This book overturns Western notions of the veil as a symbol of women's oppression in Islamic societies. The author reveals how the veil, which has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity since the 1970s, de-marginalizes women in society and is an expression of liberation from colonial legacies as well as a symbol of resistance. She also shows how the veil has multiple and nuanced meanings which extend far beyond the narrow view that it is merely a special form of women's clothing.
In Islamic culture, women are autonomous in identity, and men and women equal in creative imagination, and religious and sexual status. Veiling is intimately connected with notions of self, body, and community, as well as with the cultural construction of identity, privacy, and space. Veiling has historical roots in practices of body covering and institutions of gender separation which penetrated Arab culture with conquest and by contact and were eventually modified in use and meaning to accommodate regional tradition.
Drawing on the ethnographic method and extensive fieldwork in the Arab East, this engrossing book challenges the European dichotomy of space into public and private, and morality into honor and shame, and shows how these notions have mistakenly been applied to Arab women's use of the veil and, more broadly, to their position in society.
