Algeria, when they forcibly removed veils from women during the nationalist movement in 1954. The French claimed they had to conquer women to properly conquer Algeria and destroy their societal structure. The veil surely has a troubled past in France. It has been a symbol of Eastern inferiority and conquest; it is an object that incites violence from the state.

While the veil has had a problematic past in France, there is perhaps hope for its future. Muslim women in France are making an effort to give the veil a new form of cultural meaning through resistance that pushes back against the Western symbol of the veil as simulatenously oppressive and threatening. According to scholar Giulia Evolvi, Muslim women in France challenge the trope that the veil is “connected with terrorsim” by “connoting the burkini as a comfortable swimsuit” (Evolvi 3). By converting the burkini from a religious symbol to an article of clothing they frame it as something they “should be able to wear in the name of freedom of expression, regardless of religious meanings” (Evolvi 10). They utilize the Western feminist ideal that women should be free to adorn themselves as they wish, and they turn it on its head to use it to their advantage. They dismantle the trope that Muslim women are oppressed because “they refuse to be considered victims by showing that the burkini holds different menanings that do not necessarily entail women’s submission” (Evolvi 3). They emphasize that in many instances choosing to veil can represent the “empowerment of women” as in the case of Mogahed who felt she was taking back power over her body by choosing to veil and not conform to beauty standards (Evolvi 10). These emerging narratives associated with the veil develop a new script that challenges the way the veil has historically been portrayed in France.

Like any object in society, the veil’s symbolism is created and it is not inherent to the object itself. Its meaning is shaped by time, place, history, and cultural discourse. French culture has historically framed the veil as antithetical to its national identity; the US has framed Islam as antithetical to its national identity; and the veil acts as an immediate symbol of Islam. But, given that these cultural links to the veil have been created, it also means that they are subject to change. We cannot erase the West’s political history along with ideas of Orientalism and Islamophobia that have shaped the treatment of Muslims in the media and in cultural discourse. We can begin to develop new narratives that portray Islam and Muslim women in a more accurate and dignified way, as the Muslim women in France have demonstrated and how Mogahed has demonstrated in her TedTalk. I will try to keep these stories in the forefront of my mind when I picture a Muslim woman and resist the learned stereotype that Muslim women are either dangerous or long to be saved.