A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence, from the Middle East to America

by Leila Ahmed

In Cairo in the 1940s, Leila Ahmed was raised by a generation of women who never dressed in the veils and headscarves their mothers and grandmothers had worn. To them, these coverings seemed irrelevant to both modern life and Islamic piety. Today, however, the majority of Muslim women throughout the Islamic world again wear the veil. Why, Ahmed asks, did this change take root so swiftly, and what does this shift mean for women, Islam, and the West? When she began her study, Ahmed assumed that the veil's return indicated a backward step for Muslim women worldwide. What she discovered, however, in the stories of British colonial officials, young Muslim feminists, Arab nationalists, pious Islamic daughters, American Muslim immigrants, violent jihadists, and peaceful Islamic activists, confounded her expectations. Ahmed observed that Islamism, with its commitments to activism in the service of the poor and in pursuit of social justice, is the strain of Islam most easily and naturally merging with western democracies' own tradition of activism in the cause of justice and social change. It is often Islamists, even more than secular Muslims, who are at the forefront of such contemporary activist struggles as civil rights and women's rights. Ahmed's surprising conclusions represent a near reversal of her thinking on this topic. Richly insightful, intricately drawn, and passionately argued, this absorbing story of the veil's resurgence, from Egypt through Saudi Arabia and into the West, suggests a dramatically new portrait of contemporary Islam.

Genres: Islam, Nonfiction, History, Middle East, Religion, Feminism, Politics

360 pages, Hardcover

First published April 29, 2011

About the author

Leila Ahmed (Arabic: لیلى احمد‎) is an Egyptian American professor of Women's Studies and Religion at the Harvard Divinity School. Prior to coming to Harvard, she was professor of Women’s Studies and Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Cambridge before moving to the United States to teach and write.

In her 1999 memoir A Border Passage, Ahmed describes her multicultural Cairene upbringing and her adult life as an expatriate and an immigrant in the West. She tells of how she was introduced to Islam through her grandmother during her childhood, and she came to distinguish it from "official Islam" as practiced and preached by a largely male religious elite. This realization would later form the basis of her first acclaimed book, Women and Gender in Islam (1993), a seminal work on Islamic history, Muslim feminism, and the historical role of women in Islam.

Reviews

[MM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given that there are so many reviews on the content of the book, I figure that I might as well write on how this book affected me personally. Perhaps it will help someone. (Or, more likely, make me feel smart and experienced.)

I started off reading this book (given to me by my brother, apparently because of the innocuous reason that it has good ratings on Amazon, though I suspect it had more to do with my unexpected decision to de-hijab) with a determination not to like it. Having been told by numerous people that Western scholarship on Islamic matters is biased, I decided to develop my own bias against their bias (wow, inception!). In the very first chapter, Ahmed stated her bias against the Muslim Brotherhood (a group that was featured far more than I expected) and Islamists in general. This honesty, rather than earning my begrudging respect, seemed an obvious reason not to read the book, so I put it down and moved onto some random boring book. (Or maybe a couple of chick flicks. Shh!)

Returning to university after a fun-filled, mindless summer, however, I re-encountered the atmosphere that had originally led to my de-hijabing: the unshakable feeling that wearing the hijab - or indeed any display of ostentatious religiosity - meant something more to the people I met than I intended for it to convey, and that I was unable to freely ask questions and enquire while I carried the burden of this inexplicable symbolism on my head. As such, I decided to continue reading this book to demystify this strange sensation.

The first half focussed primarily on the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian politics, etc. Even the women referenced were all speaking from an Egyptian framework. I could not relate to them and felt as though I could find a more objective, comprehensive source in Egyptian history elsewhere.

The second half discussed issues of hijab, and broadly gender stances, in Muslim American society. Beginning with a long discourse on ISNA and MSA (the histories of which I was totally unaware, despite being loosely affiliated with both) and ending with a list of prominent female Muslim activists, I was able to relate on a far more profound level. Suddenly (or rather, gradually - redundancy is definitely something the author should work on) my impressions of the university's atmosphere made a whole lot of sense. The firm feeling I had of my hijab meaning more to others than it meant to me was because it did. Compared to my egregiously Caucasian and Islamically-ignorant public high school, the folks at university knew something about religion, and indeed had opinions on it. To them, as I suppose to most Western university-going hijab-wearers, the hijab was not simply an act of obedience to God, which was all I had ever thought it to be, but that of social justice, activism, and identity. Unconsciously or consciously, this is the notion the hijab has come to represent for its wearers, and the one that its attackers declare is mistaken. Ahmed's explanations are the first I have read on the topic, and my own experiences confirm it. Hence, the hijab is a personal choice, but certainly one closer to piety because piety involves social justice. To wear the hijab is "brave" - something I never understood, equating as I did hijab with something private like prayer - because it is to take a public stand on your identity as part of an oft-vilified minority.

Ignorant as I was/am, having been raised in a Muslim-majority nation, I failed to see that to wear the hijab in Canada is vastly different than to wear it in Saudi Arabia. I had been shielded from the difference because I went to a public school that was totally indifferent on the matter - kids who didn't know or care about religion - but once I entered an environment with educated, driven students, the obvious symbolism of the hijab gained a new meaning. I was not simply wearing the hijab; I was unconsciously asserting a pre-formulated, pre-decided identity to onlookers in university, an environment where my parents did not have a say on what I wore. By wearing such a visible symbol, I had unwittingly united myself with a group of people who were clearly a minority, struggling especially in a somewhat Islamophobic province. It was not simple-minded piety that my hijab expressed, but open opposition to the current status quo. While before I had not understood why Muslim Canadian girls who accepted that the hijab was mandatory did not wear it (my simple-minded and stupid rationalization being that they wanted to look pretty), it became clearer to me as I read the book: it may be mandatory, but they did not identify, or wish to openly identify, with everything that it has come to stand for.

Another simple observation Ahmed made struck me: Muslims criticise the government less than their non-Muslim counterparts in public speeches. I had unconsciously already understood this in grade 10 when, arriving in Canada that year and being told by my classmates that 9/11 was arranged by the American government, I simply shrugged, because I appreciated that as a Muslim I could not air such thoughts.

Reading the second half of the book and finally beginning to understand the importance of clothing in the university environment as a symbol of identity (a fact that I had denied as "stupid; who cares what you wear?") was not only enjoyable, but necessary. While I have criticisms of this book, all of them pale in comparison to this knowledge that I have gained about myself and the society I am in.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 4 out of 5]

In A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence, from the Middle East to America, Leila Ahmed explores the evolution of veiling beginning with Cairo in the 1940s and culminating in the 21st Century. She grounds her research on the influence of historical and political movements in Egypt, the permutations of various Islamic groups, and the role of Saudi Arabia in spreading Wahhabism in the United States and Europe.

Veiling has always been embroiled with political movements in one way or another. During the 1940s and 1950s, while Cairo was under the influence of Western colonialism, veiling was deemed a relic of the “backwardness” of the Arab world, a symbol of the culture’s misogynistic treatment of women. Accordingly, educated middle-class women removed the veil and entered the work force and institutions of higher education in increasing numbers.

Since then, veiling has experienced a resurgence. Ahmed conducts interviews with both veiled and unveiled women to chart the changing attitudes toward veiling. She learns why they chose to veil or why they chose to remove their veils. Their reasons are diverse but, surprisingly, their choice was not indicative of their commitment or lack of commitment to Islam. Some women did not veil because they were convinced the religion doesn’t require it. Other pursued the opposite trajectory, arguing their choice of clothing symbolizes pride in their identity. But in all cases, their belief in Islam as a religion of political activism advocating for social equity, including gender equity, is unwavering.

Ahmed claims the new generation of American Muslims do not see a contradiction between being American and being a Muslim. In fact, the opposite is true. They argue Islam promotes the same ideals espoused in America and are vocal in their support for minorities and in their demands for social justice. They challenge traditional readings of the role of women in Islam, insisting Islam does not advocate the subordination of women since it is a religion of social justice and equity. As Ahmed says:

It is not, by and large, secular American Muslims nor American Muslims for whom religion is a private matter but rather the children of Islamists who are notably present in and at the forefront of the activist American and American Muslim struggles of our times: be it against torture, erosions of civil rights, racial profiling, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other foreign policy issues, and also in the cause of women’s rights and gay rights in relation to Islam.

At the conclusion of her study, Ahmed admits her research has caused her to experience a change in attitude about the veil.

Following out this story and focusing in particular in the last chapters on American Muslim women’s activism in relation to gender and women’s rights has brought me to the astonishing conclusion that it is after all Islamists and the children of Islamists—the very people whose presence in this country had originally alarmed me—who were now in the vanguard of those who were most fully and rapidly assimilating into the distinctively American tradition of activism in pursuit of justice and who now essentially made up the vanguard of those who are struggling for women’s rights in Islam.

Ahmed includes extensive notes, bibliography, and index in her insightful study of the veil’s resurgence and the growing activism of Muslim American women. The work is highly recommended for any who seek an understanding of women’s changing role in Islam.

My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com

[Jonna Higgins-Freese · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was quite helpful and interesting to me, as someone who spent a lot of time working with Muslim women in a non-profit organization right after 9/11. We did a solidarity event with women who covered, as Ahmed describes was common across the US as those women were the targets of prejudice from nasty remarks to violence.

I loved my friends who wore the hijab, and at the same time, I felt uncomfortable whenever I myself wore a scarf -- whether at a solidarity event or to attend mosque (and sit in the back). My friends spoke of the way that they didn't like how women -- and girls -- were sexualized in American culture, and how the hijab, for them, was a stand against that. I appreciated that; it seemed to me that they were taking more of a position on this than secular American feminists seemed to be doing. At the same time, it felt clear to me that covering required one precisely to claim that one *was* a sexual, physical being, and to foreground that aspect of oneself quite visibly. The double standard with men (who of course did not cover) was also troubling to me, as were some of my friends' comments that their bodies "belonged to their husbands to see, and not to the world." My own view that was that my body belonged to me, and that I had committed to sharing it only with my husband. To say that one's body belonged to one's husband seemed to me troubling, and I always wondered whether this was a semantic difference between how I and my friends perceived this, or a real difference.

At any rate, Ahmed gives a very helpful context to the historical and political context of the rise of veiling in the late '90s onward. The first section of the book is about un-veiling in Cairo, and how the re-veiling trend was linked to the rise of Islamism. I didn't read the first half of the book, but skipped right to the part about the US in the late '90s (though Ahmed does summarize and skip back to the historical context throughout).

Ahmed points out that the veil has often been used by colonial oppressors as symbols of Islam's Otherness and oppression of women. She cites how one noted British imperialist, no supporter of British women's rights, used the veil as an example of Muslim misogyny and a justification for colonialism. She then goes on to a very troubling section on how this very thing happened in the United States during the invasion of Afghanistan, when the Taliban's ruthless treatment of women was often invoked to justify killing women, children, and their families during the invasion. She quotes Abu Lughod, who asks, "Where is the global feminist campaign against killing such significant numbers of (mostly) Muslim women? Or maiming them, traumatizing them, killing their children, sisters, mothers, husbands, fathers, and brothers" (228). (I felt proud here of the work I'd done that I mentioned above, with an interreligious group of women called Women for Peace, and our activism against the war). Ahmed writes, "the rights and conditions of women in Muslim-majority societies often are acutely in need of improvement, as indeed they are in many other societies. But the question now is how we address such issues while not allowing our work and concerns to aid and abet imperialist projects" (229). She points out that it would be as senseless -- and useless -- to talk about what oppresses Muslim women (in the US, Kandahar, or Sri Lanka) as it would be to talk about what oppresses Christian women (in Serbia, in the US, and in China). In each case, the answer would be inflected by the specific historical, political, and sociological circumstances.

In the early post-colonial period, "the veil was emphatically affirmed by the Muslim Brotherhood and other religiously grounded oppositional movements . . . as an emblem of resistance to colonialism and of affirmation of indigenous values, a meaning that it retained in the initial years of the Islamic Resurgence." (212)

Meanings of hijab, for wearers and others: Otherness of Islam, oppression of women, obedience to God's commands as set forth in the Quran, personal expression of spiritual commitment, to challenge the sexism of the ways women are viewed, to assert a minority identity in a dominant culture. "Clearly these are meanings that the hijab can come to have only in societies that declare themselves committed to gender equality and equality for minorities. They are not meanings that the hijab could possibly have in Cairo or Karachi or Riyadh or Tehran." (213)

Ahmed gives an example of a woman who spoke at an open house at a mosque, identifying herself as a non-believing Jew deeply skeptical of all monotheisms and yet committed to "supporting Muslims in their right to be in this country and in their right to be treated with justice and without discrimination." (202) Ahmed remarks that this was an unprecedented moment --when a woman of Jewish background, who would not normally have been invited into the main room of the mosque, reserved for men -- could be there and "offer views that in ordinary times they would not have even permitted to have uttered in their mosques." At that moment in time, space opened up for Muslim authorities to hear from people "who spoke from a deeply American tradition of justice and indeed (like the Islamists themselves in their origins) from a tradition of activism in pursuit of justice." (204)

Ahmed also outlines the history of progressive Muslim action after 9/11, which seems to have arisen precisely out of the activist and social justice orientation of the Muslim Brotherhood/Islamism (as opposed to the quietist/pietistic Muslim traditions). Such progressive action included women leading mixed-gender prayer, some small steps toward giving voice to LGBT Muslims,

She documents the ways that these arise precisely out of being Muslims in America, and the way the participants used Martin Luther King, Jr., and the African-American experience more particularly, as a touchstone in thinking about the ways that Islam needed to open itself to gender and sexual-orientation justice.

[Kelley · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is as much about veiling as Animal Farm was about pigs. Sure, Ahmed mentions veils and girls who wear them. But it's basically about her own views on the Islamicization of Egypt, and how she has noticed that some of those people of her Egyptian youth have shown up in different versions here in the states today. Case in point - most reviewers have pointed out that this book is "about so much more," or offers a "wider view" and was "not what was expected." Additionally, Ahmed makes it quite clear that she isn't the most unbiased of sources when it comes to this topic: she starts off with a personal account of encountering hijab-clad women on her campus, and draws a dichotomy between them and herself and her friend, marking them as "the other;" she goes on to say later in the book that members of the Muslim Brotherhood killed a friend of her family. So we have someone writing as an expert about people who she sees diametrically opposed to who she is and what she believes in, and who was scared of as a child. Sure enough, the rest of the book doesn't go so much into the topic of veiling, as to who wears those veils - the Muslim Brotherhood bogeyman. This book could have been about the Muslim Brotherhood coming to America and it's influence here; with some editing, it could have even been good. But Ahmed relies only on her own experiences and does little or no research. She "infiltrates" an ISNA conference (open to anyone, the annual national conference draws more than 40,000), and declares that the Brotherhood (MB) has created ISNA as a front for propagating it's views in America. MB students for sure had some role in ISNA, but today's incarnation has nothing to do with MB. No, if only she had done ANY research - perhaps even a simple Wikipedia search, she would have known that America's MB front is MAS, the Muslim American Society. Every Muslim with any knowledge of American orgs knows this, and a simple meet and greet with any MAS chapter would tip anyone off, as most every member is Egyptian or of Egyptian heritage. But Ahmed doesn't mention MAS at all. She only zeros in on ISNA. As someone who comes from an Egyptian background you would hope that she would be able to present insight into Islam, Muslims, Egyptians etc, but A Quiet Revolution comes off as Orientalist, and bad scholarship to boot. I'm shocked that she is employed in Harvard's Divinity school. It's high time we had better Islam scholars in the West. Having attended a Western seminary for Islamic studies myself, I'm praying for real theologians and those familiar with Islam to take the reigns, and not more of the same - people with knowledge of the Middle East being passed off as knowing something about religion. Islam and Islamic cultures are NOT the same thing. So, if you're looking for a book on why more and more women are wearing the hijab (as I was), then this is not the book for you. If you're looking for a semi-memoir about the Muslim Brotherhood and how women started wearing hijab more in the 1940s in Egypt, then maybe you'll like this.

[Ardene · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Quiet Revolution: the veil’s resurgence from the Middle East to America is a fascinating and frustrating book.

Leila Ahmed, currently teaching at Harvard, writes from her perspective as a Muslim women born in the 1940s in Egypt and raised during a time when it was normal for women of her family (upper middle class, educated, urban) not to wear hijab (head covering). Thus, her experience of the advocacy of many Western-educated Muslims’ advocacy of a return to a “pure” form of Islam, coupled with an increase in the wearing of hijab as a sign of this return is not welcome. In Ahmed’s understanding, the rise of hijab is coupled with the rise of a type of Islam that calls for political activisim on the part of its practioners.

I found Ahmed’s account a content-rich description of the combination of political and religious activism of Muslims in Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia in the last decades of the twentieth century. In addition, it covers the influx of students and later immigrants to the USA from majority Muslim countries in the last half of the twentieth century, and the development of several organizations in the US. This was the fascinating part.

Unfortunately, the entire discussion is laced with the word Islamism, which is never clearly defined. This makes it difficult (impossible?) to be clear about what Ahmed’s position is. At the first use of the word Islamism (page 3, Introduction) Ahmed states the appearance of hijab signals, to her, the presence of Islamism, a political form of Islam which she associates with the Muslim Brotherhood and, by implication in the next four paragraphs, with violence. Thus the word carries a negative connotation. On page 9 she refers to Islamism as a term that becomes popular in the 1990s to describe a wider continuum of movements, from moderate to militant.

The confused meaning of Islamism coupled with a lack of thesis statement made this book disappointing.

I do appreciate Ahmed’s attempt to put the rise of hijab in historical and political context. This is, to me, a very helpful way of looking at it, and a perspective I haven’t run across before.

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahmed is always curious and calm as she explores the explosive subject of women in Islam. She wants to know what Muslim women think, their reasons for doing things, and how they are shaping their tradition. The investigation takes her through the decades of her own lifetime, first in Egypt and then in the USA. She tracks the trend towards veiling and the varied motives behind it, be they self-protection from aggressive men in the streets of Cairo, to the influence of Saudi-funded teachers, to self-assertion in the face of Western prejudice. And to her own surprise, Ahmed finds encouraging developments among North American Muslim women. In standing up for their rights as a minority, many of these women have become outspoken defenders of freedom and equality. Many are claiming an equal role with men in leading their communities and interpreting their tradition. I found the book fascinating and occasionally inspiring.

[Mariam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read on the politics of the veil, but only flaw is that Dr Leila would use the terms “Persian gulf” and “Arabian gulf” interchangeably.

[Basmaish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember having this book on my to read shelf since 2014 and thinking I’m not going to find a reasonably priced copy and removed it, only to find it last week in the library. Again, god bless Liverpool’s library for the gems that I keep finding.

The content of this book and the research done is incredible and on a personal level I needed this. This book unpacks a lot on how veiling entered the scene from the 70’s-90’s and early 2000’s and how it has impacted people across the world, as well as understanding it’s implications and the changes it brought on. The main focus is on Egyptian women and politics but it does branch out when necessary. There’s a lot about the different Egyptian presidents, how they governed, how religion played a role and the wars that were going on, also about the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. And of course, the influence of Saudi Arabia, Wahabisim as well as the religious and political on goings in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Turkey...etc. There’s so many aspects that come into play into what one might say is a small thing and reading about how the author is slowly unpacking each element and connecting stuff together kind of connected the dots in my head that were already there but were jumbled and hard to grasp.

I devoured the first section that focused mainly on the Middle East, the part that focused on America and the changes happening their with Muslims and the veil and all of that didn’t really grab me as much and I guess it’s because it’s the side of the story that I read more of and it’s one that doesn’t reflect my current state; it’s still well researched and great but sometimes I’m looking for what I can relate to.

All in all I found it excellent, and the writing is great; academic but not too academic that it bores you or makes you lose track of what is being said. Considering everything going on and the changes that are still happening, I think there’s still more to uncover and more questions to be answered from different perspectives. Throughout reading I was trying to reflect on what it was like and how it’s like right now. I find that certain topics can’t just be closed and moved on with and this to me is one of those things. I’m interested to see what other new research is out there and I’m really interested in picking up more books by Leila Ahmed.

[Around the world pick for Egypt.]

[Avery · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of this book are a must-read on the British colonial influences that suppressed traditional Egyptian dress at the turn of the 20th century, and the surprising appearance of the modern hijab in Egypt after 1973. If you are interested in this topic I strongly recommend this compelling sociological overview, however incomplete it may be from an insider perspective.

However, the rest of the book can be completely dismissed. Don't even look at it -- as Ardene's review states, it's dominated by an undefined and mystifying term called "Islamism," which the author tries to distinguish from Islam, to no avail. (The prologue to part 2 can be read ironically as the author almost becoming self-aware of the failure of her terminology.) I would argue that this confusion reduces chapters 4-11 to meaninglessness. Events and people are discussed, but no coherent narrative is formed, and in part 2, the discussion drifts completely away from the history of the hijab and into the author's personal fantasies about third world feminism. I also dislike this book's complete reliance on English language sources. Colonial primary sources are coherently analyzed in chapter 1, but not a single Arabic language source is cited, which contributes to the uselessness of the later chapters.

[kayleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Read for my Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Middle Eastern History class, not going to review.

[Melanie]

Ahmed traces how meanings have developed surrounding Muslim women covering the hair on their heads. The earliest meanings, shared to some degree by all monotheistic societies, pertained to God-given roles in society. Colonial actions of the nineteenth century added a new meaning, viewing ‘the veil’ “a sign of the inferiority of Islam and Muslim societies and peoples, as well as of Islam’s ‘degradation’ of women” (44). By the 1920s, Egyptian intelligentsia had accepted this view, as demonstrated most clearly in the writings of Qasim Amin who called for the unveiling of women as part of social changes in imitation of European society.

From the 1920s to 1960s, urban women throughout the Arab world tended not to wear headscarfs. According to Ahmed, this does not mean that women had lost their piety. Instead, she claims, Islamists have “recast [the 1920s to 1960s] as a secular age, a time when women had given up on veiling because they were no longer devout or even believing Muslims and had given up on Islam” (47).

With the growing popularity of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood from the 1970s, Egyptian women increasingly chose to cover the hair on their heads. By the late twentieth century, wearing a veil had become a personal choice. Among the plethora of reasons a woman might choose to cover her hair was increasing social pressure as people grew to embrace the decision and encouraged others to follow their example. Why did people choose to embrace this custom? Ahmed attributes this mass acceptance of social change to the appeal of the Muslim Brotherhood. The group took an early stance (in the 1930s) in support of Palestine, against British policy and in defiance of the Egyptian government which supported British policy at the time (51). Also, the Brotherhood called for social justice, with Arab unity as a step toward Islamic unity (52). To this day, the Brotherhood and the movement that it inspired among Muslims throughout the world, strives for social justice.

Ahmed’s book consists of two parts. The first narrates the history of the custom of veiling, and I have attempted to summarize that history above. The second part discusses instances of Islamic feminism in the United States that Ahmed sees as having branched from the Islamist movement that the Egyptian Brotherhood began. One of the distinguishing traits of the groups and individuals that Ahmed names is their strong identification as Muslims. They tend to present themselves and their work (activism, charity, advocacy, research, writing, lecturing, and so on) as Muslim first and foremost. This of course aims to increase unity among Muslims. The most obvious disadvantage is that such a stance may downplay unity among other social groups to which individuals belong. However, especially post-9/11, many Muslims felt the need to reclaim their Muslim identity in recognition of the tragedy.

I think that Ahmed’s book succeeds in offering a balanced account. Ahmed admits that her book is limited to Egypt and the United States, but that the trends she traces stretch farther. I think that exploration of how such trends stretch farther to other geographical locations would certainly enhance this book and its usefulness. Ahmed writes as a scholar first and foremost, noting trends, offering observations and analyses. She does not write primarily as a woman, a Muslim, or an American (for instance). I do not see any clear calls for action. So I recommend the book to other scholars and those interested in learning about why some Muslim women cover the hair on their heads, especially those in Egypt and the United States. For those who want more personal reflections, calls for action, or explorations of trends’ implications, they will need to resort to other books...and perhaps future writings by Ahmed.

Also, if you are interested in how women are rising in leadership positions in the Muslim community, then you would probably like to see Veiled Voices, a documentary of interviews with women in Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria. The official website: http://www.veiledvoices.com/
On YouTube (at time of writing) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sde9ID...

[Cara · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Leila Ahmed traces the fall and rise of the headscarf in Muslim societies and in the west, America in particular. She comes at this from the perspective of someone who does not wear it, but I think she is rather fair in her assessment of it. She recognizes that she grew up in an era where women in Egypt were abandoning traditional dress and choosing to dress more western, while still considering themselves fully Muslim, and that this has colored her perception of the headscarf. Though she argues that Islamism was at the forefront of women choosing to wear the headscarf again in the 70s and 80s, and I accept this as correct, she is aware that Islamism* is not now the reason why most women choose to wear the headscarf.

This book was interesting for me as someone who has both worn and not worn the headscarf, and still feels a great deal of ambivalence about it. While we like to think our choices (and not just about the headscarf) are our own, they are so clearly influenced by other people and the society in which we live. Few Muslim women choose to put on a headscarf because of a conscious decision to follow the Muslim Brotherhood, but the influence is there. And similarly, the women who choose not to wear it are influenced by early racist orientalists who pushed women to adopt western styles in order to "civilize" them.

I know that Leila Ahmed is Egyptian and clearly has more familiarity with Egypt than anywhere else, but I really, really wish she had looked abroad a little bit more, particularly in her chapters about the headscarf gaining traction in the 70s and 80s. The Muslim world is big, and influential as the Muslim Brotherhood may have been even outside Egypt, it's far from the whole story. This is the only reason I can't give this book 5 stars.

*Interestingly, her definition of Islamism reminds me a lot of the definition of feminism: many women (Muslim women included) would never call themselves feminist because in their minds the word has such terrible connotations, even though in reality they believe in and practice many of what would be considered the basic tenets of feminism. Similarly, many Muslims (including Muslims who consider themselves secular or liberal) would never call themselves Islamist because the word is so associated with terrorism, even though their views of the role that Islam should play in society match very well with traditional Islamists (e.g. early Muslim Brotherhood), even if their view of Islam itself is rather different.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew! A lot to read and I'm not sure I absorbed much of it. Still, interesting and worth another read through at another time. I'm confused about the difference between Islam and Islamism and Muslims. Encouraged about trends of Islamism in US/West as they apply towards being actively engaged in social justice and standing up for minorities/speaking out against injustices, to include issues involving treatment of women in Islam. So why is there a resurgence of the veil? Yes, there's all that going on in the middle east where women are required to wear it by men and the usual patriarchal views. But what's encouraging is that young women in the West are wearing it because of their own personal beliefs and not because they are forced to do it.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used this book as a source for a paper for an online course, otherwise I might not have read it. It was interesting enough that I decided to go ahead and finish reading it after my paper was completed.

It is a detailed "short history" about 'the veil' that Muslim women wear. It is well-written, has a wealth of information, and seemed to be fairly even-handed in its presentation. I had the impression when I first started reading the book would end in a particular "tone" or "vibe," and I was quite surprised to learn that was not the case. The author "blames" a more militant version of Islam as being the source behind the resurgence of the veil in the lives of Muslim women; I thought she would end the book pining for her lost "freedom" and the direction in which Islam was moving. About halfway through the book, she "shifted directions" and changed her focus, in so many words. It starts in the 1800s and moves forward through time, tracing Islam's "growth" (spread?) in the "Modern Era," until 2010ish. In the 1900s, she focuses primarily on Egypt and Iran before talking about the "conflict of ideologies" between Iran and Iraq before shifting to Saudi Arabia. The back half of the book talks about Islam in the United States and Canada.

She talks about how Muslims realized how far "behind" they were in comparison to the Western world (Europe and the United States) in regards to nearly all aspects of life - industrial, technological, military, and general knowledge. In their desire to "be like the West," some of the Muslim countries began taking on aspects of European society. They began imitating European clothing styles and furniture, disposing of attire suitable for their environment for clothing ill-suited for the warmest regions of the globe. Despite the best attempts of the Arabs to be seen as equals to Europeans, Europeans still held Muslims in contempt as lesser beings and as a lesser "race" (as this was during the time when races were judged on a hierarchy; Whites were judged at the top of the racial hierarchal ladder and superior to the other races of the planet [which is no different than how the Chinese or Japanese saw themselves as superior to the other races of the planet]). Europeans continued to prove to be hypocritical in how they treated Arabs; Arabs were mocked for their women remaining veiled while trying to achieve an equal "high society" as the Europeans, yet once their women stopped veiling themselves, the Arab women were mocked as being loose, immoral, and impious.

As Arab nations sought to improve their standing in the world's eyes, they continued to emulate Western (European) values. The leaders of some nations (specifically, Turkey, Egypt, and Iran) even went so far as to ban the wearing of veils in order to help their nations show "forward progress" in the eyes of the rest of the world. This brought about a period of about fifty to sixty years [depending on the country] in which women were no longer veiled; or, if they wore a veil, it was by choice. However, in the 1970s, more women were seen wearing veils. These women tended to be younger women, and college-educated. This trend has continued until today, where now most Muslim women are veiled and unveiled women tend to be in the minority.

Apparently, there are three major strains of Islam in the world today, as well as what the author calls "Islamist" (which is the more militant, aggressive strain favored by extremists and terrorists) outside of the United States. There is Sufi and Shi'a, which are the primary two strains, and then Wahhabism (which is the primary faith/strain of Saudi Arabia). Militant groups started appearing primarily in Egypt, which saw several assassinations of political and civil leaders as the extremists sought to force the changes they wanted that they could not obtain by peaceful methods (not that they tried hard for peaceful means of change). Iran also saw the rise of extremist groups to the extent that the government was replaced in the late 1970s with a hard-line theocracy.

Now, what I found most interesting was that the women who started veiling did so because they felt that it was required by Islam and they wanted to be seen as pious. They did not feel it was forced upon them; they felt that it was required and expected of them. They chose to wear it of their own free will; unfortunately, they then imposed their religious beliefs upon those around them and "guilted" other women into wearing it. Now, the majority of Muslim women around the globe wear a veil of some sort; even then, most of them still feel a religious connection to what they are wearing and how it helps set them apart from others. The veil helps to remind them of who they are, spiritually, and how they need to live their lives accordingly.

Islam first appeared in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but it did not have the impact it has today upon society at large. Islam was still a definite minority in the nation. It began spreading, expanding, and growing in the United States especially during the late 1970s and 1980s. Muslim nations were seen as some of the best allies to stand against the godless Communists, and Muslims were allowed to come to the United States to pursue levels of higher education that might not have been available in their home countries. As students came to the United States, many of them would eventually acquire their green card and remain as US citizens. Other Muslims also immigrated into the United States in hopes of pursuing a better life.

According to the author, the United States had definitely had an influence on Islam. Originally, the early Muslim immigrants did not have "religious leadership" when Muslims first immigrated. The teachers tended to be self-taught, and were more 'relaxed' in their teachings. It was a more 'relational' religion at the time, as the teachers thought Islam could be understood using logic and rationality as opposed to having religious training. It was not until later in the 1900s (1950s and beyond) when religious teachers and leaders would appear. Also, as students studied the Koran, they would be influenced by what they read and how their lives were not necessarily as "religious" as the Koran indicated they should be. Regardless, according to the author, a "less strict" form of Islam has generated in the United States over the years which is seen as more amenable to life in the United States (more "liberal" in nature) and more in fitting with the "standards" of the United States of America.

In regard to the author's "conclusion": I totally expected her to discuss her thoughts on the "future" of veiling and women. Instead, she discusses how women have gained a voice in Islam, something they have not had, historically. The view of "the veil" in regard to women has been predominantly commented on by men; the perspective or opinion of women was not really considered or believed to be important. However, women have begun speaking out more and more, and they have not been silenced (or been able to be silenced) by Muslim religious leaders. Muslim women in the United States are able to speak out more freely than in most Muslim countries about their lives, their beliefs, and their 'situation' in reference to whether or not they wore a veil. This dialogue is unprecedented and, now that it has been allowed to happen, cannot be stopped, closed off, or contained. She sees this as being the most important event to come out of women returning to veiling and the subsequent discussions it has provoked, that Muslim women have "found" their voice (or been given the chance to speak). I think I would agree with her, too.

She makes an interesting point that the majority of Muslims do not have a 'voice' in the United States because "official" organizations are the ones focused on by the news and the government in regard to Muslim concerns. As a result, the news media and the government gets a "biased" view of Muslim concerns or ideas as these organizations have a "louder voice" and speak out of turn. The more moderate, "quieter" American Muslim citizens are not necessarily represented by these organizations and, therefore, have no 'voice' in American society as a result (well, on a "national level," I suppose).

It was an interesting book. It has an enormous amount of "compressed" information within its 306 pages. The author's conclusion, though, really surprised me. At the same time, I think her conclusion is valid, and she makes a great point as a result. This is not to say that the book does not have any weaknesses; it does (it gets a little long-in-the-tooth, in some parts, and she makes some generalized comments without giving any kind of "background" as to why some things happened the way they did. It makes some other groups look unjustly "bad" as a result. Overall, though, it was informative, and I am glad that I decided to finish it.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only a generation ago, few Muslim women wore head coverings in public in Egypt. Leila Ahmed, who is from Egypt and is now a professor at Harvard University, asks how the reversal of that trend came about and what it means. It begins with a conversation with her friend in the 1990’s, observing a group of covered Muslim women near her university campus. Her friend says,

“To them we are the enemy. That’s how they see us, all of us, people like us, feminist, progressives. That’s just how it is. We can’t ignore that. And anyway, they are our enemies. They threaten us, ban our books, and oppose everything we stand for. That’s just how it is.”

“They” refers to the central player in this book – the Muslim Brotherhood. She remembers it well from her childhood, when they bombed the cinemas she liked to attend and murdered her father’s friend, the prime minister of Egypt. And they are the ones who insist that female head covering is mandatory. So she is not exactly a fan. But she tries to objectively examine what this movement is about, including its possible merits.

The Ignorance of Erasing History

The Arabic word “Jahiliyya” traditionally means the ignorance of Arabian society before the Islamic revelations. The Brotherhood’s leading intellectual, Sayyid Qutb, applies it to almost all of Islamic history. He says, “People’s visions, beliefs, their habits and customs, their sources of knowledge, art, literature, rules and laws, even what we consider as Islamic education, Islamic sources, Islamic philosophy and Islamic thought – all if it is the product of the Jahiliyyah.”

This kind of extreme rejection of the past has a rather poor track record in history. Think of the communists trying to create the “New Socialist Man”. The so-called Islamic State is busy trying to remove all traces of both the pre-Islamic past and the parts of the Islamic past they disapprove of. This philosophy is essentially a rejection of civilization itself.

Shades of Islamism

According to the author, traditional Islam is a personal relationship with Islamic teaching, strongly colored by the local culture. Islamism requires activism in the cause of da‘wa (religious outreach) and justice (as they define it). Those who use violence are referred to a militant Islamists.

Within Islamism there is a range of approaches. Since the 1970’s the mainstream of the Muslim Brotherhood has been committed to a gradualist approach of charity work and education, with the violence undertaken by its radical offshoots. While moderate Muslims were out shopping, the Brotherhood was reaching out and converting much of the population to their version of Islam. In all societies people of moderation are at this kind of disadvantage against dedicated extremists.

Good Cop, Bad Cop after 9/11

Let me complete the thoughts from the start of this review. “And now, our own friends defend them [the Islamists]. And what is worse, they are right to do so. That is what they have to do in this country, defend minorities, defend people’s right to be different. That’s why we love their societies. That’s why we want to be like them.”

A major theme of the book is the convergence between leftist liberal American values and some of the ideas of Islamism. These include equality, social activism, and opposition to what is perceived as American Imperialism. Whatever you think of these issues, it did serve to provide Muslims, including Islamists, a place in the American mainstream. American born Muslims see no conflict between their faith and basic American values, and even view their activism as helping to strengthen the “true” America.

On the other hand, sometimes pressure from the conservative end of the spectrum can have a positive impact. For example, Ahmed reports that Al-Fatiha, a homosexual Muslim organization, was forced to operate in secret to avoid violence from extremists. After 9/11 and the increased scrutiny by the U.S. government, it was able to hold its conventions openly. Under similar pressure, she reports that the Brotherhood conventions became more open and inclusive, with more non-Islamic guest speakers, and more uncovered women in attendance.

I wonder how conservatives feel about doing the heavy lifting to bolster the ranks of those allied with liberal activists?

Saved by the Double Edged Sword?

Islam has always had a decentralized structure. So while Brotherhood agents founded western Islamic organizations, they are governed under local control. As more American born Muslims join them, these organizations are changing.

Sayyid Qutb’s philosophy can be seen as a double-edged sword. In rejecting the authority of the Islamic scholars, he claimed that ordinary Muslims could interpret the scriptures themselves. Thus some Muslims are doing just that, choosing to re-interpret the Qur’an in a more moderate and feminist friendly way.

The book ends with a cautiously optimistic view of how Islam in America is evolving. Let us hope that she is right.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish that the book had revealed the focus of Egpyt in the title-- maybe from Egypt to America? The narrative seemed to be centred on that relationship.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting. The veil is only one small part of the larger issue here. Her basic argument is that the resurgence of the veil is a sign of the spread of an Islamist viewpoint. Islamist, according to her, means not espousing violence, but taking Islam as a guide to how to live your life in the world, not as something you essentially do in church on Sunday - and transplanted into western nations like the US, large numbers of the children of Islamist immigrants have taken that to mean that you embrace the demands made for justice by the oppressed and marginalized. And she says that the veil means something completely different for women who wear it today, as opposed to women who wore it before the "unveiling trend" of the 20th century in Muslim majority nations. Because she is from Egypt, she traces in detail the rise of Islamism in Egypt, the way Saudi Arabia worked with Islamist organizations to promote Wahhabi Islam, and the impact that had on women in Egypt, which in turn affected the role of the veil in society. That is a weak summary; I can best sum up the book by a couple of quotes.

"This then is the conclusion that I find myself arriving at in light of the evidence surveyed through the preceding pages - a conclusion that represents in fact a complete reversal of my initial expectations: that it is, after all, Islamists and the children of Islamists and not secular or privately religious Muslims who are most fully and actively integrating into this core and definingly American tradition of social and political activism and protest in pursuit of justice. It is they, after all - they and not us, the secular or privately religious Muslims - who are now in the forefront of the struggle in relation to gender issues in Islam, as well as with respect to other human rights issues of importance to Muslims in America today - and implicitly of importance in the long term to other Americans too." (pp 296-7)

"Somehow with the rise of Islamism - and quite possibly because activist women and wearers of the hijab became directly involved in generating the meanings of the hijab - the hijab's meanings began to break loose from their older, historically bounded moorings. It was only after the veil had gone through that cycle of history that it would be unmoored, at least for its wearers, from its old meanings." (p 212)

"...above all, perhaps, the story of the activist involvement of women in Islamism that I have followed out in these pages, from its beginnings in the early 1970s in Egypt to America in the post-9/11 world, is the story also of the expansion of the understanding and interpretation of religious texts that occurs, and similarly of the rethinking and transformation of the notion of justice that begins to take place, when the work of interpretation is democratized and women are able to enter and participate in the broad arenas of social and religious movements and of public life as activists, teachers, and leaders, and as people proactively engaged in defining the public good and the meaning of justice and the meanings also of sacred scripture."

Yeah she writes long sentences, and they got longer in her summation section! But that seems to me to sum up the arguments of the book, which she supports throughout by examples of specific women she either read about or interviewed.

[Shafiqah Nor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably one of the most important books to be read and debated. Particularly North American Muslims. It provides an opportunity to reflect deeply if we are diverse enough in our scholarship/understanding of Islam both from a religious and from a socio-political standpoint.

I would caveat that this is a social-science scholarship, and not an Islamic study. It explores dimensions of geopolitics and gender, and not Quranic/Islamic Studies methodologies.

Before I summarize, I have 2 criticisms of the book:
1) 'Islamism' was not clearly defined in the book. It was a term thrown around loosely that made me cringe by its overwhelming negative connotation. I wish she explained the spectrum of the political and/or religious merging of both. It was clear that in the end, Ahmed sees unintended result positively in the residue of Islamism advancing gender causes for Muslim women.

2) While she pursued a study on the veil, her approach is from a social science methodology. It felt lacking and slightly bias to have not acknowledged the Islamic methodologies influencing the reason for hijab - particularly references in the Quran which many Muslims interpret as authoritative source.

Ahmed gives a compelling argument of Islamism from Egypt to its spillover in North America. In particular she looked at the narrative surrounding the hijab, how it re-emerges (again and again) and is used as a political rhetoric in many spheres.

She details the rise of the Brotherhood in Egypt and Wahhabism in Saudi, to the role of migration in North America and how bodies like MSA and ISNA were initially founded upon Islamist thought in the 70s and 80s. This criticism is important as MSA, ISNA (and CAIR) remain the authoritative and dominant 'voice' of Sunni Muslims in North America.

These organizations refer to the hijab as the "religiously mandated covering for Muslims women." She finds thus problematic given the Islamists pattern of exploiting the hijab to subjugate women, as was the case in Egypt.

However post 9/11 provided a shift as American Muslim women are using the tools/residue to reshape the discourse on gender justice & Islam.

Overall, I enjoyed the qualitative and quantitative studies on women's perception of piety in this book. It was interesting to note that Egyptian Muslim women who did not veil saw themselves equally pious to their veiled counterparts - thus denouncing themselves as secular.

Additionally, I really appreciated the diversity of women referenced in the book. She had a whole chapter referencing various contemporary Muslim women and their contributions.

[Siddhartha Dhar · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointing read and the title is a misnomer. Ahmed's focus is particularly on Egypt and more specifically women living in the urban niches of the Egyptian society. Regarding Egypt, apart from quoting excerpts from other researchers, Ahmed did minimal research on her own. We do get to know(as if it wasn't obvious) that no single factor drives women to veil themselves. Men or Islam in that regard, do not always force women to veil, and veiled women aren't necessarily more religious than women who don't use the veil. Despite Ahmed being hailed from Egypt, her book is replete with secondary sources from western researchers. Even in these sources, we don't seem to find any narrative of the veiled women living in the peripheries of the Egyptian society. They have been typically shoved aside as too conservative to reflect on. Ahmed doesn't offer anything new in this regard.

The middle chapters go astray from the topic where Ahmed rather unnecessarily focuses too much on Islamist movements like Muslim Brotherhood leaders(predominantly men) and their views regarding the veil, their conflicts with the socio-Nationalist Arab regimes, American intervention in the middle-east, etc. There is no new information here, and they don't do justice to the title of the book.

One would expect the writer to establish a much more intimate relationship with the cast aside veiled women and hear their narrative. The best Ahmed does is quoting the women members of the Islamist movements who promulgate the Islamist political discourses and represent an elitist power group.

The later chapters are slightly better, where Ahmed shifts her focus to the American context. Her tendency to rely heavily on second-hand accounts remains the same. She discusses the North American Muslim organizations like MCA, ICNA which are predominated by ex-Brotherhood member or sympathizers to the Wahabi strain of Islamist ideologues who often fund them. We don't get a clear picture of the scope of her research and never find out how many women she actually interviewed. Her overt reliance on personal experiences and the parochial focus on Arab-Americans and converted women impose further limitations on the scope of the book to have a broader universal appeal.

[Serena.. Sery-ously? · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raramente un libro "imposto" e letto per dovere universitario mi è piaciuto così tanto.. L'ho letto con enorme piacere e senza ombra di dubbio lo consiglierò a destra e manca, non solo agli "arabisti" in erba come me, ma anche - e soprattutto - a chi del mondo musulmano conosce solo quello che i media riportano.
Innanzittutto ho particolarmente apprezzato il fatto che l'autrice sia una donna musulmana e dunque conosca bene e di prima mano ciò di cui sta parlando..
Poi mi è piaciuto perché oltre ad offrire un background storico - fondamentale per capire - riporta anche numerosissimi esempi di donne musulmane che esprimono il loro parere a favore o contro l'hijab: donne che lottano per abolirlo, donne che lo considerano una forzatura e un simbolo della disparità di genere ma anche chi ha cominciato ad indossarlo a 20/30/40 anni come simbolo di identità, sicurezza o orgoglio.
La parte storica l'ho trovata davvero ben fatta: sebbene io conoscessi già la maggior parte degli eventi descritti, vengono presentati in modo chiaro e fattuale e permettono la comprensione del fenomeno velo (nonché dell'Islamismo, uno dei fattori scatenanti).

Ho trovato particolarmente interessante la descrizione della fase che precede lo sviluppo dell'Islamismo, quando nell'Egitto di inizio '900 il velo non solo era poco comune, ma anche spesso mal visto: Credo che in futuro, quando ci saranno discussioni sull'argomento, riporterò sempre l'esempio citato nel libro in cui diversi genitori si disperavano per l'hijab delle figlie che così non avrebbero mai trovato marito.

Insomma un excursus davvero interessante che permette di capire un po' meglio la situazione e mettere da parte qualche pregiudizio.. Soprattutto per l'ultima parte, quella della situazione delle donne nell'America post 11/9; devo ammettere che un po' mi ha commosso :')

Consigliatissimo!!

[Sandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a complete beginner to the subject, so I did learn about the history of the Islamist movement, especially in Egypt and the US. And I have a better appreciation of the varied reasons why more women in those countries are wearing the veil. The latter has been useful as I work among women wearing the veil on my campus in the US. I'm glad the author included small sketches of individual women which added a little warmth to an otherwise dry writing style.

What was unsatisfying is that it took the author 306 pages of scholarly writing to share her information and opinions. I felt this could have been summarized for the layperson in several pages or even less, and more clearly. With the length and the confusing repetition in the book, I really needed a study guide with names to remind me who's who, and chapter summaries with bullets! It was just hard for me to digest all the info and still hear her conclusion. I read it in entirety, but felt I was trudging through it, and frankly I couldn't wait to finish it. Still, if you are interested in the historical background of the veil, and how some Muslim women perceive the veil, I'm sure you will find this book fruitful.

[VJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned that Islamists come in many flavors, that they tend to be more politically and socially active in promoting the best for the community than their secular or moderate sisters and brothers.

The veil is a political statement. I still do not agree on it being a mandatory element of modest dress, but many women wear it of their own choosing to express a variety of political and personal beliefs.

[Jehnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good update on her earlier study of Women in Egypt.
This book analyzes the role of women in Egypt in the 1970s and 80s with the rise of Islamism. In the second half she analyzes the role of Muslim American women. Obviously, the question of the role of the veil is central to the book.

[Andi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting read, although the subtitle feels like a bit of a misnomer: the veil is a jumping-off point for Ahmed's interest in the topic, and does resurface from time to time throughout the narrative, but really this is a history of Islamism, an overtly political and activist form of Islam, with special attention paid to women's roles in the movement and its effects on their lives (and occasionally their sartorial choices). Part 1 covers Islamism's rise in the 20th century in the Middle East, focusing particularly on Egypt, and Part 2 discusses the way this movement has grown and changed throughout the 1990s and 2000s in the United States.

I definitely learned a lot about 20th century Egyptian history that I didn't know before, although that wasn't what I was looking for going in, and there were certainly parts, especially in Part 1,that felt like a bit of a slog. Part 2 was closer to what I was looking for, although it too occasionally strayed pretty far into the weeds. I did like Ahmed's discussions of individual activists, and the different ways they interpreted and engaged with their beliefs and put their values into action; the last chapter in particular was interesting for that. She was also very good about grounding each development in historical context and making relevant comparisons to other beliefs and movements where applicable, which I appreciated.

I have an acquaintance who's of the opinion that the hijab is a symbol of oppression and anyone who wears it is unquestioningly supporting misogyny (this person is not a Muslim, btw, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't know any personally). Going in, I was hoping this might be a book I could recommend to him to hopefully begin the process of pulling his head out of his Islamophobic ass, but ultimately the question of veiling feels so peripheral to the actual meat of this book that I think I'll have to keep looking for that particular topic. That's not to say it wasn't a worthwhile read, but it would have been helpful to have a more accurate picture of the book's subject before picking it up.

[Sam Lasry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dr. Leila Ahmed uses her extensive academic expertise to examine the political, religious, and societal changes in the Middle East throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, with a focus on women's status and dress, particularly in Egypt and the US.

The book does a decent job at navigating major milestones such as the colonial period and Nasserism era, the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab-Israeli Wars, Wahabism and the consequent Islamic resurgence of the 1970s and 1990s, and finally 9/11 and feminism within Muslim migrant Americans.

Dr. Leila definitely succeeded in demonstrating how these milestones interlink and slowly shift Islamic thought and women's roles. My only criticism was that she somehow failed to include other MENA regions like the Maghreb in the earlier chapters, where the Algerian civil war spanned a decade of fighting with Islamic rebel groups, for example.

Two quotes that convey the message of the book very well are:

"Somehow, with the rise of Islamism and quite possibly because activist women and wearers of the hijab became directly involved in generating the meanings of the hijab’s meanings, they began to break loose from their older, historically bounded moorings. It was only after the veil had gone through that cycle of history that it would be unmoored, at least for its wearers, from its old meanings. (p 212)"

"Of course I continue to believe that the rights and conditions of women in Muslim majority societies often are acutely in need of improvement, as indeed they are in many other societies. But the question now is how we address such issues while not allowing our work and concerns to aid and abet imperialist projects, including war projects that mete out death and trauma to Muslim women under the guise and to the accompaniment of a rhetoric of saving them. (p 229)"

[Dhartridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed, well researched, scholarly analysis of the meaning of women's veiling in Muslim culture. Ahmed ends up concluding, surprisingly to herself, that the veil (hijab) has many meanings to women and is often freely chosen rather that imposed upon them. In the U.S., it is now associated with a socially active, feminist culture of women's empowerment, for want of a better phrase. Ahmed grew up in Egypt at a time when Muslim women didn't veil and practiced a private type of Islam, basing their identities less on religion than on being Egyptian. She had looked askance at the rise of Islamism, in which a person sees themselves first as Muslim, and brings their religion into the public square. One of the things that interested me most was her description of how the issue of Islamic oppression of woman has been used to justify wars to "save women" in countries like Afghanistan. I have seen a number of movies and read a few books, including Reading Lolita in Tehran, that focus on women's oppression. I didn't grasp the potential of these writings as propaganda tools until I read this book. She doesn't deny that women are often oppressed in Islamic countries, but she writes about the current movement among western women who are maintaining their religious beliefs and practices while working for women's recognition and rights within their faith. The book is a thorough exploration of ideas that are front and center in today's world. One quibble is that her writing style includes a distracting overuse of quotation marks. Because she bases her contentions on a thorough perusal of the statements of individuals including scholars, political figures, religious leaders and others, she apparently wants to be careful about not appearing to plagiarize, but so many individual words are in quotes makes for choppy reading at times.

[Lia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книга стояла на полке года полтора, а жаль.

Подробное исследование того, что такое исламизм, как он зародился в Египте и распространился в США, и как с исламистами связаны поколения американских исламских «феминисток» (в скобках, потому что это не самоназвание). Лейла Ахмед рассказывает, как происходило сначала снятие головного платка (и как исламский модернизм связан с колониальными властями), и как в части общества начались обратные процессы, как исламистские толкования Священного Корана получили широкую репрезентацию — сначала в Египте, а затем, с миграцией, и в Америке. Интересно, как она соединяет в очень сложную и противоречивую конструкцию исламизм, сомнительную политику американского правительства, денежные потоки и терроризм. Книга написана в 2011 году, тогда, по словам Ахмед, исламисты и их дети, которые составляют меньшинство от американских мусульман, были самой громкой (и видной) и самой активной мусульманской общностью. Я читала, потому что мне интересно, какими смыслами обрастает головной платок в разных сообществах, надеюсь, со временем смогу проводить параллели с российской ситуацией.

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really incisive volume that does more than what the title suggests. In order to understand why the veil made a resurgence in multiple Muslim communities across the world in the 70s, and 80s, and beyond, Prof. Ahmed outlines its historical trajectory from the early 20th century, through its appearance in the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt in the 50s and 60s, through its meaning and use internationally among immigrant communities in America, and beyond. As such we learn a lot about political, nationalist, and religious history in the late 20th / early 21st centuries.

I found the first half of the book more enlightening than the second half, which read more of a ethnography of a specific (albeit important) population of American Muslims and their reasons for wearing the veil.

Most definitely a thought-provoking and nuanced read.

[Gally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Politics and history surrounding the Islamic veil, primarily in Egypt and the United States. Most of the text follows figures, organizations, and movements from the 1950s until about 2008, although a historical background is given reaching as far as the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1799.
This is certainly an academic history, but is very much an approachable, informative, and engaging read. Ahmed highlights movements in the wake of 9/11, including Muslim-American organizations, women's and LGBT activism, and Islamophobia.

[Schwarz Rund · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for a university class. I learned a lot about egypt history but I think this book would deserve a better editing. It is sometimes confusing and more structure would have been so, so helpful.
Also sometimes it is, from a scientific view point, a little loosley researched. Some rumors made it into the book, without proper proof.

still an outstanding reading as you will et here a huge, deep research on egypt history!