Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance

by Fadwa El Guindi, Joanne B. Eicher (Series Editor)

Shortlisted for the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award 2000. In the 1970s, often to the consternation of parents and siblings, certain progressive young Arab women voluntarily donned the veil. The movement, which rapidly expanded and continues to gather momentum, has sparked controversy within Islamic culture, as well as reactions ranging from perplexity to outrage from those outside it. Western feminist commentators have been particularly vociferous in decrying the veil, which they glibly interpret as a concrete manifestation of patriarchal oppression. However, most Western observers fail to realize that veiling, which has a long and complex history, has been embraced by many Arab women as both an affirmation of cultural identity and a strident feminist statement. Not only does the veil de-marginalize women in society, but it also represents an expression of liberation from colonial legacies. In short, contemporary veiling is more often than not about resistance. By voluntarily removing themselves from the male gaze, these women assert their allegiance to a rich and varied tradition, and at the same time preserve their sexual identity. Beyond this, however, the veil also communicates exclusivity of rank and nuances in social status and social relations that provide telling insights into how Arab culture is constituted. Further, as the author clearly demonstrates, veiling is intimately connected with notions of the self, the body and community, as well as with the cultural construction of identity, privacy and space. This provocative book draws on extensive original fieldwork, anthropology, history and original Islamic sources to challenge the simplistic assumption that veiling is largely about modesty and seclusion, honor and shame.

Genres: Islam, Feminism, Religion, Nonfiction, Fashion, Gender

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Fadwa El Guindi is an Egyptian-born in 1941 professor of anthropology with a PhD in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin (1972).[1] At present she is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at Qatar University in Doha, Qatar, as well as head of the department of social sciences.

El Guindi graduated from the American University in Cairo, with a BA in Political Science. She worked at the Social Research Centre and participated in the first full-scale ethnographic project to study the way of life of the Nubians of Egypt prior to their government-sponsored relocation due to the building of the Aswan Dam.[1]

In 1986, she made the film El Sebou': Egyptian Birth Ritual, which was sponsored by the Office of Folklife Programs at the Smithsonian Institution. She also guest-starred as Julian Bashir's mother, Amsha Bashir, in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?", opposite Siddig El Fadil and Brian George.[2]
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from wiki

Reviews

[Mohammed Yusuf · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب مميز، بعيد عن الكتابات السطحية حول الحجاب، يغطي مناطق مهمة حول نشأة ورمزية الحجاب داخل الفضاء الإسلامي ، عبر الانثربولوجيا وتعليقات على دراسات تمت في عدة قبائل إسلامية خلال فترات تاريخية مختلفة

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fadwa El Gindi has set herself an extremely difficult task: to explain, anthropologically, the meaning and significance of the veil in contemporary Arab societies. She is extremely critical of approaches to the veil that come at it from Area, Religious/Islamic or Women’s Studies approaches because, she says, they fail to grasp the diversity of significances of the veil; she is also extremely critical of anthropology, her field, for its failure to attend to dress.

She draws on a rich set of evidence, her own ethnographic work in the emergence of a demotic Islamic politics since the 1970s, a small but rich body of anthropological work dealing with Arab societies, and textual analyses of the Qu’ran, hadith and related scriptural sources. This range of sources means that there are times when the narrative flow of the text seems to be broken by the requirements of using a different form of information as evidence for the case, but bear with the demands of this diversity and watch out for the emergence of a vital distinction between seclusion, modesty and privacy as a key element of her argument.

The modesty/privacy distinction is, I think, essential here. Although there is a vibrant set of debates within Islamic cultural politics about the meaning of ‘modesty’ as restraint, humility and so forth, El Guindi is, I suspect, right to note that for many outsiders ‘modesty’ relates to sexual modesty only and as such use of that term to discuss meanings for veiling fails to adequately encapsulate the requirements on men and women towards modesty. Privacy, then, becomes a key trope and allows her to explore the idea of the eternally sacred within the secular – of sacred bodies, people, spaces – and ways in which the veil in its many forms acts as a mode of ‘seclusion’ for some and display and status for others, often the same person in different contexts. There is, in this context, an intriguing distinction between veiling as a distinction from slovenliness, as a form of care for the body and appearance that is class and status linked.

It is a rich and subtle argument that would have been enhanced has the photographic reproduction been better: Berg seemed to save money by stinting on the production costs at the expense of the clarity of the argument in a couple of places.

[Yomna · Rating 5 out of 5]

معظم الكتب التي بتناقش جدلية الحجاب بتناقشه من منظور النصوص، سواء من القران أو السنة
كتاب د فدوى أول كتاب يعدي عليا يكون بيناقش الحجاب من منظور أنثروبولوجي و اثنوغرافي، بالأخذ في الإعتبار الجانب المتعلق بالنصوص طبعا.
كتاب بيستعرض كيف اتخذ الحجاب كرمز للهوية و المقاومة ضد الإحتلال، و بيناقش تحجب الرجال. مواضع بحث دائما ما يغفل عنها معظم من يحاول مناقشة الحجاب
عمل ميداني ضخم يستحق القراءة

[Femina Sagita Borualogo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the English one, titled Veil: Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance, when I was writing my mater thesis which was the same subject, Veil. This ethnographic book inspired me a lot, because it made Veil as a very analitic subject of discussion. Good work of El-Guindi!

[Yulikha Elvitri · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5⭐

Sangat bagus.
Meski mencari buku ini cukup susah dan niat beli untuk melengkapi bahan jurnal tentang Jilbab.

Bahwa jilbab tidak sesederhana cara memakainya. Bacaan bagus untuk membuka wacana bahwa jilbab sesungguhnya bukan saksi ketaqwaan semata.

[Femina Sagita Borualogo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This ethnographic book inspired me a lot, because it made Veil as a very analitic subject of discussion. Good work of El-Guindi!

[Valena Arguello · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fadwa accounts for the persistence of veiling across cultures as well as its significance in such... Great book