Islamic Like Me: Taking On The Veil

Danielle Crittenden wore a burka for a week during her daily life in Washington, D.C. Click here to see a video of her experience, which appears in Canada's National Post.

Part One: Taking On the Veil

'I wonder what it's like to wear Arabic dress?" I said one day to my husband. His eyes sparked with interest. "You mean as in I Dream of Jeannie?"

"No. I mean those black cover-ups they wear in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries."

"Oh." He looked disappointed.

"Seriously. What must it be like to wear something like that day in, day out? Never being able to show your face in public -- or to a man who is not your husband. I don't think Western women appreciate how oppressive that must be."

My husband was not paying attention. "That filmy, translucent fabric, the little sequined top ... If I could impose dress on women, that's what I'd impose." He paused. "Maybe not all women ..."
I ignored him, warming to my rant. "And yet, you never hear a peep of protest about it from the feminist groups over here. They protest the war in Iraq. But the idea that there are people right here who want to shroud women ... to make us all submissive and invisible ... where's the outrage over that?

"And we shouldn't kid ourselves. It's coming here too. It already is here."

The sight of fully veiled women has become disturbingly familiar in shopping malls, airport lounges and Muslim neighbourhoods across North America. I see them sometimes in the shopping mall at Tyson's Corner, in Northern Virginia; I see them often when traveling in Europe. It's strange: North American and European Muslim leaders insist that the Koran does not require full cover-up, that little more is required than modest clothes and a headscarf. Yet one does not hear these leaders speaking out against the spread of the more extreme interpretations of veiling, even as it spreads further and further.

Whether or not veiling is a political or cultural statement, we in the West have to ask: Is this a statement that is tolerable in a free and equal society? Does our deference to minority cultures require us to acquiesce in the subjugation and intimidation of women?

In 2005, Cherie Booth Blair, wife of the former British prime minister, fought a court case to win the right for a girl to wear full cover to her school over the opposition of a Muslim headmistress. (Blair won, but the ruling was overturned this year in the House of Lords. She has since voiced misgivings about the veil.)

In April, 2005, a Muslim dentist in Manchester, England, was caught requiring his female patients to wear cover before he would treat them. (The dentist was found guilty of a breach of professional standards in September.)

Accepting veiling implies acceptance of a larger ideology of female subordination. And that ideology too is finding a receptive audience in our own society. A former attorney-general of Ontario, Canada proposed that the province permit Shariah law for arbitrating domestic disputes between Muslims on a voluntary basis. In the free and equal societies of North America and Europe, we are hearing of more and more cases of forced marriage, confinement of women to their homes, honour killings and female genital mutilation.

Like many women, I am appalled by these trends. As a writer, I am fascinated by them -- and by the cover that both conceals and proclaims them. When I see a woman entirely masked in black cloth, I can't help but wonder what it must be like to be her -- and what it would be like to be fully cloaked in my own life. The garment is at once so alien and so personal, so mundane and yet so fraught with meaning.

Thus one day I found myself sitting down to my computer and entering the search words, "Islamic clothing retail." I decided I would buy the "full Saudi": an abaya, or cloak, plus a niqab, or face cover. I'd wear it for one week here in Washington, D.C., where I am otherwise a journalist and mother of three. I'd do everything I usually do, except I'd do it completely veiled.

One of my first surprises was how many choices came up on my search (about 1.2 million hits, according to Google). There was everything from "Islamic Haute Couture" to "Plus Size Islamic Clothing online store." There were multiple styles of niqab as well: Did I want a mask that just covered the lower half of my face -- sort of like a lobster napkin over the nose -- or did I want more "full coverage"?

I settled upon a outfit pictured on the Web site of a Kuwaiti boutique called Al-Hannah. It looked like something an executioner would wear, if the execution took place in a heavily wooded area infested with mosquitos: a black hood with peephole eyes and two extra layers of netting; long black cloak and black gloves. The catalogue assured me this outfit would be, "Perfect in any weather. Our [abaya] is made from the same high quality, breathable, poly blend georgette fabric worn by women in Iraq and surrounding Gulf states." As for its matching headgear: "Two outer layers wrap around to ears when down. Pull one screen down and you can see out, yet prying eyes can not see in. For extra privacy pull both screens down. Tie closure." I could even use PayPal!

The only real puzzle was sizing. Rather than the usual "small, medium or large," the online form asked for the measurement from my shoulder to feet. There was something pleasing about not having to worry about hips or chest -- and also, something definitely weird, like I was being measured for a bedsheet (which I guess I was). Perhaps the form should have asked, "twin, full, queen, king, California king."

A few weeks later, an odd parcel arrived at my door. It looked like a package someone had shipped 400 years ago but had gone astray in the post: a bundle of coarse white cloth, hand-sewn shut. A rubber band secured its girth. My name and address was scrawled on it in black ink below a postal sticker from the State of Kuwait.

I opened it excitedly, and shook out a pile of black cloth. I'd ordered three outfits, so I could launder one while wearing the other, and have a spare in case any of my friends wanted to join the experiment.

But as I rooted through the pile, trying to discern the different pieces, I realized the vendor had forgotten my niqabs. There was no sense calling Kuwait to complain. Instead, after more Internet surfing, I tracked down a niqab at a shop in the nearby (heavily Muslim) suburb of Falls Church, Virginia.

There, a helpful but curious salesman found the niqab I was looking for.

"If you don't mind me asking, why do you need this?"

"I'm travelling," I said vaguely. (I did not say, "fellow-travelling.")

The man, Pakistani by origin, clearly did not think much of Saudi fashions for women. When I asked him how to put on the niqab, he chuckled and said, "Like Zorro."

He tied it around my head, and then flipped back a top layer of cloth to reveal my eyes. "You can use it again at Halloween," he said, still chuckling.

I startled at my reflection: All that was left of my head were a pair of two intense blue eyes peering back.

I was about to become entirely invisible.

TOMORROW: "GOODBYE TO NORMAL LIFE"

Photograph by Brent Foster, National Post

Comments

[tyruler]

David Frum's neocon wife asks, "And yet, you never hear a peep of protest about it from the feminist groups over here. They protest the war in Iraq. But the idea that there are people right here who want to shroud women ... to make us all submissive and invisible ... where's the outrage over that?"

As a Muslim male, the last thing I have power over is telling my wife, sister, or mother to cover. They'll kick my ass collectively if it went against their wishes.

But that's the magic, they all cover, not because I tell them to or some male tells them to, as downright idiotic people like you have other gullible Americans believe, they do it out of religious modesty and conviction much like the nuns habit.

Agreed that I find it as repugnant as Wahhabis forcing women to cover as much as I dislike some self-righteous Western women such as yourself who think all the world wants to dress the way you do. Please do Muslims the world over a favor and butt out our internal affairs from Iraq to Lebanon (and this coming from an American first). Ron Paul is right, you as a neocon have no right to tell others overseas how to live their life and culture.

Your modern day Frumm-Crusade on behalf of women's rights, democracy, and liberation have all proved itself to be nothing but convenient lies of deception. You are not helping Muslims women, you are imposing on them. Indeed you ARE hurting their cause. Sure there are plenty of women in Saudi and Iranian society that don't want to wear the mandatory dress code...but seriously as much as I want to see that gone, that issue is secondary when Iranian and Iraqi blood, oil wealth, and lives have been and are being lost daily, due to men like your husband, David Frum.

I'm greatly disappointed that as someone who has visited Islamic countries that you still remain ignorant as ever.

best to you

[BoBoBolinski]

Islam died after the last Imam of the Shia. It has been corrupt ever since. Mohammad and Ali would be ashamed of how Muslims treat their women. The world needs a veil to cover up this religion that Mohammad put to rest over a thousand years ago.

[RaptorRex]

I think some people dislike the veil not because they fear for women's rights but because of a sense of "they are coming". Meaning that Islam is growing and it scares them. The more veiled women they see, the more Muslims there must be in their neighbourhoods. The final great fear is that eventually a Muslim majority will retract their own personal freedoms as is done in many Muslim countries today.

And I am proud to have lived in a country that permits both veils and pornography. That is freedom.

[r81801]

The issue is law and choice. If you choose to wear a costume, then have fun--if it is legally required or socially imposed on you with dire consequences, then it is a problem.

This kind of clothing is very similar to the garb of Roman Catholic nuns who live in my neighborhood. They don't cover a small area of their face, but all the rest is hidden in volumes of cloth.

People do and believe all kinds of bizarre things. I find most religions to be sad coping attempts with horrific imaginary goblins and heroes, so the whole discussion seems more a human mental health issue than about clothing.

[rlehman]

"Whether or not veiling is a political or cultural statement, we in the West have to ask: Is this a statement that is tolerable in a free and equal society?"

Of course it is. For the very reason that we live in a free and equal society.

I know a few Muslim women who wear the veil. Most of them choose it as a discipline (compare those of us who take on a discipline at Lent.) They will also tell you it gives them a freedom most women here do not know. They are not judged by their clothing, their hair cut, their shape. Not the way I would choose to allow others to be blind to anything other than my personhood but I've heard from one friend that that is exactly how she feels about wearing the veil.

Woman are subjugated in Arab countries. Humans are subjugated all over the world. But, I have much more tolerance for those who feel women should be veiled than I do for those who trot young girls who have yet to reach the age of consent through every possible media outlet as advertisement for their sexually suggestive clothing. I really don't want my 11 year old thinking she needs to be dressed up like a hooker in order to be 'in.'

[Caitlain]

For all those of you who insist this isn't about subjugating women, why aren't MEN wearing wearing clothing that covers them from head to toe? If it is truly about "liberation" and "not judging someone by their appearances," why aren't MEN wearing this kind of stuff?

[13Martyrs]

I spent three years living and working in Saudi Arabia, having just returned last year. There's no question that Saudi women are oppressed in many ways. From limited job opportunities to the ban on driving. But the abaya is not one of them.

Muslim women find this a superficial issue. They bristle at the West's preoccupation with the abaya as a symbol of oppression. Unlike what you imply, wearing the niqab is a personal choice. As a rule women make their own choice whether to wear the niqab.

The Qur'an does not require the face to be covered. This is cultural and Saudi women would be the first to tell you this. Also to be considered is the fact that 99.9% of Saudi women who travel leave the abaya at home. They recognize and understand that they would look like freaks wearing the abaya and niqab outside their own country.

Saudi women laugh when liberals talk of the abaya as oppressive. Yet they see 12- and 14-year-olds sexually exploited in U.S. advertisements and on the Internet. Somehow they are supposed to believe that such things are liberating. What, they say, makes Western women the judges of what is oppressive. They need to look inward and evaluate their values first.

Muslim women are tired of these lectures from the West and silly stunts by women who wear the abaya and niqab in the U.S. as if they are breaking new ground and fighting the good fight for all oppressed Muslim women. It's a bunch of hooey. The reason for the abaya is not to attract attention to yourself. Your experiment will have the opposite effect and fail because it will attract unwanted attention.

Muslim women find that the West's preoccupation with the abaya and niqab detracts from the more important issues of the day: The right to drive. The right to a college education. The right to equal job opportunities. Their message to you is quit focusing on the trivial.

13 Martyrs
http://13martyrs.blogspot.com/

[Gingur]

Umm, if you want to know what it's like to wear the veil, why don't you ask the women who do as part of their actual lives, not as a costume or an 'experiment'? Heck, you can find many articulate, interesting Muslim women blogging, some of them wearing a headscarf or veil, with a few keystrokes. Many fascinating pieces have been written by women within Muslim communities about the practice, and yes, even by feminists.

Instead you think you can get the essence of their experience by playing dress-up? Why did you choose the most extreme, the most 'other' form to try? Why did you think one of your friends might want to get in on this? There are undercurrents of titillation throughout this piece that are really disturbing. I thought better of HuffPo.

[samfox]

"Accepting veiling implies acceptance of a larger ideology of female subordination."

What would you call an ideology that subscribes to the use of 15 or 16 year old models on a catwalk, used to portray the latest fashions of couture fashion houses and dressed to look like over-sexed dolls?
What would you call an ideology that creates an obsession with celebrity and glorifies "celebrities" like Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears?

I live in a Muslim country, I am a Muslim and I do not wear the veil. It has never been imposed on me, either by society or by my family. I do not presume to argue that Arab women living in GCC or Middle Eastern countries are not oppressed. However, what I am arguing is that the generalization of oppression based on the veil is naive and displays ignorance rather than a true attempt to understand the complexities of this region.

For the majority of Muslim women in the world (not just the Middle East), the veil represents a way in which you are not judged by the clothes you wear, the way you look or your hairstyle du jour. For them, it is about feeling liberated. Again, I am not saying that it is not forced on women in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and other countries. But there is more to this than just "oppression".

If you are so concerned about these women's rights and freedoms, then maybe you should be examining their right to an education, a career, a driver's license... their right to go shopping on their own without a male relative for an escort, i.e., the freedoms we take for granted every day.

[marko77]

I clicked on to the site that shows pictures of these coverings for sale. Talk of being creeped out!!!

Covering oneself had a place in Saudi Arabia during the time of the Prophet Mohammad when people had to travel in the desert with winds that whipped particles of sand - that were like little pieces of glass - at people.

It's lunacy to think women have to be covered in this manner today in cities and towns.

[NumberCruncher]

The interesting thing though, is that women on the required not to wear the niquab but for some reason seem to think such dress is required to they are religious at other times!!

[bluesapphire48]

Danielle Crittenden has completely missed the point of wearing hijab.

It is not "an experiment."

It is a discipline.

It is not about buying new outfits.

It is a way of getting past what a person looks like or dresses like, and concentrating on how you treat other people.

Some of the kindest women I know were Saudi and Egyptian women who were dressed from head to toe. They had a compassion and a strength that most women in the West, I'm sorry to say, just don't have.

And I am a white, Anglo-Saxon American women. I don't wear hijab, but I respect women who do. They value themselves, and that is something that our sick American society doesn't understand. That's why we can let our government torture people, and why people can starve in our streets and the government doesn't care. We are making war on decent people in the Middle East, and it will come back on us. The depleted uranium that we dump on women who wear hijab in Iraq and Afghanistan will poison our own country, too.

[grailknight]

A real problem with full face veiling is that it is anathema to western society. We are an open society by which seeing each others' faces is bedrock egalitarianism. Covering one's face in our society in this context suggests exclusion and duress, not submission as the term Islam means as submitting to the will of Allah. Moreover facial covering has a long criminal connotation, i.e., highwaymen and vigilantes, not that women who veil themselves are, but covered faces are an offense to western sensibilities. Wearing a head scarf and other loose fitting clothing should be signal enough to ward off unwelcome staring.

[blacksellout]

Pakiman how are women gaining employment is Saudi. And do you understand if these things are a major issue in your countries, then it's a problem for the belief system that rejects female empowerment to be accepted in the west. How much power do your fundamentalist clerics have in the middle east. Our fundamentalist Christians do not have centralized power. Your fundamentalist clerics seem to rule from the highest place, and seem to have the power to make laws that reverberate throughout society. They seem to oppose the movement of women, as most fundamentalist do, though ours are getting better. So you paint a rosy picture, but as long as Islam and State are conflated, women's rights seem to be at the mercy of a fundamentalist whim in the middle east. If you are moving forward they are in a good mood. Speaking of outside help, I mentioned Afganistan before, ( I am not sure it will be printed) but I believe it was outside feminist who got a Iranian-American feminist released recently.

[jackbauer0396]

Can we stop acting like the veil is a problem with Islam, as a religion?

Of course, Islamic CULTURES have serious issues that need to be worked out. But to assume that there is a universal problem with wearing a veil is so ethnocentric, it's sickening.

The sin isn't the wearing of a veil. The sin is when women aren't presented with a choice. In Saudi Arabia, women are second class citizens. Maybe if America didn't have such large oil interests there, we could actually DO something about it! We condemned Afghanistan for being so archaic (which they were, towards men as well as women---men were beaten by religious police for not having beards) but we did nothing to battle the injustices in Saudi Arabia.

Further, if you're a Christian and you think that Islam is a faulty religion because of veiling, consider this. "Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered brings shame upon his head. But any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled brings shame upon her head, for it is one and the same thing as if she had had her head shaved." Is this a Hadith of the Prophet Mohammed? Is this a Qur'anic sura? No, it's in CORINTHIANS, written by Paul the apostle.

If a woman wants to express her religion and culture in this form of modesty, she has every right to, and should not be scorned or MOCKED, like you, Danielle, are doing. This isn't some sort of "cultural bridge" you're trying to gap here, I presume. I hardly believe your conclusion will bring forth some sort of cultural understanding. Quite a masquerade, indeed.