Veiling Essay

Opinions on how women from regions such as the Middle East should be allowed to dress have been present for around one hundred years now. Many people have opinions on situations which they do not know much about. Only women who actually participate in veiling or have studied the practice of veiling know the exact reason on why these women decide to veil. Maysan Haydar, an observant Muslim and a feminist, is the author of “Veiled Intentions: Don’t Judge a Muslim Girl by Her Covering” which appeared in Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image in 2003. Haydar’s text is written to try and convince people that we should redefine the way we view the veil and that is should be seen as something positive rather than oppressive. On the same page as Haydar is Lila Abu-Lughod, an American woman with Palestinian and Jewish ancestry and professor at Columbia University. Abu-Lughod is the author of “The Muslim Woman”, in this text she talks about how in the eyes of the Western civilization the women who veil are seen as oppressed. She writes to show feminist women, who may not understand, why these Middle Eastern women would subdue themselves into wearing veils and covering their faces . Haydar and Abu-Lughod both write to try show their audience that women who decide to veil are not oppressed but rather have as much freedom as those who do not veil but they do it in a very different way. Haydar’s text is more casual and written for a younger feminist audience and Abu-Lughod’s text is written in a more scholarly form directed towards educated older feminist. Throughout this text I will explore both Haydar’s and Abu-Lughod’s main claims, evidence, and strategies that they both provide.

Maysan Haydar’s text “Veiled Intentions: Don’t Judge a Muslim Girl by Her Covering” is what I will be talking about first. Haydar has been wearing a veil since the age of twelve and shows us in detail how her life has been as a woman who veils. One of Haydar’s main claims is that the veil can help avoid certain damaging experiences such as being cat called or objectified. In order to support this reflects on her experiences walking by construction sites, “Construction workkers many feel obligated to say something to every passing woman, but I often get things like “I like your skirt!” or “Girl, I would marry you!”—harmless…”. While talking about how oppressive she find the way women in Western culture decide to dress she reflects on her own personal experience while being on a bus and other women criticized her for being oppressed but to her they seemed to have less freedom because they felt they needed to look and dress a certain way. Haydar then states, “If anything, I would find that ensemble more caging…and more painful than clothes that would allow me to walk in front of construction sites confidently, with minimal risk of harassment” (Haydar 260).  In Haydar’s life since she decides to veil and cover up she sees it as a very positive thing because she does not have to deal with men harassing her wherever she walks. Her position on this topic can be seen as weak because one can ask whether women should be sheltered all of the time from everything that might damage them or even if the women themselves are really who is to blame. In Haydar’s eyes the women are the ones who should be blamed based on the way they chose to dress and not the men who decide to verbally harass these women. She believes that because she covers up that it pushes people to respect her more. Haydar reflects back on her high school years and states that her interactions with those of the opposite sex were very different. She writes, “…without being given handbooks or informative flyers about how they should curb their posturing and come-ons, guys sensed that they should treat me with respect” (Haydar 261). Because Haydar was veiling these boys did not have to be taught to respect her they just automatically knew they had to which as she grew older it only stayed the same. The veil allowed her to have authentic relationships with men and to be liked for who she really was and not just for her looks and sex appeal. Haydar’s use of personal anecdotes seems as a good strategy to try and persuade her audience but there is room for questioning in that claim. For example, Did those men and boys treat her with respect simply because she was wearing a veil or a jilbab? Or did they treat her with respect because they knew that that is how you are supposed to treat someone no matter what they are wearing? Nonetheless Haydar never attempts to ask those questions to herself and assumes that it was because she was covering. Another claim Haydar makes is that women in the Western culture dress up for random people and not those who love them and that body image is the most important thing to them. She states, “I worked for a couple of magazines and saw the way women acted out to draw attention to themselves…women showed up to work in backless halter tops and were fawned over by male coworkers” (Haydar 262). From Haydar’s point of view women dress up not for themselves but rather to get attention from the opposite sex. In Muslim culture Haydar says young girls are taught that their body should only be shared in intimate relationships which is what leads her to think this way. This claim really affects how her audience takes in her argument, because she is writing for a Western culture based audience but judges them and their ways. Overall Haydar’s arguments are mostly supported by her own personal anecdotes which does not make her paper very strong. If she would have done studies to prove them it would have helped her paper out a lot but using just her experiences does not have much of an effect on the audience in attempting to persuade them.

Lila Abu-Lughod author of “The Muslim Woman” also has some of the same claims as Haydar but she approaches them in a very different manner. Unlike Haydar Abu-Lughod does not veil, is American, but does have Palestinian and Jewish ancestry. The main problem that Abu-Lughod wants her audience to look at it that the way the western culture views veiled Muslim woman is all wrong. Not only is it unrepresentative it is also very limited, meaning that we do not see the full picture on who they really are and therefore creates a division between “us” and “them”. In order to prove this claim Abu-Lughod uses the example of when the United States invaded Afghanistan. She states, “George W. Bush…used the oppression of these Muslim women as part of the moral justification for the military invasion of Afghanistan” (Abu-Lughod 1). Because the United States believes that these Muslim women are being oppressed and mistreating they find the need to invade their countries in order to “help them out” but in reality they do not need help. The use of a real life example to prove how wrong our preconceived image of Muslim woman is works greatly in Abu-Lughod’s favor because it is something that actually happened. Another claim that Abu-Lughod makes is that pity can be a dangerous thing because it enables other women, such as those that live in the western area, to believe that they need rescuing. Abu-Lughod states, “…liberal feminist feel they need to speak for and on behalf of Afghan or other Muslim women in a language of women’s rights or human rights” (5). This creates a sort of division between the Muslim women and the Western women, making the Muslim women seem “inferior” and the Western women “superior”. These Western feminist believe that they are helping Muslim women out but in reality they are belittling them. To extend her claim Abu-Lughod writes, “If one constructs some women as being in need of pity or saving, one implies that one not only wants to save them from something but wants to save them for something…” (5) She herself knows that it is not true that these women need some sort of saving because she herself has interacted with these women first hand and states, “I’ve spent lots of time with different groups of Muslim women and know something about how they see themselves, how they respect themselves…” (Abu-Lughod 5). If these Western feminists were actually educated and knew how these Muslim women feel they would not have to feel the need to stand up for them and make them feel like lesser. Because Abu-Lughod actually has spent time with Muslim women and knows the reality in their situation it helps her claim be seen stronger. Just because these women chose to wear burqas does not mean they are oppressed. Abu-Lughod wants her audience to redefine the way they view the burqa and to recognize it as liberating and protective. These women chose to cover themselves up and that is what Abu-Lughod wants her audience to realize when she states, “Choices for all of us are fashioned by discourses, social locations, geopolitical configurations…Those for whom religious values are important certainly don’t see them as constraining—they see them as ideals for which to strive” (Abu-Lughod 8). These women do it for their religion not because they are forced to wear it. While talking about a woman who worked in Pakistan, Hannah Papanek, Abu-Lughod wrties, “She noted that many saw it as a liberating invention since it enables women to move out of segregated living spaces while still observing the basic moral requirements of separating and protecting women…” (3). Because these women wear a burqua they have the ability to avoid harassment and gives them a sense of freedom. By using other people as evidence to support her claim it really helps make her argument stronger and establishes a sense of ethos. As a whole Abu-Lughod’s argument is strong not only because she herself is educated on why these women veil but also because she uses various credible evidence to support her claims so there is not a lot of room for questioning in her text.

Overall, Haydar and Abu-Lughod both women do a good job at showing their audiences why the veil as a whole should be redefined into something positive. Haydar did this by providing the reader with her experiences growing up wearing a veil. Abu-Lughod took on this topic in a more educated form because she studied why these women veil and therefore was able to provide the audience with a scholarly view on the topic. If Haydar’s text had taken the same approach as Abu-Lughod’s did her text would have been more reliable. By reading this text I now have a whole different perspective than I did before. I now know why these women chose to veil and that they do it because they want to. Everyone especially those in the Western regions should learn or at least have an idea on why these women chose to veil before they chose to speak out for them.