Islamic female clothing has become as much a political statement as it is a
religious statement in many countries, which is why Marjona has a fashion
problem.
The 20-year-old Tajik, a devout Muslim and madrassa (seminary) student,
says she feels "increasingly passionate" about wearing hijab, the
Islamic head scarf, "but you aren't allowed to wear the hijab in
schools."
Graduation will solve Marjona's problem. Tajik officials banned girls from
wearing hijab in public and Islamic schools and universities this
autumn, but grown women are free to wear what they like.
Many Muslim women don't get off so easily, however. When laws
on religious clothing conflict with their personal beliefs, no matter what
Muslim women wear, be it a full-body burqini swimsuit in secular France
or a too-loose hijab in doctrinaire Iran, it's probably wrong.
French officials have long sought to set restrictions on what Muslim women can
and should wear. President Nicholas Sarkozy has controversially described
Islamic dress as reducing women to "prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all
social life, deprived of all identity".
Chloe Patton used to live in France and now studies hijab-wearing youth
in Australia. She says that despite "a lot of hypocrisy" and "long-standing
politics" on Islamic clothing, there are genuine safety concerns. In France and
other Western European countries, women have been attacked and killed for not
wearing a head scarf.
John Bowen, a United States anthropologist and the author of the book Why The
French Don't Like Headscarves, thinks the idea that head scarves are
"the symbol of the oppression of women" lacks evidence. "It's just a claim kind
of thrown out there," he says.
Still, the French have issued a series of bans on Islamic wear, beginning with
head scarves in schools.
More recently, lawmakers have declared swimming pools off-limits to women
wearing burqinis, which resemble a loose-fitting wetsuit with an
attached hood. Officials say the suits are unhygienic. But the decision sparked
controversy in a country famed for its topless beaches and devotion to fashion.
Growing unrest prompted French officials to launch a public debate on the
French national identity this week, including a proposed ban on the burqa.
Bowen, who is preparing expert testimony for the French parliamentary committee
considering the burqa ban, believes the Islamic clothing debate is a
"symbol" of a larger goal. France's goal, which Bowen describes as a "state
project", is secularist and concerned with, he says, "trying not to be taken
over by what they would call an Islamist ideology”.
'A bomb in my undies'
Central Asia's autocratic leaders have "state projects" of their own.
Although the majority of the region's inhabitants are Muslim, the countries are
officially secular. Authorities are eager to keep signs of religious devotion
under tight control because they fear that a threat to their power will come in
the form of Islamic extremism.
Uzbekistan recently banned women from wearing the hijab in schools and
universities in the country's south, where Islamic activity is on the rise.
Authorities also forbade women from wearing the head scarf during the country's
Independence Day celebrations in early September, claiming that female
terrorists could use the loose-fitting head scarf to conceal a bomb.
Many Muslim women say such restrictions border on the ludicrous. Aheda Zanetti,
the creator of the burqini, thinks terrorism fears are no justification
for the Uzbek crackdown on what she calls "a piece of cloth".
"I can hide a bomb in my undies," she says. "I can! I can walk around with my
undies on and hide a bomb in them. Really. Bombs are getting smaller and
sharper."
The Lebanese-born Zanetti, now an Australian citizen, says she got the idea for
the burqini after reading about swimming in a full burqa, which
is common in the Muslim world. Because the weight of the garment makes moving
in the water difficult, swimming can become an inconvenience at best and a
drowning hazard at worst.
The burqini can be a surprising sight to beachgoers accustomed to the
more revealing swimwear favored in the West.
But Muriniso Alizoda, a journalist and women's activist in Tajikistan, says the
modest Muslim swimsuit is nothing short of a human-rights triumph - especially
in comparison to bikinis themselves.
"Look, I think one type of swimwear [the bikini] is actually less liberating
than the other [the burqini], because a woman's rights are violated when
men look lustfully at her," she says. "That's a violation. But in the burqini's
case, I don't see any violation of human rights."
Bad hijab
For women in Iran - the only country to have both banned and enforced the hijab
within two generations - the issue of human rights comes down to the right to
choose.
Starting in 1936, the hijab was banned by Iran's Pahlavi ruling
monarchy, which also ushered in an era of improved women's rights, offering
better education and work opportunities and better protection for women and
families under the law.
After the 1979 Islamic revolution, however, those advances saw an immediate
rollback; the hijab was enforced for women almost overnight.
Iranian-American Azadeh Moaveni, the author of the best-selling memoirs Honeymoon
in Tehran and Lipstick Jihad, says many Iranian women feel
imprisoned by the state's strict interpretation of what they can and cannot
wear.
"I think even many religious women are democratically minded and open-minded
enough not to want the state to impose religious dress," she says. "There's a
lot of comfort in the Iranian women's movement with looking at it that way."
Fatemeh Haghighatjou, an observant Muslim and former member of the Iranian
parliament who now lives in the United States, says that "politics play a great
role" in regulations on Islamic dress, but most Iranian women agree that "women
should be free."
In the years following the revolution, women wore severe, dark colors and kept
their hair and neck completely covered. Such restrictions were supported by
what Moaveni calls the "male, extremist political agenda" to create model
Islamic citizens out of a population that was, in fact, "much more secular and
sophisticated."
Younger Iranian women are increasingly pushing the boundaries of what is
acceptable Islamic wear. But for women who came of age before the revolution,
Moaveni says Islamic clothing restrictions have been grudgingly accepted as an
inescapable diktat.
For these women, she says, "wearing 'fashionable' Islamic dress is possibly
abhorrent" because "they just reject the idea so entirely that they're not
willing to even individualize it and create their own style within it".
Personalizing Islamic wear "has fallen to the younger generation", she says,
"who hasn't known anything else."
Today, many young women wear brightly colored scarves loosely wrapped around
their heads or tied at the back. Some even dare to show a little neck. The
latest trend is to style exposed hair at the top of the head, puffing it up in
a fashion reminiscent of the 1960s.
The look, frequently accompanied by heavy makeup, even has a name - "bad hijab".
Significantly, bad hijab is spreading, along with a growing number of
Iranian youth frustrated by the ruling regime and hardline President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad.
With a majority of Iran's population due to come of age within the decade,
trends like the "bad hijab" may prove a stumbling block for a regime
keen on using Islamic dress for political purposes.
For now, Iran's Islamic fashion police are fighting back - even requiring that
storefront mannequins are appropriately dressed, wearing the hijab and
with all "bodily curves" hidden.
RFE/RL's Tajik and Uzbek services contributed to this report.
Copyright (c) 2009, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
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