Pop orientalists and hard-line Islamists agree with each other on the "essence of Islam" -- they both come up with the most conservative possible interpretation of what hijab means, unsupported by textual evidence from the Qur'an, and assert that it's been in use across classes and regions for ages, undocumented by empirical historical evidence.
>But the point that such patterns of dressing pre-date colonial rule
>is well-taken.
The point is not that colonialism invented the veil -- various face veils and head coverings not only predate colonialism but also Islam:
Like most customs, what women wear has reflected the practices of a region and the social position of the wearer. The veil itself predates Islam by many centuries. In the Near East, Assyrian kings first introduced both the seclusion of women in the royal harem and the veil. Prostitutes and slaves, however, were told not to veil, and were slashed if they disobeyed this law.
Beyond the Near East, the practice of hiding one's face and largely living in seclusion appeared in classical Greece, in the Byzantine Christian world, in Persia, and in India among upper caste Rajput women. Muslims in their first century at first were relaxed about female dress. When the son of a prominent companion of the Prophet asked his wife Aisha bint Talha to veil her face, she answered, "Since the Almighty hath put on me the stamp of beauty, it is my wish that the public should view the beauty and thereby recognized His grace unto them. On no account, therefore, will I veil myself."
As Islam reached other lands, regional practices, including the covering of women, were adopted by the early Muslims. Yet it was only in the second Islamic century that the veil became common, first used among the powerful and rich as a status symbol. The Qu'ranic prescription to "draw their veils over their bosoms" became interpreted by some as an injunction to veil one's hair, neck and ears.
Throughout Islamic history only a part of the urban classes were veiled and secluded. Rural and nomadic women, the majority of the population, were not. For a woman to assume a protective veil and stay primarily within the house was a sign that her family had the means to enable her to do so. ("Historical Perspectives On Islamic Dress," <http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/essay-01.html>)
What colonialism invented is the idea that the veil -- especially of the sort that covers the entire face and body -- was universally worn by Muslim women across classes, regions, and relations of production. The idea was subsequently adopted by Islamists. The irony is that Islamists, who rail against the decadence of the West and consider local feminists to be purveyors of Western corruptions, are the ones who are the most taken in by an essentially Western colonial invention. Islamists = the biggest suckers for all orientalist nonsense. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>