(Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style: Gendered Configurations in Muslim Contexts 9783030719401, 9783030719418

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NEW DIRECTIONS IN ISLAM

(Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style Gendered Configurations in Muslim Contexts

Edited by Viola Thimm

New Directions in Islam

Series Editors Joshua M. Roose, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia Bryan S. Turner, Australian Catholic University and The Graduate Centre, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

The New Directions in Islam series will promote creative ways of conceptualizing the practice of Islam in new, challenging contexts and present innovative and provocative interdisciplinary studies examining intellectual, political, legal, economic, and demographic trajectories within Islam. Although recognised as the world’s fastest growing religion, many Muslims now live in secular societies where Islam is a minority religion and where there is considerable social conflict between Muslim communities and the wider society. Therefore it is vital to engage with the multitude of ways by which Muslims are adapting and evolving as social and cultural minorities. How are they developing their faith in line with local and national customs? How are converts and subsequent generations adapting in these challenging contexts? This series moves beyond dichotomies about radicalism, citizenship, and loyalty evident in the proliferation of descriptive and repetitive studies of Islamophobia and Orientalism, which have become both negative and predictable. Rather, contrary to the perception of Muslims as victims of secular modernity, we are interested in ‘success stories’ of Muslims adapting in and contributing to society at local, national and even transnational levels, such as the case of Muslim middle classes in Canada, the United States, South Africa, and Argentina. This series will go beyond the geographic boundaries of the Middle East to examine Islam from a global perspective in vastly different contexts from Brazil to Vietnam and Austria to Papua New Guinea.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14746

Viola Thimm Editor

(Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style Gendered Configurations in Muslim Contexts

Editor Viola Thimm University of Heidelberg Heidelberg, Germany

New Directions in Islam ISBN 978-3-030-71940-1 ISBN 978-3-030-71941-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8

(eBook)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Picture Partners/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Introduction: (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style—Gendered Configurations in Muslim Contexts Viola Thimm

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Modesty and Fashion: Reconfiguring Social Conditions and Identifications Beauty East, Beauty West: Muslim Beauty in Indonesian Islamic Magazines Diah Ariani Arimbi “Your Life Would Be Twice as Easy If You Didn’t Wear It, It’s Like a Superhero’s Responsibility.” Clothing Practices of Young Muslim Women in Germany as Sites of Agency and Resistance Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf and Yasmina Shamdin “How I Wear My Headscarf.” Narratives About Dress and Styling from Young Muslim Women in Copenhagen Gülzar Demir, Marie-Louise Nosch, and Else Skjold

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Contents

Trending Muslim Appeal and the Discourse on Intersectional Diversity Laura Haddad Men’s Non-Fashion: Embodying Authority in the Gulf Viola Thimm

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Normative Orders, Subjectivation and Counteractive Practices The Halal Nail Polish: Religion and Body Politics in the Marketplace Özlem Sandıkcı

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Hijab as Migration: Embracing and Leaving Hijab in Contemporary Indonesia Yulianingsih Riswan

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After the Hijab: Liminal States of Post-veiling Embodiment Alicia Izharuddin

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High Heels and Rainbow Hijab Nancy Pathak

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Materiality, Political Discourses, and Power The Fabric of Diasporic Designs: Wearing Punjabi Suits Home and Away Among South Asian Women in Europe Sara Bonfanti

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Materiality, the Malah.fa (Mauritanian Veil), and Social Hierarchy Katherine Ann Wiley

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More Than a Garment: The haïk in Algeria as a Means of Embodied Artistic Expression Isabella Schwaderer

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Toward a Self-Empowered Female Body: Body Language, Tactility, and Materiality in Contemporary Art Rhea Maria Dehn Tutosaus

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Index

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Notes on Contributors

Diah Ariani Arimbi is currently teaching gender and cultural studies at Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya, Indonesia. She received her Ph.D. from The University of New South Wales, Australia. Her main research is about the intersection between women and Islam in Indonesia. She also researches women and their identities in Indonesia: be it in literary narratives or popular culture. Her interests include Islamic feminisms, Indonesian women in post-colonial Indonesia, while her current researches cover images of women and the conception of beauty in magazines, and the ways women are portrayed in popular culture. Sara Bonfanti is a Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento (Italy). Dr. Bonfanti is a social anthropologist, specialized in gender studies, with expertise on South Asian diasporas and multisite ethnography. Keen on participatory methods, her research interests include kinship, religious pluralism, and media cultures, approached through intersectionality and life stories. Since 2017 she has collaborated within the comparative ERC HOMInG Project homing.soc.unitn.it, exploring the home-migration nexus across

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European cities. Her latest book “Shifting Roofs: Ethnographies of Home and Mobility” was published by Routledge in 2020. Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf is a Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cologne, Germany. She obtained her Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of Gießen with a thesis on the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) and received her postdoctoral qualification (Habilitation) from the University of Bonn with a study on Palestinian narratives of the Arab-Israeli war 1948. Her main research interests include transformations of religious concepts, everyday religious practices, (forced) migration, and popular culture. She has carried out field research in various countries in the Middle East. Rhea Maria Dehn Tutosaus is a Ph.D. student and research assistant in art history at the Department of Fashion and Aesthetics at the Technical University of Darmstadt. She earned her BA in art history and romance studies and her MA in art history from the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the Universitat de Barcelona. Her research focuses on postcolonial theory, transculturality and visual representation, and intersections with migration and gender in contemporary art. Her publications include “Der Schleier: Nexus zwischen Kunst und Mode” (Contemporary Muslim Fashions ed. by Mahret Ifeona Kupka and Matthias Wagner K., MAK Frankfurt a.M. 2019). Gülzar Demir is a Master’s in Spanish and History from UCPH. She works as a research assistant for the Danish partners in the Creative Europe project, The Fabric of My Life. She teaches podcasting and supervises the collection of podcast on emotions and clothing. For this chapter, Gülzar Demir conducted interviews in Copenhagen in 2020 about dress practices and choices, and she designed and supervised the online survey. Laura Haddad is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Geography and Member of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at Osnabrück University, Germany. She is a member of the IMISCOE Standing Committee DIVCULT (Superdiversity, Migration and Cultural Change) and the Global Decenter (GDC).

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Her research interests comprise discourses on diversity in various “Social worlds,” such as urban contexts and religious education in schools, but especially within the fashion segment. She engages with ethnographic research methods and the genealogy of knowledge and power relations. Alicia Izharuddin is a Research Associate affiliated with the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School. She was previously a Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of Malaya. Her research interests in gendered piety, religious filmmaking, and women’s media practices have been published in many leading peer-reviewed journals. She is also the author of Gender and Islam in Indonesian Cinema (2017, Palgrave Macmillan). Marie-Louise Nosch is a Professor in ancient history and textile history and director of the Centre for Textile Research 2005–2016. She teaches dress and textile history and has published 150+ works on the topic. Nosch was PI in THREAD and PI of the Creative Europe project, The Fabric of My Life, and in 2020 she launched the COST Action network EuroWeb of 26 countries aiming to rewrite European history based on dress and textiles. Nancy Pathak is an Indian Political Scientist and holds a position as Assistant Professor at Sri Venkateshwara college, Delhi University, India. She is not just an academician but also a body politics activist. She has also walked the ramp at Lakme Fashion week as a fashion inclusive model for renowned Indian designer Rina Dhaka. Yulianingsih Riswan is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Philosophy, Universitas Gadjah Mada Yogyakarta Indonesia. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in Islamic studies at Oriental Seminar, Faculty of Philosophy, Freiburg University Germany, working on a dissertation on Islamic youth movement and popular culture in Indonesia. Her particular interests include phenomenology of religion, Islam and popular culture, youth, and woman issues. Özlem Sandıkcı is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Glasgow, Adam Smith Business School, UK. Her research addresses

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sociocultural dimensions of consumption and focuses on the relationship between globalization, markets, and culture. Her work is published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Theory, Business History Review, and Fashion Theory, and several other journals and edited collections. She is the co-editor of the Handbook of Islamic Marketing (Edward Elgar, 2011) and Islam, Marketing and Consumption: Critical Perspectives on the Intersections (Routledge, 2016). Isabella Schwaderer is a Research Assistant in Religious Studies at the University of Erfurt. She was previously a lecturer at the universities of Würzburg, Erfurt, and Jena and held a post at the University of Jena. She studied Greek and Latin Philology and Philosophy in Würzburg, Thessaloniki and Padova. She received her MA in Ancient Greek from the University of Würzburg and her Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Orthodox Christianity) from the University of Erfurt. Her teaching and research interests cross the fields of history, anthropology, and aesthetics. Yasmina Shamdin completed her master’s program at the University of Cologne (Germany) with a research project on cultural heritage and memory cultures of Syrian refugees. During her studies she also worked on topics related to political Islam and Salafism. Currently she is employed in a prevention program against religious radicalization in Germany. Else Skjold is an Associate Professor and head of MA in fashion and textiles at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, and an expert in dress practice, design entrepreneurship, and sustainability. She has conducted research on these topics together with various organizations and fashion brands within the last 12+ years. Viola Thimm is an Assistant Professor and Professorial Candidate (Habilitandin) at the Institute of Anthropology, University of Heidelberg (Germany). As a Cultural Anthropologist, her research interests include cultural practices of mobility, gender relations and intersectionality, and Islam and its socio-cultural entanglements. Her regional focus lies in Southeast Asia and the Arabian Peninsula, where she has conducted

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extensive ethnographic fieldwork since 2007. Among her recent publications is the edited volume Muslim Women’s Pilgrimage to Mecca and Beyond (co-edited with Marjo Buitelaar and Manja Stephan-Emmrich). Her current book project (monograph) is an ethnography on Muslim pilgrimage, gender, and consumption in the regional context of Malaysia. Katherine Ann Wiley is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Pacific Lutheran University, United States. Her book, Work, Social Status, and Gender in Post-slavery Mauritania, focuses on female slave descendants and how their economic activities are integral to how they navigate their social positions. Her research interests also include dress, Islam, joking, and, most recently, masks. She has published in a variety of journals, including The African Studies Review, Africa, and Africa Today.

List of Figures

“Your Life Would Be Twice as Easy If You Didn’t Wear It, It’s Like a Superhero’s Responsibility.” Clothing Practices of Young Muslim Women in Germany as Sites of Agency and Resistance Fig. 1

Modest fashion show in a German city

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“How I Wear My Headscarf.” Narratives About Dress and Styling from Young Muslim Women in Copenhagen Fig. 1

Modest clothing in the Nordic nuances in the Sabaya Copenhagen shop

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Hijab as Migration: Embracing and Leaving Hijab in Contemporary Indonesia Fig. 1

Online survey on veiling, unveiling, and niqab for this study

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List of Figures

High Heels and Rainbow Hijab Fig. 1 Fig. 2

A queer muslim adorned in Rainbow skirt with Niqab at a pride parade (Davidson 2017) Kal Jazeera is dressed in a Muslim Qurta (Jazeera 2019)

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The Fabric of Diasporic Designs: Wearing Punjabi Suits Home and Away Among South Asian Women in Europe Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

A three-piece Punjabi suit from Simran’s latest collection A diaspora family portrait: Tailoring memories. Painting by an unknown artist Looking for purdah in the window: a Brit-Asian fashion district

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Materiality, the Malah.fa (Mauritanian Veil), and Social Hierarchy Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Malah.fas for sale in a shop in Kankossa. Many of the pictured veils are hand dyed locally Woman feeding chickens in a malah.fa. Note how the malah.fa fully covers her arms

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More Than a Garment: The haïk in Algeria as a Means of Embodied Artistic Expression Fig. 1

A kiosk in Rue Didouche Murad, Algiers, © Isabella Schwaderer

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Toward a Self-Empowered Female Body: Body Language, Tactility, and Materiality in Contemporary Art Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Majida Khattari, Houris, Rêve de Martyrs, 2014, Performance Lalla Essaydi, Les Femmes du Maroc: Harem Women Writing, 2008, Chromatic print Majida Khattari, Houris, Rêve de Martyrs, 2014, Performance

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List of Figures

Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6

Yumna Al-Arashi, Rituals: The 99 Names of God, 2018, Video Lalla Essaydi, Les Femmes du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque, 2008, Chromatic print Yumna Al-Arashi, Rituals: The 99 Names of God, 2018, Video

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Introduction: (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style—Gendered Configurations in Muslim Contexts Viola Thimm

Muslim attire is very diverse and differs in colors, styles, and cuts according to the regional, cultural, socio-political, and religious backgrounds of the wearers. Variations in style are especially obvious when it comes to females—women and girls alike. Through their clothing, Muslim females negotiate concepts and interpretations of Islam and equally constitute their intersectionally interwoven position in the world. Malay Muslim women from Malaysia, for example, have appropriated the abaya, the long black Arabian cloak for females, over recent years as a result of increasing pilgrimage journeys to Mecca and Medina (Thimm 2015, 2018). Emirati women prefer to wear a light-colored trench coat-like “travel abaya” once they have traveled to European countries. Muslim women in the Netherlands wear the veil in order to resist racist hostilities toward Muslims (Moors 2009). Designers in Dubai have V. Thimm (B) University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_1

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created a brand new abaya that allows UV radiation to pass through the material in order to solve the problem of vitamin D deficiency in the Gulf states due to their coverings.1 “Muslimah wear” (clothing particularly targeting Muslim women) has become better and better integrated into the international fashion industry. In fact, designer jallabiahs (long, shirt-like robes with wide sleeves and very wide skirts), kaftans (long, airy dresses), or abayas that have been cut to fit tightly transform the various items’ original functions as loose garments that should not draw attention to the female body (Al-Qasimi 2010; Lindholm 2014). The designer brands, which are in part visible to the outside world by their labels, do play a role in drawing attention to themselves—and thus also to the female body. Many shops selling these items in Indonesia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Germany, or Great Britain support the notion of these garments as “modern pieces of fashion.” Gendered Muslim clothing, in general, signifies different meanings to those who wear, promote, sell, or distribute it: as religious articles of clothing, as vehicle for negotiating being “modern” and “sexy,” as garments for selfprotection to chase away the male gaze, or as lucrative goods that fit into commercialization strategies in capitalist and “halal industries” alike (see e.g., Jones 2010; Lewis 2013; Thimm 2018; Sandıkcı 2018; Sandıkcı and Ger 2010). Taking the interlinkages between “fashionized religion,” “religionized fashion,” commercialization and processes of feminization as a starting point, this book (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style. Gendered Configurations in Muslim Contexts aims at reshaping our understanding of gendered forms of religiosity and spirituality through the lens of gender and of embodiment. It focuses on the agency and creativity of women as they appropriate ways of performing and interpreting various modalities of Muslim clothing and body practices, and investigates how women deal with empowering conditions or restrictions that they may encounter in this process. The high relevance of the intersection between gender and Islam is increasingly dealt with in academia and the public alike. The significant role of fashion, dress, and clothing most recently became obvious through, for example, the international exhibition Contemporary Muslim Fashions in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt

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(see D’Alessandro and Lewis 2018; Dehn Tutosaus in this volume) in 2018/2019. Social actors bring Muslim gendered fashion to the forefront with vehemence and self-confidence—many of the volume’s contributions (Damir–Geilsdorf and Shamdin; Demir, Nosch and Skjold; Haddad; Pathak; Sandıkcı; Schwaderer) will hint that social media and technology are of relevance for an understanding of this development. The comparison of interdisciplinary cases in this volume focuses on material, normative, and social dimensions. The compilation of authors from anthropology, art history, business and marketing, gender studies, history, Islamic studies, religious studies, sociology, and textile and design research offers comprehensive insights into social dynamics in Algeria, Denmark, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, the Indian and Pakistani diaspora, Mauritania, Germany, Denmark, Turkey, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Foregrounding contemporary scholars’ diverse disciplinary, theoretical and methodological approaches, the volume aims to problematize and complicate the discursive and lived interactions and intersections between gender, fashion, spirituality, religion, class, and ethnicity. To accomplish this, the volume brings together interdisciplinary research on the changing meanings and practices of gendered clothing in Muslim contexts. Focusing on global Muslim communities, the comprehensive composition in this volume discusses ways of dressing, style, and fashion as gendered and embodied, but equally as “religionized” phenomena. In the existing body of literature on Muslim fashion many books, book chapters, or articles deal with forms of dressing and style in connection with gendered Muslim identities. Clothing, especially veiling, is investigated from anthropological, sociological, economic, or religious studies perspectives (e.g., Al-Qasimi 2010; Bucar 2016; Godart 2012; Gökarıksel and Secor 2009; Hochel 2013; Hume 2013; Jones 2007, 2010; Lewis 2013, 2015; Lindholm 2014; Moors 2009; Sandıkcı and Ger 2010; Scapp and Seitz 2010; Tarlo 2010; Tarlo and Moors 2013). Within this broad and valuable array of literature, focusing on the body is the exception. For example, Pia Karlsson Minganti (2013) draws attention to (Muslim) women’s bodies when examining how they are used as

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sites for fighting political battles. Reina Lewis (2015, 199–236) showcases how sellers of Muslim fashion are supposed to embody the brand they sell in order to maximize profit. Whereas gendered forms of embodiment need more attention in scholarship on fashion and Muslim identifications and practices, the (female) body has been a central focal point in feminist research on the theoretical, methodological, and empirical levels broadly since the 1970s (e.g., Böth 2015; Butler 1990, 1993a, b, 2002; Fischer and Dolezal 2018; Grosz 1995, 1990; Harcourt et al. 2016; Lindemann 1993; Oakley 1972; Schaufler 2002; Thanem and Knights 2012; Zettelbauer 2004). However, acknowledging religionized phenomena as fundamentally influencing gendered forms of embodiment and its effects on dress, fashion, and body have only recently become part of this literature collection. In particular, very few studies apply a systematic approach that captures forms of gendered and religious embodiment by Muslim women. Heidi Mirza (2013) analyzes, inter alia, how professional Muslim women of Turkish, Pakistani, and Indian heritage living and working in Great Britain embody gender, race, and religion through their clothing, especially by wearing the veil. Anoosh Soltani (2018) studies Muslim women’s embodied geographies in New Zealand. Also focusing on the veil, she investigates gender, religious, and national identities in relation to emotions and power in different spaces. To give the body optic more prominence in the academic field of Muslim fashion on the one hand and to increase attention on Muslim women’s life-worlds in research on gender and the body on the other, the central goal of this book is to investigate the interplay between the physical and social conditions of female Muslims in their manifold environments through a gender and body lens. Given this, the contributions deal with embodied spirituality; economy and consumption patterns; politics; connections between forms of representation and axes of identification. This book will create a theoretical lens of (gendered) embodiment in scholarship by investigating perceptions of the body, fashion styles, and self-inflicted rules among Muslim communities around the world. Besides this theoretical contribution to existing research, the book furthermore offers new observations of social dynamics from regions that have not been covered elsewhere in this regard. For instance, the contexts

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of Punjabi suits (suits from Punjab/India) as examined in Sara Bonfanti’s chapter, of the malah.fa (Mauritanian veil) studied by Katherine Wiley or the haïk (Maghreb robe) as dealt with by Isabella Schwaderer are original topics in this sense.

(Re-)Claiming the Gendered Muslim Body Examining embodied practices in studies of dress, style, and fashion requires an understanding of the body and its connection to fashion. Joanne Entwistle (2015, 1) states in this regard: “Fashion is about bodies: it is produced, promoted and worn by bodies. It is the body that fashion speaks to and it is the body that must be dressed in almost all social encounters.” The body constitutes the environment of the Self, it is the material side of the Self. People commonly live their lives in dressed bodies. To dress oneself as a Muslim woman means to think about how to meet upcoming (social) situations between Muslims and non-Muslims, how to (re-)present oneself toward Muslim men, how to produce respect, acceptance, and/or desire—or alternately rejection and avoidance—among other Muslim women, for example. Given this, applying a gender and embodiment optic to examinations of Muslim fashion is of high significance in two regards: first, religious fashion is gendered and second, gender is embodied (see van den Berg, van den Bogart and Korte 2017). Religion is understood in this volume as “lived religion,” which implies that we understand it as a distinct meaning-making process with regard to social reality (Schielke 2010). This process is expressed in institutions, traditions, and social practices. Religion provides a philosophy of life and, as such, constitutes identity formations, offers guidelines for quotidian activities, and legitimizes or delegitimizes power. Muslim women’s practices of embodiment show the complexity of meaning-making processes within Islamic frameworks. The concept of embodiment in this volume will contribute to an investigation and presentation of social processes in and through the gendered body. Gender defines a relationship between women and men, homo- and heterosexuals, non-binary persons, and biologically and

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socio-culturally (self-)defined males or females. Yet we have to acknowledge that scholarship on Islam, fashion, and style mostly deals with female (predominantly women’s) perspectives. Scholars who work on male perspectives in Muslim contexts are rare (e.g., Scheibelhofer 2018; Tunç 2018). Reasons for this might be related to gender hierarchies, e.g., the male gaze, which makes women more conscious of their bodily appearance and therefore more interested in fashion than males are, based on socio-cultural conditions, dependent upon temporal-spatial contexts. These gendered notions of fashion, then, are of further relevance when it comes to the body. Situated in the division between public and private spaces and the allocated notions of femininity and masculinity, i.e., the perception of a disembodied, abstract, public space and an embodied, nature-related private space (Grosz 1995), females are associated more with the body and thus with all aspects related to it. Dressing the body and fashionizing it is, therefore, attributed more to females than to males. This clarifies the female focus in research on body, fashion, and gender in general and in this book in particular. However, two contributions broaden and diversify this emphasis: my own chapter on male lived realities and Nancy Pathak’s chapter on queer perspectives on body and fashion. My ethnographic contribution on Emirati male perspectives on their ways of dressing in the UAE supports the assertion that males are not as interested in fashionizing and styling their gendered bodies as females are. Emirati men commonly attire their bodies with kandoras (simple, long white robes) that are explicitly not fashionable garments. The reason cannot be found in a sense of antifashion but rather in pro-simpleness, so to speak. For the male Emirati citizens in my research context, the body is rather regarded as a physical entity that needs to be simple and stable in styling. The chapter showcases that these citizens utilize their bodies in order to claim their privileges in relation to men from other countries residing in the UAE and Emirati women. Since non-Emirati men in the UAE can wear more colored kandoras on the one hand and Emirati women have turned the kandora’s female counterpart, the abaya, into a fashionable piece on the other, Emirati men represent their social position as powerful gendered citizens through their non-fashioned style. The stable appearance of the male body becomes a creative area of activity in Pathak’s

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contribution on young queer Muslim Hijra communities in India and Pakistan. The author investigates from the view of a political scientist how subjects in these communities use Islamic Sufi philosophy to claim their divine status in hetero-normative societies. On this basis, Pathak argues, these queer social actors manage to engage in coalitions and alliances to freely realize their sexualities within restraining social orders. The body is perceived and utilized in Pathak’s socio-cultural context as a site of agency that wants to act out in creative ways. (Re-)claiming the body can be a very nuanced and complex process. In the case of male Emiratis, the process of claiming it is not done through fashion. In Pathak’s research context, queer Muslims reclaim their non-heteronormative bodies by not following gender norms and orders, and thereby putting their bodies at the forefront. In contrast, women claim and reclaim their gendered bodies through autonomous fashion and style. (Re-)claiming the body can mean reclaiming it from conservative Islamic orders and practices such as covering the female body. More subtly speaking, developing one’s own style within socioreligious dynamics can already be a form of claiming and reclaiming when it challenges social expectations and power hierarchies. In this sense, some contributions deal with the idea of (re-)claiming the body through their examination of styling and/or fashionizing the female body (in many cases precisely through covering parts of the body) and thereby subverting normative orders and engendering agency. For example, Sabine Damir–Geilsdorf and Yasmina Shamdin analyze from an Islamic studies perspective how Muslim women in Germany (re)claim their bodies as sites of resistance and agency through clothing practices that strengthen a more pious self. Based on the socio-cultural reality that Germany is a predominantly non-Muslim society, women who veil are usually not only automatically perceived as Muslim, and can represent their belief by doing so, but also become highly visible in public. Hence Damir–Geilsdorf and Shamdin argue that they are more cognizant of their outer appearance, which leads to a greater awareness of their clothing choices. This is not only depicted by a fashionable outcome, but also by the self-confident wearing of a headscarf in a society that is inherently biased against Muslims (see Roose and Turner 2015). Female Muslims in Germany who refuse to take off their veil not

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only add a further explanation for why women are more interested in style than men, but also raise the question of whether women are even more interested in religionized styling than their male fellows are. Gülzar Demir, Marie–Louise Nosch, and Else Skjold similarly deal with Muslim women’s clothing practices in a non-Muslim majority society: Denmark. As dress researchers they look at tactile, bodily, and aesthetic aspects of headscarves in connection with commercialization. They reveal that Muslim or modest fashion is still a developing sector in Denmark. Within this sphere, shop owners, consumers, and producers vividly use the digital realm of so-called influencers and Instagrammers. Interestingly, Demir, Nosch, and Skjold disclose, for many of their respondents the body is somehow absent when reflecting upon their clothing habits. However, they explicitly claim it as a position through which they mark their Nordic and Danish identity by incorporating typical local aesthetics such as dark colors, “bohemian style” and monochrome fabrics. The clear forms of (re-)claiming the female body in non-Muslim majority countries as discussed in Damir–Geilsdorf ’s and Shamdin’s chapter and in Demir’s, Nosch’s, and Skjold’s contribution shift to more nuanced arrangements in Alicia Izharuddin’s and in Yulianingsih Riswan’s chapters. Both deal with processes of challenging social hierarchies through the means of dressing by analyzing a continuum between veiling and de-veiling in Malaysia and Indonesia. Izharuddin examines through a Gender Studies lens liminal states of embodiment of Malaysian and Iranian Muslim women in Malaysia after they have made the decision to unveil. She explains that these social actors do not abruptly expose their “free hair” but find themselves in a transition in which they choose different styles of scarves and headgear, and various grades of concealment and exposure of their hair and neck. These Malaysian and Iranian women reclaim their female bodies through various methods of styling their heads and thereby embodying their mindsets. Located in a similar cultural context in Indonesia, Yulianingsih Riswan finds comparable social practices. Against the backdrop of a so-called hijabization phenomenon, that is, a situation in which more and more women start to veil, Riswan’s respondents are moving between veiling and non-veiling, as she presents from a religious scholar’s point of view. She defines this

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process as a form of migratory movement between different states of Muslim Self that she refers to as a hijrah movement. Hijrah originally denoted the migration of Prophet Mohammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina in order to find a place in which they could practice their beliefs with fewer limitations and less conflict. Riswan understands hijrah in contemporary Indonesia as a migration toward a more pious self. The hijrah movement in her study is materialized in the various practices of Muslim Indonesian women, especially of the urban and middle class, who veil, de-veil, or are situated in-between. This fluid practice is based on her respondents’ perception that the inner stance is more important than the outer appearance. What unites them, though, is their wish to be better Muslims. In this sense, Riswan’s research subjects reclaim their bodies as physical expressions of their inner Self.

Constituting, Living, and Challenging the Religionized Gendered Body Demir’s, Nosch’s, and Skjold’s data suggest a feeling of separation between the wearer and the worn through the absence of the respondents’ bodies in their descriptions about attiring them. In contrast, Katherine Ann Wiley discusses in her ethnographic study on the malah.fa (Mauritanian veil) how the wearer and the worn act together and thereby constitute a “wearer-outfit.” By applying a framework of materiality she understands a clothing item as an agent in the social world, leading to a mutually constitutive process of garment (malah.fa) and wearer in her Muslim-majority research context of Mauritania. Attiring the body with a malah.fa symbolizes piety and femininity (and, additionally, social status) but the garment can simultaneously be seductive to others. Clothing thereby reveals the differing motivations, desires, or options of the female Muslim wearer. This dynamic situation leads, Wiley argues, to a local context in which social hierarchies are claimed by the Mauritanian veil, i.e., by a single body and a Muslim female garment. Beyond this, Wiley’s findings on the entanglement of femininity and social rank indicate how Muslim women’s practices inform specific discourses on their intersectional bodies. Intersectionality (see, e.g.,

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Crenshaw 1989; hooks 2000, 1981; Phoenix and Pattynama 2006; Thimm et al. 2017) as an academic and activist tool stems from Black feminist movements in the US and has become useful for analyzing linkages between social locations, identities, and social power structures. It explains and captures that racialized, classed, gendered, and other social identifications are mutually constitutive and inform how people interact with each another, and how they negotiate their locations in society. In the context of this volume, applying an intersectionality framework suggests an understanding of Islam and gender as cultural practices that in specific contexts intertwine with various axes of differentiation such as, among other things, class, as well as ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality. Such an intersectionality optic runs through various contributions in this volume (Bonfanti, Haddad, Pathak, Thimm). In their interdependency, categories and practices such as religion and gender influence the form and degree to which people can use or transform their bodies, and the ways in which this is formed, framed, controlled, constrained, or encouraged. Laura Haddad discusses intersectionality in her ethnographic discourse analysis in relation to fashion and embodiment in Germany and the UK. She demonstrates how mainstream fashion media shape the discourse on intersectional diversity and how this, in turn, negotiates the role of Muslim women and their visibility in fashion in European contexts where Muslims are the minority. While embodied conditions such as status positions are relatively stable, she argues, practices that relate to and target the body, e.g., dressing or fashionizing it, can shift from moment to moment or from time to time. Fashion and embodiment stand in a mutually constitutive relationship with one another, i.e., the performing body, for example via fashion, not only executes its own physical and styled condition but is simultaneously influenced, constituted, and constructed by this social act. Thus, Haddad provides a differentiated framework of intersectionally interwoven bodies, fashion, and embodiment. As Haddad shows in her chapter, manifold specific power structures and identifications form the options for women’s embodiment of religion. Contemporary socio-political, economic and cultural relationships around the world shape and transform these concrete options

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and are constantly challenged and negotiated by social actors. Narratives, discourses, power hierarchies, and oppression are manifest in global, local, and transregional connections between Muslims and nonMuslims and, more specifically, between non-Muslim men from the Global North and Muslim women from the Global South. This marks political substance and pinpoints responsibility when framing research (and activism) around gender, body, and Islam. Local and global power structures are embedded in post-colonial and Orientalist structures and practices. Edward Said (1978) coined the term “Orientalism” for an analysis of Western portrayals of the “East,” here focused on Muslimmajority societies in Western Asia and Northern Africa. As Said states, these representations and interpretations have not been a descriptive matter but, based on colonial historicity, a powerful way for imperialist societies to (re)produce global hierarchies. Both Rhea Dehn Tutosaus and Isabella Schwaderer investigate fashion, gender, and embodiment connected with post-colonial and Orientalist structures and practices at the intersection with art and artistic expression. Dehn Tutosaus deals with contemporary understandings of the “female Oriental body” and its attired situations. She chooses three artworks by Lalla Essaydi, Majida Khattari (both from Morocco), and Yumna Al-Arashi (from the US with a Yemeni father and an Egyptian mother) in order to exemplarily analyze artistic strategies that subvert and deconstruct hegemonic maledominated discourses on the “Orient.” Dehn Tutosaus showcases how these three artists use their work in order to claim their identities, their social positions, and their female bodies and thereby create spaces of self-empowerment. This intervention is characterized and produced by their artistic expressions of moving Muslim women with and within their clothing, by the tactile properties of fabrics, i.e., the lightness and flexibility of the fabrics, but also by the various modes of touch. In a similar vein, Schwaderer concentrates on women challenging powerful notions and practices of the “female Oriental Other” through artwork. Through a religious scholar’s optic, she examines the artistic expressions of Algerian performing artist Souad Douibi in which she uses the haïk (a traditional garment that Maghrib women used to wear over their clothes) as a central component. In her analysis, Schwaderer frames Douibi’s work in postcolonial contexts. She explains that under

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French colonial rule, Algerian women wore the haïk as a means of expressing intransparency, which meant challenging Western demands for clearness, transparency, and homogeneity. Since then, this garment has widely been abandoned. The artist Souad Douibi, however, has recently re-appropriated the haïk in and through her artwork and has thereby created belonging and self-empowerment. Within the postcolonial context, Schwaderer argues, wearing a haïk and moving through public social realms is not only an embodied artistic act but furthermore a political one.

Consumerist Developments of Body Work Global power structures are not only shaped, developed, and characterized by historical-political circumstances but moreover by the economic realm. Embedded in capitalist processes of production, distribution, and consumption (Sandıkcı and Ger 2013; Gökarıksel and Secor 2013), the body is commonly in focus as part of consumerist developments of body work. More specifically, fashionizing and styling the body is integrated into the process of the fashion industry’s product development that, in turn, depicts, negotiates, or contests normative orders. This then influences how bodies can be characterized or even transformed. Haddad; Demir, Nosch and Skjold; and Özlem Sandıkcı deal in their chapters with Muslim women who are active parts of the fashion market predominantly as consumers. Sandıkcı, for example, analyzes from a business and marketing viewpoint the debate over a certain product that has been recently appropriated by Muslim women: nail polish. She looks at the intersection of marketplace dynamics and the manifold social, cultural, material, and religious interpretations of the female Muslim body. While the capitalist market regards the body as a site of endless choices, religion limits the styling of this body since Muslim females commonly need to embody modesty. Sandıkcı shows that as coloring nails is usually perceived as a symbol of female sexuality, the application as such is broadly questioned in Muslim contexts. Though a religious requirement concerning the five daily prayers (solat ) additionally comes into play here. Before solat, Muslims are obliged to clean their bodies

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(wuduk) for the purpose of purification. A breathable line of nail polish, which allows water to permeate the substance down to the nail, has become an option for Muslim females to perform their ritual washing and their prayers with colored nails. By broadening the discussion on Muslim female attire (which predominantly involves the veil) to makeup, Sandıkcı adds nuance to understandings of femininity, body, fashion, and normative orders. Whereas Sandıkcı deals with the perspectives of consuming Muslim women, Diah Arimbi shifts to the view of those who target these subjects. Through a gender studies optic she studies two Indonesian fashion magazines. She carves out the entangled discourses and narratives operational in Indonesian urban areas that shape images of the ideal Muslim woman. She argues that Arabian, Indonesian Muslim, and Western traditions form an entangled background for the creation of an idealized slim, light-skinned, veiled woman who is predominantly depicted in these magazines. Given this, the magazines are part of socio-cultural discourses about and practices of local characterizations of beauty. Sara Bonfanti complements the examination of market dynamics by introducing producers and retailers into the discussion. By combining approaches from material culture studies and cultural anthropology, she focuses on the salwar-kameez , the iconic Punjabi suit. In her case study in Italy and the Netherlands, many South Asian women work at home as seamstresses producing this three-piece garment. Bonfanti then deals with Muslim Hindustani women who purchase or retail the salwar-kameez in order to fashionize themselves or others to embody their intersectional social position. The clothing is predominantly an ethnic piece originally worn across social status and faith. Yet by being embedded into Pakistani Islam it has become more and more a religious dress. Against this backdrop, it has been transformed into a fashionable ethnic and religious piece, inter alia through the flourishing Bollywood market. However, Bonfanti shows that in South Asian diasporas in Europe, the character of what the wearers embody with this garment is still contested. Approaching Muslim Hindustani women’s performance of identification and differentiation from the perspective of the specific body cultures that characterize their lived realities, Bonfanti furthermore raises the

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question, what actually defines a clothing item or any other beauty product as “Muslim?” When does a garment start to be Islamic or Muslim and when does it stop being so? A garment or beauty product as such cannot be religious and is only made so through the context of the wearer, i.e., through the meaning assigned to it. Furthermore, garments that are worn by believing Muslim women are also used by non-Muslims to attire their bodies. The reasons are manifold and derive from individual taste, from sexist Western body images that focus on half-naked and tightly dressed female bodies that women want to distance themselves from or from the comfort of wider clothing. As part of the discussion and in alignment with Demir, Nosch, and Skjold; Damir–Geilsdorf and Shamdin suggest framing thinking and research on Islam, gender, and fashion around “modest fashion” rather than “Muslim fashion.” In sum, by focusing on Muslim social actors’ manifold perspectives on their bodies as sites of social conditions and negotiations from different disciplinary angles and from various regional contexts, this book will significantly contribute to an understanding of the changing meanings and practices of gendered clothing and body work in Muslim contexts.

Note 1. https://gulfnews.com/news/uae/society/90-of-uae-population-vitamin-d-def icient-says-dha-official-1.2113556, last access 18 September 2019.

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Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan. Sandıkcı, Özlem. 2018. Religion and the Marketplace: Constructing the ‘New’ Muslim Consumer. Religion 48 (3): 453–473. Sandıkcı, Özlem, and Güliz Ger. 2010. Veiling in Style: How Does a Stigmatized Practice Become Fashionable? Journal of Consumer Research 37: 15–36. Scapp, Ron, and Brian Seitz, eds. 2010. Fashion Statements: On Style, Appearance, and Reality. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Schaufler, Birgit. 2002. “Schöne Frauen – Starke Männer“. Zur Konstruktion von Leib, Körper und Geschlecht. Opladen: Leske + Budrich Scheibelhofer, Paul. 2018. Der fremd-gemachte Mann: zur Konstruktion von Männlichkeiten im Migrationskontext. Wiesbaden: Springer VS Press. Schielke, Samuli. 2010. Second Thoughts About the Anthropology of Islam, or How to Make Sense of Grand Schemes in Everyday Life. ZMO Working Papers 2010(2). Soltani, Anoosh. 2018. Muslim Women’s Embodied Geographies in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand: An Intersectional Approach. A Thesis Submitted in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography at The University of Waikato. https://pdfs.semanticscho lar.org/d428/c7251582586eeecb23e708f98e63a7cc1303.pdf. Accessed 17 September 2019. Tarlo, Emma, and Annelies Moors, eds. 2013. Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion: New Perspectives from Europe and North America. London: Bloomsbury. Tarlo, Emma. 2010. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith. London, New York: Bloomsbury. Thanem, Torkild, and David Knights. 2012. Feeling and Speaking Through Our Gendered Bodies: Embodied Self-Reflection and Research Practice in Organisation Studies. International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion 5 (1): 91–108. Thimm, Viola. 2018. Embodying and Consuming Muslim Pilgrimage: Gendered Shopping and Clothing Practices by Malaysian Women on ‘umrah and ziarah Dubai’. Asian Anthropology 17 (3): 185–203. ———. 2015. Die arabische abaya in Malaysia: Verhandlungen von muslimischen Kleidungspraktiken, weiblicher Körperlichkeit und Modernität. Paideuma 61: 95–116. Thimm, Viola, Mayurakshi Chaudhuri, and Sarah J. Mahler. 2017. Enhancing Intersectional Analyses with Polyvocality: Making and Illustrating the Model. Social Sciences 6 (2): 37.

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Modesty and Fashion: Reconfiguring Social Conditions and Identifications

Beauty East, Beauty West: Muslim Beauty in Indonesian Islamic Magazines Diah Ariani Arimbi

In various cultural texts, in advertisements, for example, where women are targeted as the main consumers, the portrayal of women is often (too) different from their daily life. In these advertisements, women look flawless, beautiful, fantastic, and, perhaps, spoiled, which is often just an illusion (Fuery and Mansfield 2000). The representation of women through these portrayals is often not only utopian but also still conforms to stereotypes such as women are obsessed with their body, gentle, rather irrational, or are even valued only half as much as men. This is also what Naomi Wolf (1991) discussed in her book The Beauty Myth. Wolf as well as other feminists view the concept of female beauty as a social control that limits women’s freedom and rights, similar to the concept of the wife and nanny. Wolf further states that the concept of female beauty has led D. A. Arimbi (B) Universitas Airlangga, Surabaya, Indonesia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_2

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to women obsessing over unreal body ideals and eventually becoming entrapped in the shackles of patriarchy (Wolf 1991, 1–8). Media, as one of the ideological constructions, is strongly influential in depicting images of women. The woman’s body as depicted in media has become some sort of guidance for how women should look and behave. In her book entitled Enlightened Sexism, Susan Douglas (2010a), states that in male-dominated societies, women are raised to just be obsessed with their body for the purpose of pleasing men and being envied by other women (Douglas 2010a, 16, 2010b, 9–10). In many countries in Asia, Indonesia for instance, the grip of patriarchal structures is extremely strong, i.e., in many of its regions, gender inequality is extremely pervasive, establishing the idea that women belong only in the domestic sphere. Indonesian women are still less valued than Indonesian men, making them invisible during decision-making processes (Gender Equality in the Asia and the Pacific 2019). Although Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, it remains a secular state. In 1997, the economic and financial crisis hit many countries in Asia, and Indonesia was strongly affected by the same in 1998, not only in terms of the economy but also with regard to politics and society. Since the 1998 crisis (Tempo Magazine 2012, 64), there has been a rather significant economic growth in Indonesia. This growth has created new middle-class Muslims in Indonesian’s economic spectrum. Tempo, one of the few Indonesian investigative magazines, in its special edition from February 2012 entitled Special Investigation: New Consumer Class stated that 2012 marked a significant increase in the number of middle-class individuals in Indonesia. Tempo also indicated an increase in Indonesia’s middle class from 37.7% of Indonesia’s total population in 2003 to 56.5% in 2010. It is interesting to note that in 2012 according to the percentage of consumption distribution pattern of the broad category, the consumption distribution for fashion (clothing and shoes) was quite large at 3.6% (compared to education, which was only 7.1%). Tempo explained further that the high purchasing power of the middle class caused a shift in the pattern of consumption distribution, especially one that was introduced by the Indonesian youth who became the “backbone” of Indonesia’s economy in the twenty-first century. Tempo even

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predicted that, in 2030, Indonesia would make a substantial contribution to the world’s consumer class and occupy fourth place after India, China, and the United States. Immediately after the end of Indonesia’s New Order regime (1966– 1998), the subsequent few years have seen the rise of a commodified religion in Indonesia. The media has been filled with Islamic themes that cater to all segments and tastes. Many magazines that were labeled as Islamic were on the rise. These magazines were meant for religious as well as commercial purposes. Many magazines for women, especially for Muslim women, have intersected Islam as a religion with consumerism, offering recipes and pieces of advice for how to combine the Muslim identity with an urban middle-class lifestyle (Wimboyono 2013). Fealy (2008) argues that a commodified Islam in Indonesia is far more common today than it was two decades ago, especially under the influence of growing modernization, globalization, and urbanization. Furthermore, Jones (2007) argues that these phenomena are more indicative of new consumerism based on religious factors, and they can be understood as complex processes and meaningful ways in which piety intersects with modernity. Since the post-Reformation Order (ever since 1998), Islam in Indonesia has become a label that signifies not only religion but also an identity marker of social classes and lifestyle. The Halal 1 lifestyle has become an idea that numerous Muslims seek to achieve, which implies a balance between their mundane and religious life (Adinugraha and Sartika 2019). The flourishing of the Muslim middle class in Indonesia has had impacts on various social and cultural practices. This phenomenon is also followed by the euphoria of Muslim designers that is created by competing to design clothes that have a religious tone. Muslim fashion began to develop rapidly around the 1990s, especially on the island of Java. Currently, Muslim fashion is emerging. Numerous Islamic fashion weeks are held regularly in big cities such as Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, and Medan. Fashion boutiques promote themselves as Islamic boutiques. Indeed, contemporary Indonesia is haven for Muslim fashion and designs. The Indonesian Ministry of Industry website reported that the number of wearers in Indonesia reached 20 million in early 2015.

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Furthermore, the Director-General of Small and Medium Enterprises of the Ministry of Industry in March 2015 stated that Muslim clothing was no longer only considered a religious mandate to cover a Muslim woman’s body but also a symbol of cultural identity and could further influence trends in fashion. The ministry targeted to have an increase of 7–8% in the hijab business in the following year (2016). This was specifically to target middle-class Muslims who were already the major consumers for the hijab industry in particular and Muslim clothing in general (Femina Magazine 2013). Until mid-2016, according to the Ministry of Industry stated, 225 thousand (30%) of the 750 thousand small-and-medium industries in Indonesia were Muslim fashion industries. Another indicator of the rise of Muslim fashion is the mushrooming of hijaber (a woman who wears more fashionable and glamorous hijabs) communities in all parts of Indonesia, especially in big cities that are identical to the community that popularized the hijab. Regarding this industry, the ministry launched a vision that Indonesia would become the “Qibla (center) of Muslim Clothing in the World.” The Indonesian Minister of Industry Airlangga Hartarto says that Indonesia is one step away from acquiring the first place and becoming one of the world’s Muslim fashion centers. This refers to a report from the State Global Islamic Economy, which states that Indonesia is the runner-up for the country that produces the best Muslim fashion in the world after the United Arab Emirates (Satu Harapan 2019). The route map for the Muslim fashion industry campaign started with the target of penetrating the ASEAN market in 2015 and the Asian market in 2020, and, by 2025, it aims to conquer the world market (Kemenperin 2012). Making Indonesia the Qibla of Islamic fashion seems extremely thought-provoking. For Muslims, Qibla is the direction toward Kaa’ba in the Holy Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Qibla serves as the center when Muslims pray and entails several meanings and significations— direction, guidance, and center—simultaneously. This indicates that Indonesians indeed have already mixed religion and lifestyle; further, Islam has become a lifestyle. The commercialization of Islam is at stake, as Barkin (2014, 7) writes, “Commercial Islam refers to the use of religious aesthetics and narratives in ways that cultivate Islam as

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(1) consumable in itself, but, importantly, (2) associated closely with consumption.” This commercialization of Islam, Barkin further explains, attempts to establish new and alternative models of Muslim lifestyle that are different from those of conservative Muslims (2014, 19). Noor (first published in 2003), Aulia (2003), Paras (2004), Musmagz (2013), and Auleea (2015) are some of the magazines specifically marketed to urban Muslim women and are very stylish with regard to their collection of contemporary Muslim fashion for professional women and other fashion enthusiasts. Wimboyono (2013) argues that the formation of Muslim women’s media, such as magazines, is a direct result of the increasing consumption of the Muslim middle class and young female professionals, especially in metropolitan cities in Indonesia, who seek media that is designed specifically to meet their needs. It is not a surprise that media functions as a powerful tool in creating ideas of Muslim beauty.2 In this chapter, Aulia and Paras have been selected for their popularity. Although these magazines are no longer in print and circulation, they are still accessible online in digital versions through their websites or social media. Similar to other lifestyle magazines, these Islamic magazines have similar appearances: glossy covers, colorful images, and full of fashion trends. The question of how women are represented in media and how this relates to the constructions of the concept of beauty in the West and in Indonesian Muslim contexts is of significance. Women (gender identity), Muslim/Islam (religious identity), and the East/West (cultural identity) in the media are interesting topics for examination with regard to their interconnections. This chapter argues that the discourse of female beauty in Muslim women’s magazines in Indonesia is not merely local or indigenous. The construction of Western beauty is also intense in the discourse of Muslim women’s beauty in corresponding magazines. This study attempts to clearly and analytically identify the forms of Western influence in the construction of Eastern women’s beauty (Indonesian and Muslim). If Wimboyono’s hypothesis is based on the attempt of Muslim women in Indonesia to defy Western femininity via their images in the media, then, in this paper, my argument is the opposite. I argue that Western ideas of female beauty are present in these magazines for Muslim women’s magazines. These magazines work on both the East’s

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and West’s notion of beauty, following Saraswati’s (2013, 1) argument which states, “Transnational circulations of beauty ideals throughout different historical periods have undoubtedly helped maintain the lightskinned preference and configure not only beauty, but also racial, gender, and skin color discourses in Indonesia.” Saraswati (2012) notes that white-skinned beauty is a preference in Indonesian ideals, as evidenced by the abundance of skin-whitening products in the Indonesian cosmetic industry: the whiter a woman’s skin color is, the higher the status she will have in social settings. In the following sections, I will first discuss the concept of the jilbab/hijab/veil, as this piece of clothing is the most significant marker for Indonesian Muslim women before continuing with the analysis of the concept of beauty, using Wolf ’s beauty myth, with respect to two Indonesian Muslim women’s magazines, namely Paras and Aulia.

Jilbab: Meanings and Identity In Indonesia, jilbab (veil) is another word for terms such as chador in Iran, purdah in India or Pakistan, milayat in Libya, charshaf in Turkey, and hijab in Arabic countries and certain African countries, such as Egypt and Sudan. Although the term jilbab is not intended to be a simple translation of these terms, it is closely related to the way the Muslim women of the aforementioned countries dress. In Indonesia, another type of headscarf or head-cover, called kerudung, is commonly worn by Muslim women of the older generations, although some Muslim women from younger generations, such as Yeni Wahid, the daughter of the late president Abdurrahman Wahid (1999–2001), wear it as well. Similar to many other Islamic countries, the number of Muslim women in Indonesia who wear a jilbab/veil/headscarf/head-cover has increased, especially in urban areas. In the mid-1980s, those who wore jilbabs were criticized by other Muslims who did not due to their belief that the jilbab was a manifestation of Arabic influence rather than Islamic (Arimbi 2009, 71–73). In 1982, the government issued a regulation stating that female Muslim high school students would be denied their school rights if they refused to take off their jilbab or veil at school.

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Female school students were not allowed to enter their schools if they were wearing their jilbab. In some big cities, such as Jakarta, Surabaya, and Yogyakarta, Muslim high school and college students staged strikes, demanding their right to wear their jilbab and to affirm their identity as devout Muslims. Wearing a jilbab was an indication that they were santri (students of Islamic schools) and, therefore, different from nonsantri people. In 1991, the regulation banning the adorning of jilbabs was repealed. Since then, it has been very common to find Indonesian Muslim women wearing jilbabs. Further, political and social shifts have changed the situation. Nowadays, wearing a jilbab is no longer seen as an adherence to Arabic influence nor as a differentiation between santri and non-santri individuals: veiling is seen as an option. In her study on the veiling of Javanese Muslims, Suzanne Brenner (1996, 673) comments, In Java, the growing trend among women toward wearing Islamic clothing (“veiling”) challenges local traditions as well as Western models of modernity. Analysis of Javanese women’s narratives of “conversion” to veiling against the background of the contemporary Islamic movement reveals that veiling represents both a new historical consciousness and a process of subjective transformation that is tied to larger processes of social change in Indonesia. In producing themselves as modern Muslims, veiled women simultaneously produce a vision of a society that distances itself from the past as it embarks upon a new modernity.

Brenner’s study, although limiting itself to the narratives of women from the educated middle class (college and university students), shows that the jilbab is closely related to a woman’s identity as a Muslim. Wearing a jilbab signifies a modern and “good” Muslim woman, a sholeha (pious) woman in contemporary Indonesia. As a symbol of a woman’s identity as a devout Muslim, the jilbab is seen as a form of acceptance of the Islamic disciplines and a more religious commitment than those who are not veiling Here, the jilbab symbolizes what is called “purification” to become a “right” and “good” Muslim woman through training in self-discipline and self-obedience. Some studies (Hamdani 2007; Jones 2007, 2010a, b; Barkin 2014; Rahmawati 2016; Muljadji et al. 2017; Utomo et al. 2018; Brown 2019) have highlighted the fashionable jilbab that is worn by the temporal

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jilbab-wearers (women who wear and take off their jilbab depending on situations they are in), for example, the jilbabs worn by Indonesian celebrities such as actresses, movie stars, singers, TV personalities, public figures, etc. (Hamdani 2010), especially in television programs during Ramadan (Muslim’s fasting month). This trend has been adopted more as a marketing strategy than a religious commitment to distribute what Jones refers to as “pious commodities” (Jones 2010a). As soon as Ramadan is over, these celebrities unveil themselves. In addition to these celebrities, certain women wear jilbabs only when they go to work, while others wear jilbabs only on special or formal occasions such as weddings and religious celebrations. The jilbabs worn on these occasions are indeed very contextual: at official occasions, wearing a veil may be a statement of religious identity but it may also be a fashion statement. For that reason, veiling or unveiling is, in this context, a choice rather than an obligation. The jilbab is a clothing item that covers its wearer in both her private and public life. But the significance of wearing a jilbab is never monolithic. There are various discourses about the meaning of wearing a jilbab. Hamdani (2007) explains that the Qur’an and Hadith do not have one single understanding regarding the obligation for women to wear a jilbab, thus making this an institutionalized local practice rather than a normative teaching. Muslim women themselves must decide whether they want to wear it. More conservative groups, commonly known in Indonesia as the Islamists such as Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (Islam Defender’s Front), assert that the jilbab is an obligation, and those who do not wear jilbabs will be condemned as infidels. For them, the jilbab is a manifestation of their political resistance to the secular government and their commitment to the establishment of an Islamic state in Indonesia. Umar (2002) observes that the jilbab may serve as a symbol of fashion, privacy, and resistance. However, as a clothing element attached to a woman’s body, it should be included in the politics of woman’s body woman’s right. The politics of jilbab is the result of its plurality, and it may suggest the ideological conception of a particular group, serve as a social phenomenon, be used for gender-based segregation, indicate a symbol of patriarchy, function as a particular limitation, lead to selfempowerment, etc. The concept of the jilbab is a complex phenomenon, having several layers of meanings and contexts, depending on the wearer’s

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perspective. A simple deduction made based on the indications of one meaning may erode the complexity of the true meaning of the jilbab.

Women’s Beauty in Islamic Women’s Magazines: Between Eastern and Western Beauty What makes a woman beautiful? For many Indonesians, according to a study conducted by Sigma Research in May 2017 that involved 1200 respondents from 11 big cities in Indonesia, being beautiful means to have white and clear skin color (41.8% respondents), to have a pointed nose (5.5%), and a slim Fig. (4.3%) (Wisnubrata 2017). Generally, this is the epitome of beauty currently booming and rooted in the minds of Indonesian women. As a result, women feel the gap between the ideal beauty and their real physical appearance, making them prone to experience negative emotions such as disappointment, sadness, despair, irritation, anxiety, and anger (Buss 2001). Ultimately, this has the potential to trigger women to experiencing a lack of confidence resulting in a particular consumptive behavior (Lasch 1979, 72): In a simpler time, advertising merely called attention to the product and extolled its advantages. Now it manufactures a product of its own: the consumer, perpetually unsatisfied, restless, anxious, and bored. Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life. It “educates” the masses into an unappeasable appetite not only for goods but for new experiences and personal fulfilment. It upholds consumption as the answer to the age-old discontents of loneliness, sickness, weariness, lack of sexual satisfaction; at the same time, it creates new forms of discontent peculiar to the modern age.

Although Lasch’s quote was written in 1979, it still rings true for contemporary consumption in the context of the investigation at hand. The Sigma Research study also suggests that women’s dream to be beautiful is highly influenced by the commercials or advertisements of whitening cosmetics. Thus, to look beautiful, consuming

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those whitening cosmetic products is a must, and, accordingly, cosmetic parlors, fitness centers, beauty salons, and beauty clinics thrive in presentday Indonesia. To follow Naomi Wolf ’s previously stated adage on the myth of beauty, beauty is indeed a myth, a belief that is widely circulated while not necessarily valid. Likewise, the idea of beauty is actually a result of societal construction—a result of societal imagery. Tragically, these myths are still unconsciously maintained by being passed down from generation to generation. The depiction of beautiful Indonesian women portrayed in the media follows a similar pattern: white and clear skin color, pointed nose, slim body, long and straight hair, smooth white face, and beautiful eyes. The rise of the cosmetics industry in Indonesia cannot be separated from the perception that the body is the source of sexual and sensual desires. Cosmetics become a concept that is dominantly attached to a woman’s body from head to toe. The female body is almost inseparable from cosmetic treatments administered for creating value, namely beauty. Beauty is an important concept and practice when it comes to fashion magazines. Jones (2007, 2010a, b), Amrulah (2008), Muljadji et al. (2017), and Wardiani (2019) have discussed Islamic fashion and how this fashion has turned religion into consumption. Furthermore, Jones (2010a) elaborated that gendered pious consumption in the form of Islamic fashion has been extensively elaborated in Muslim magazines such as Noor. With the rise of popular Islam, popular magazines followed suit, and this includes popular Islamic magazines that are circulated in Indonesia to target middle-class Muslims by promoting the halal lifestyle. The magazines’ front covers are significant, as they promote the content inside the magazines. The front covers of Islamic magazines share similarities with many international women’s magazines: models with flawless faces wearing glamorous and luxurious clothing. In so doing, the front covers of Aulia (literally “saint”) and Paras (literally “face”) show similar features: portraits of white-skinned women with their fashionable jilbabs. These women also look slim and very stylish. This somehow reiterates the findings of Sigma Research that were previously discussed

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that a beautiful Indonesian woman should have clear and white skin, a pointed nose, and a slim body. The title of the Aulia special edition August 2012 is Jilbab—Love It Right, Wear It Right. This title touches upon the issue of how to wear Muslim clothes properly within the framework of Islamic sharia. This edition contains the dos and the don’ts of how to dress while following Islamic teachings and being fashionable at the same time. Being a Muslim woman must not limit fashion desires: religion and fashion are intertwined, and fashion religion is one of many mediums through which Muslim women display their identity as pious Muslims, making them sholeha women as well as fashionable and fun at the same time. This is their way of projecting that they have agency through their choice to wear a jilbab; although, as Jones (2010a, 96) states, these women acquire their identity of being devout Muslims and beautiful “through purchasing power.” Guiding women in ways of dressing according to Islamic principles, these magazines are not free from controversy. There are several instances in these magazines of contradictions to the guidance given in the magazine’s content and fashion trends. Some models in the fashion spreads appear to oppose what must be followed in terms of proper Islamic fashion. As an example, in an article on the importance of using socks for Muslim women, “Girlfriends, don’t forget your socks” (Aulia August 2012, 68–70), the readers are reminded that wearing socks is obligatory as women’s feet are considered to be a part of aurat (nakedness) that must be covered by quoting the Qur’an Surah An Nuur verse 31: “And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of ] their head-covers over their chests.” The author of this article includes women’s feet as a part of women’s beauty, thus implying that covering women’s feet with socks is an obligation. Nevertheless, some female models included in the same magazine are still seen showing their feet and making them highly visible through nail polish (see Sandıkcı in this volume). The tension between religion and fashion is quite strong. Does fashion overcome religion? Perhaps, the answer lies on page 16 in the booklet that comes with the

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magazine, which states that wearing a jilbab and being beautiful are the attributes of a sholeha woman. In the booklet of this edition of the Aulia magazine, Islamic beauty has been discussed thoroughly. One article contains a warning that white skin and a slim body are a part of Westernization that universalizes the Western beauty. This article even parallels this beauty as a form of colonization by asking the question “Should the skin colors of Mongoloid (including the skin color of Indonesian women) and Negroid all be changed to Caucasoid?” (Mutahharah 2012, 17). Further, if this is the case, then what we have is cross-border colonization (Mutahharah 2012, 20). Yet, in the pages of this edition, readers will find that all models look similar: clear and white skin, pointed nose, and slim figure. In the old Javanese scripture, Kitab Arjunawiwaha, a beautiful woman was one with yellow skin rather than white. But now, a beautiful woman is one with clear and white skin. From then to now, women’s magazines have altered the ideal beauty image from yellow or even darker skin to smoother and whiter skin (Arimbi 2011). Prabasmoro (2003) in Becoming White: Racial Representation Class, Femininity and Globalization in Soap Advertisements writes that Indonesian women are becoming fairer as the whitening of skin is the global symbol of beauty: whiteness is a global concept, and universalized whiteness is necessary, as it reflects the global order. Yulianto (2007, xii) in her book Pesona Barat (the Western Charm) extends Prabasmoro’s argument of whiteness in Indonesia by emphasizing that it is due to media that Indonesian women’s ideas beauty and body have shifted from local standards to a more universalized global standard. By carefully reading Islamic women’s magazines from Indonesia, one can easily spot many Arabic references in those magazines, especially in names: names of the models and names of the clothing brands or fashion boutiques promoted in the magazines. The front covers of these magazines are often filled with photos of Indonesian celebrities such as Inneke Koesherawati, Risty Tagor, Saskia Adia Mecca, etc. Besides celebrities, less famous models are often pictured on the front covers as well. Along with models with Indonesian names, such as Nuri and Andara, those with names of Arabic origin, such as Salwa, Munira, and Almira, are also frequently featured on the magazines’ front covers.

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Arabic-looking models are common in these magazines in the fashion spreads or commercial sections. Wardiani (2019) notes that Arabesque clothing brands, such as Rabbani, Zoya, Elzatta, Shafira, and Shasmira, are famous and dominate the Indonesian Islamic fashion market. The Arabic association is strongly presented in these magazines, as Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam. Arabic names and Arabic-looking models are used to authenticate the concept of beauty presented in these magazines. Authentic Islamic beauty is somehow related to Arabs, so these magazines try to send the same message to their readers. The use of the word hijab versus jilbab also needs to be observed. The hijab is identical to the fashionable, modish, and modern veil, and the word hijab itself has been borrowed from the Arabic language. It is different from the word jilbab, which is more indigenous. Jilbab becomes “other” compared to hijab as it is less fashionable as compared to the hijab that is more elegant, glamorous, and trendier. From the perspective of fashion, the jilbab is far simpler than the hijab. The globalization of the Arab world has influenced the Islamic beauty and fashion industry, as evidenced by the significant impact of the Arabic associations through language-borrowing on Indonesian Muslim women’s clothing and beauty concepts. When a Muslim woman wears her jilbab in the proper way, she is labeled as sholeha. But what if she wears it in the wrong way and for the wrong reason, especially if she wears it because the jilbab is trendy and fashionable? In Paras magazine, October 2014 edition, the improper jilbab was termed jilboobs (short for jilbab and boobs). The term jilboobs refers to a sexy jilbab. Jilboobs is used to refer to Muslim women who wear very short jilbabs, tight-fitting tops or clothes, and leggings that show their body’s curves. Mardiani writes, “Muslimah [Muslim women] fashion models like this certainly contradict the convention and are not in accordance with its function as a sign of piety” (Wardiani 2019, 100). In the article “Jilbab, eh Jilboobs,” the writer condemns these jilboobswearers, stating that they are not true Muslims simply because of what they wear. This writer seems to disregard the fact that it is common to find Indonesian Muslim women wearing jilboobs in their daily life (Hemdi 2014, 88–89).

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The attempt to blend fashion and religion does not stop with the fashionable jilbab. The more recent term hijab, the wearer of which is called a hijaber, adds to the already complex meanings of jilbab. The hijabers and their community, called the hijaber community, have introduced trendier, more glamourous hijabs, also sometimes known as hijab gaul (cool hijab). In Paras magazine, November 2012 edition, an article entitled “Galau Pro-Kontra Hijab Gaul vs Syar’i” (pro-con between cool hijab or conservative hijab) discussed the reasons behind the decision of the first model in Paras to wear a hijab. The model on the front cover was Lulu El Hasbu, whose real name is Lutfiah Hasbu Marzuki (Siwi 2012, 6–8). Lulu or Lutfiah is a native Jakarta model. In the modeling world, especially as a Muslim fashion model, she has changed her name to Lulu El Hasbu, which is a more Arabic name. Lulu, her friend Dian Pelangi, and their friends established the Hijabers Community—a community of Muslim women who were fashion aware—and introduced the idea of the fashionable hijab. Since then, Dian Pelangi and Indonesian Muslim fashion designers have managed to bring Indonesian Islamic fashion into world fashion through their participation in international fashion weeks such as the New York Fashion Week in February 2019 (Nadya 2019). The Jakarta Globe (2013) writes, The term ‘hijab gaul’ seems to carry a negative meaning, while it actually brings fresh air—there are more and more Muslim women attracted to hijab now. Some say these women are just following a trend, but it’s better to follow a positive thing than a negative one,” emphasized Dian [Pelangi]. . . Islamic attire has since been found everywhere and has become more attractive and affordable. The mushrooming Islamic fashion blogs have inspired Indonesian hijabis [hijab wearers or hijabers], with Japanese-British convert Hana Tajima being one of the inspirations because of her chic and out-of-the-box look. Hana, also a designer, has made her way to numerous international media, promoting the fresh, “friendlier” look of hijab.

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Conclusion The aforementioned Muslim women’s magazines exhibit similar tendencies, demonstrating that the notion of women’s beauty is experiencing universalization. Beautiful women in contemporary Indonesia, as depicted in the studied magazines, are white, sharp-nosed, tall, slim, and highly fashionable. Their religious identification appears only in the form of the jilbab or hijab worn as a headscarf or head-cover or the veil, which represents their Islamic identity. The process of globalization affects the concept of beauty presented in these magazines. Western and Arabic influences are strong in the production of the beauty standards that appear in these magazines. The jilbab is indeed a marker of religious identity. Women themselves should allocate meaning to the donning of a jilbab. The question of whether Muslim women choose to wear a modest jilbab, cool hijab, or a more conservative hijab, as discussed in the magazines, should be left to women’s discretion. Unfortunately, the controversy over the styles of the jilbabs worn by the wearers—whether it is the modest jilbab versus hijab gaul or even jilboobs—still falls within the framework of Naomi Wolf ’s seminal argument that female beauty is still limited to the female body, framed by cultural and socioeconomic conditions. This chapter has shown that the idea and practice of beauty for Muslim women in Indonesia are still politicized and become a part of women’s body politics. Women have not yet become the queens of their bodies: as women still do not have exclusive rights over their own bodies. The recent hijab phenomena have demonstrated the empowerment of women regarding the fact that wearing stylish head-covers is a matter of choice—it is a woman’s personal choice. However, in terms of fashion, women are still a part of a consumer society where style is still the most important identity marker. Islamic beauty still highly correlates to just wearing a jilbab/hijab. Fashion is strongly hegemonic and influences the ways in which women dress even though they are still functioning within Islamic rules. On one hand, this means that this is how Muslim women interpret their identity in association with Islam: by being both pious and fashionable, contributing to a more open-to-interpretation Islam that is more acceptable of its Indonesian plural adherents. On the other hand,

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this also shows that religious identity is never alone but has always been interwoven with other identity markers, such as fashion. More importantly, this study finds that the concept of the hijab is not single-minded but complex, and the complexity of its meanings is influenced by various situations, including cultural, social, religious, and economic.

Notes 1. Halal means permissible: anything that is permissible within the parameters of Islamic teachings is halal. Indonesia is now witnessing a rise of Islamic consumerism: consumption of whatever is perceived as halal. Majelis Ulama Indonesia—MUI (Indonesian Ulema Council), as Indonesia’s highest Muslim clerical body, is the only body that provides halal certification for products (including but not limited to foods, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and clothing). 2. Muslim beauty and Islamic beauty is used interchangeably in this article, just like Islamic fashion or Muslim fashion. Both terms imply the same thing, which is the notion of beauty and fashion targeted toward Muslim women, though not exclusively.

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Aulia Magazine. 2012, August. Jilbab Wear It Right. No. 02, Tahun X Ramadhan-Syawal 1433. Barkin, Gareth. 2014. Commercial Islam in Indonesia: How Television Producers Mediate Religiosity Among National Audiences. International Journal of Asian Studies 11 (1): 1–24. Brenner, Suzanne. 1996. Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and “The Veil.” American Ethnologist 23 (4): 673–697. Brown, Gustave. 2019. Conforming Choices: Peer Influence, Adoption, and Interpretation of the Islamic Headscarf in Indonesia. Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 2019, 80 (3): 372–398. Buss, Arnold H. 2001. Psychological Dimension of the Self . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Douglas, Susan J. 2010. Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done. New York: Henry Holt. ———. 2010. The Rise of Enlightened Sexism: How Pop Culture Took Us from Girl Power to Girls Gone Wild . New York: St Martin’s Griffin. Fealy, Greg. 2008. Consuming Islam: Commodified Religion and Aspirational Pietism in Contemporary Indonesia. In Expressing Islam: Religious Life and Politics in Indonesia, ed. Greg Fealy and Sally White, 15–39. Singapore: ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. Femina Magazine. 2013. Kiprah Busana Muslim. 5 January 2013. https://www. femina.co.id/mode/fashion.news/kiprah.busana.muslim/001/001/165. Fuery, Patrick, and Nick Mansfield. 2000. Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gender Equality in the Asia and the Pacific. 2019. UN Women, Asia and the Pacific. https://Asiapacific.Unwomen.Org/En/Digital-Library/Publicati ons/2019/11/Infographics-Gender-Equality-In-Asia-Pacific. Accessed 29 October 2020. Hamdani, Deny. 2007. The Quest for Indonesian Islam: Contestation and Consensus Concerning Veiling. Ph.D diss., Australia National University. ———. 2010. The Role of Celebrities in Campaigning Muslim Attire. Kultur: The Indonesian Journal for Muslim Cultures 5 (1): 121–140. Hemdi, Yoli. 2014. Jilbab, Eh Jilboobs. Paras Magazine. No. 132, tahun XII, October, 88–89. Jones, Carla. 2007. Fashion and Faith in Urban Indonesia. Fashion Theory 11 (2/3): 211–231. ———. 2010a. Images of Desire: Creating Virtue and Value in an Indonesian Islamic Lifestyle Magazine. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 6 (3): 91–117.

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———. 2010b. Materializing Piety: Gendered Anxieties About Faithful Consumption in Contemporary Urban Indonesia. American Ethnologist 37 (4): 617–637. Kemenperin (Kementerian Perindustrian Republik Indonesia). 2012. Mimpi Indonesia: Kiblat Fashion Muslim Dunia. https://www.kemenperin.go.id/ artikel/4051/Mimpi-Indonesia:-Kiblat-Fashion-Muslim-Dunia. Accessed 29 October 2020. Lasch, Christopher. 1979. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: W. W. Norton. Muljadji, Yusar, Bintarsih Sekarningrum, and R.A. Tachnya Muhammad. 2017. The Commodification of Religious Clothes Through the Social Media: The Identity Crisis on Youth Muslim Female in Urban Indonesia. Jurnalism si Stiintele Comunicarii Anul XII (2–3): 53–65. Mutahhara, Shahifah. 2012, August. Jilbab, Love It Right. Aulia Magazine Booklet No. 02, Tahun X Ramadhan-Syawal 1433. Nadya Novi. 2019. Dian Pelangi Comeback ke New York Fashion Week 2019. Liputan 6 , 24 January 2019. https://www.liputan6.com/lifestyle/read/387 9283/dian-pelangi-comeback-ke-new-york-fashion-week-2019. Accessed 29 October 2020. Prabasmoro, Aquarini Priyatna. 2003. Becoming White: Representasi Ras, Kelas, Feminitas, & Globalitas dalam Iklan Sabun. Bandung: Jalasutra. Rahmawati, Aulia. 2016. Faith, Fashion and Femininity Visual and Audience Analysis of Indonesian Muslim Fashion Blogs. Ph.D diss., Cardiff University. Saraswati, L. Ayu. 2012. ‘Malu’: Coloring Shame and Shaming the Color of Beauty in Transnational Indonesia. Feminist Studies 38 (1): 113–140. Saraswati, L. Ayu. 2013. Seeing Beauty Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia. Series: Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Satu Harapan. 2019. Tahun Depan, Indonesia Siap Jadi Kiblat Fashion Muslim Dunia. 2 May 2019. https://www.satuharapan.com/read-det ail/read/tahun-depan-indonesia-siap-jadi-kiblat-fashion-muslim-dunia. Accessed 29 October 2020. Siwi. 2012, November. Galau Pro-Kontra Hijab Gaul Vs Syar’i. Paras Magazine, No. 109, tahun X. Tempo Magazine. 2012. Liputan Khusus Kelas Konsumen Baru. 20–25 February 2012.

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“Your Life Would Be Twice as Easy If You Didn’t Wear It, It’s Like a Superhero’s Responsibility.” Clothing Practices of Young Muslim Women in Germany as Sites of Agency and Resistance Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf and Yasmina Shamdin

Within the heterogeneous spectrum of Muslim orientations, beliefs, and religious practices, notions of appropriate Islamic clothing rules for women are highly disputed. Different selections and interpretations of passages in the Quran and Hadith as well as references to divergent Muslim scholars’ instructions and advice lead to contesting religious views about the “right” dress code. Social media such as blogs, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube contribute to the (re)interpretation of Muslim clothing and body practices beyond national boundaries. At the same time, Muslim clothing practices are—like those of non-Muslims—also strongly connected to a variety of other factors such as consumer cultures and practices, local and global fashion trends, individual preferences and pragmatic decisions in everyday lives. S. Damir-Geilsdorf (B) · Y. Shamdin University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_3

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However, Muslim women’s clothing practices are scrutinized in manifold ways. The way they dress, in particular, the veil and other forms of religiously motivated concealment of the female body receive much media, political and social attention in both countries with Muslim majorities and countries with Muslim minorities. In several European societies, heated debates about headscarves, burkas, or burkinis have led to a variety of legal restrictions and revolved not only around what the veil as a socio-politically charged symbol actually is, or whether it is a symbol at all, but also around different opinions about the visibility of Islam in the respective non-Muslim majority societies. In Germany, for instance, debates about veiling practices which are often accompanied by savior fantasies and anxieties about unveiling (Ghumkhor 2020) have become more significant in public discourses and politicized since the 1990s, when veiled Muslim women were no longer mainly perceived as spouses of male guest workers or laborers in lowwage sectors1 but claimed positions like teachers, medical doctors, or judges as a result of the educational advancement of the guest workers’ successor generations. At the same time, there was a shift in ascriptions of migrants from Muslim majority countries as “Muslims” instead of their former ascription by their homelands or ethnicity, or as Spielhaus (2018) describes “the migrantisation of Muslims and Islamisation of migrants.” Miriam Cooke (2007) points out that in particular after the events of 9/11, in the perception of “Western” societies, Muslims have become the “Other” and Muslim women their visible representatives with an ascribed identity as “Muslimwomen”, which overlaps their diversity and strongly intertwines gender and religion into a homogenized single image. In public discourses, veiled women are often constructed as backward, oppressed and representative of gender inequality, while in contrast unveiled Muslim women with a background of a Muslim majority country are often perceived as “good migrants” and examples of successful integration into German society (Bendixsen 2013, 119). On the other hand, so-called “hijabistas” and other Muslim women who present their fashionable outfits combined with different forms of veiling on social media have sparked increasingly media and scholarly attention. In German media coverage, they are often commented on with expressions of astonishment, e.g., titles such as “Muslim answers

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to Western fashionistas” (Brunke 2015), or remarks such as that the respective person “proves that modernity and tradition fit together very well” (Brigitte 2016), which implies a binary social categorization between the veil as a sign of tradition and fashion as a sign of modernity. At the same time, the exhibition Contemporary Muslim Fashions which was curated at the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and shown in 2019 at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt (see Dehn in this volume) was harshly criticized. Nationwide, newspapers argued that exhibiting photographs of veiled women support the suppression of Muslim women. The leading German feminist magazine “Emma” deplored the public visibility of veiled women in the exhibition as a setback for women’s movements with several citations of well-known “Islam critics” who argued that exhibiting women with veils was equivalent to “chumming up with misogynistic political Islam” (Emma 2019). To equate the headscarf with oppression and to homogenize Muslim women has been much criticized in academic literature, but as Amir– Moazami (2014) points out, the question of Islam’s adaptability to a liberal-secular order is also the (hidden) frame for scholarly knowledge production and the gaze through which the Muslim “Other” is investigated. Scholars are often captured by the one-dimensional frame of debates on veiling, e.g., the emancipatory or submissive character of this religious bodily practice, and thus covered women are almost compelled to legitimize their veil in a liberal-secular vocabulary (ibid., 272 f.). In the following sections, we highlight factors which affect Muslim women’s individual—changing and dynamic—clothing practices in Germany from the perspective of Islamic Studies. It is based on ethnographic interviews with young Muslim women between the ages of 18 and 31 in Germany, who choose varying religiously motivated ways of dressing, which they often described as “modest,” including nonveiled women, so-called “Salafi” Muslims (data gathered 2014–2018), “hijabistas” and Muslim fashion bloggers (data gathered 2019–2020) as well as participant observations in mosques and Muslim fashion shows. All of our interlocutors were raised in Germany, and most of them were born there. We explore how our interlocutors’ clothing choices serve as markers of affiliations, intersecting with issues of inclusion and exclusion,

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but are also dynamic and closely linked to women’s current lived realities. Furthermore, we examine how women (re)claim their bodies both as sites of resistance and agency through clothing practices and as a way to strengthen a more pious self.

Contesting Debates on the “Appropriate” Veiling At an event of a fashion label whose founder explains that her attire, as a “symbiosis of fashion and modesty,” wants to address the “fashionconscious Muslim women,” we were promised an “unforgettable beauty and fashion event” with an “exclusive fashion show and great shopping possibilities.” There we encountered veiled and unveiled women in all sorts of clothing: From abayas2 and colorful hijabs3 to turbans and uncovered women with belly tops or minidresses, a wide variety of apparel was shown (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 Modest fashion show in a German city

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Lina,4 a 28-year-old social worker, was for example wearing a red, pleated dress that reached down to her calves with black leggings underneath it. Over the dress, she wore a long black blazer and around her waist a belt with flashy white rhinestones. The dress had a small standup collar but left a part of her neck uncovered as her hair was covered with a black turban. For her, she told us, the day six years ago when she put on a headscarf for the first time is an important turning point in her life: “The day I put on my headscarf is like my second birthday. I always give myself a present on that day.” In her view, covering her hair is decisive for her Muslimness and self-definition, but there are no specific instructions on how to do so in the religious sources. She loves fashion and has decided to wear a turban, because she finds it suits her more than a hijab. Sometimes she has been criticized for her uncovered neck, but she thinks: “This can be seen differently.” For her, it is very important to cover her bottom with something long and wide, “because that’s what both men and women look at. I always wear something over it. I don’t have to pay so much attention to wide clothing on top, because I don’t have a large bust.” Farah, on the other hand, was wearing a darkblue, wide abaya with discreetly colorful floral embroidery on the upper sleeves and a black khimar,5 which she had draped with needles to frame the face in different pleats and layers. She tells us proudly: “Many people have told me that my headscarf looks beautiful and asked me how I do it. I have just experimented a lot and tried to find my way.” Concerning women wearing turbans like Lina, she explains that the neck and ankles need to be covered in any case, and therefore what the turban-wearers wear is not Islamic for her. By no means do these different practices mean that fashion-interested veiled women are less religious. They might just have dress preferences that do not necessarily need to be related to religion, or interpret theological clothing rules differently. Ilhana, for instance, prefers jeans to skirts: “I like to wear those tight jeans, I wouldn’t wear skirts, I just don’t like them at all and also don’t see that I have to wear them.” For Maryam, in turn, a 24-year-old student of English literature, it is clear-cut that religious sources oblige Muslim women to cover all parts of the body except the face, hands, and feet with wide clothing. From her point of view, the most appropriate garment for Muslim women is an abaya, although she

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does not wear one. She prefers fashionable outfits, often chooses tight, ankle-less pants, but always makes sure that her bottom is covered by a long top: “The highest ideal cannot be achieved, because humans are weak. I admire women who wear the abaya, but for me, it is not feasible, because it is hard enough as it is with a hijab. Allah is merciful and may forgive this.” Since early Islam Muslim legal scholars have controversially discussed which parts of women’s bodies belong to the so-called awra, i.e., those body parts which should not be exposed in public, and by which kind of clothes they should be covered (see Damir-Geilsdorf and Tramontini 2015). This includes for instance different views about whether, and if so, when and which parts of females’ heads (hair or also the neck, shoulders, or parts of the face) should be covered by which kind of veil (hijab, khimar, niqab, etc.). Furthermore, there are religious debates about the question whether other parts of female bodies such as feet and hands belong to the awra and varying discussions about the existence (or not) of rules for women’s choices in regard to cut, color, etc. Not only do the corresponding passages in the Quran and Hadith that refer to clothing differ, but also the approaches to their interpretation, such as for example a literary understanding of certain wordings in the Quran and Hadith versus one that is oriented more toward their meaning and goal within a specific historical context. Moreover, in the Quran and Hadith there are different terms for a veil which are open to contesting interpretations. The Arabic word hijab, in our contemporary research context usually understood as headscarf, appears in the Quran only in the meaning of partition or curtain, such as for instance in Quran 33:53, where it says that believing men who want to ask the Prophet’s wives something, should do that “from behind a curtain (hijab).”6 In Quran 33:59, the Prophet is instructed to tell his wives and daughters and the believing women “to draw their veils close to them; so, it is likelier they will be known, and not hurt.” The Quranic word for veils is here jalabib (sg. jilbab) which is today a type of clothing similar to an abaya, i.e., a long robe in the form of a loose outer garment which is worn over the regular clothes and conceals the body shape. Whether or not the modern jilbab is the same garment as referred to in the Quran is

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unknown. While some legal scholars and Islamic advice websites understand the Quranic jilbab as a cape which is worn over the headscarf and covers the body but leaves the face free (Philips n.d.; Muhajabah n.d.), others assume that the jilbab at the time of the Prophet was a headscarf, referring to the comprehensive classical Arabic dictionary Lisan al-Arab which was completed in 1290 by Ibn Manzur (Elturk 2014). Still others, however, derive from Quran 33:59 the religious duty for Muslim women to wear a face veil in public (Der Weg zu Allah n.d.; Dawah2do 2012), referring to some classical Quran commentators such as Ibn Kathir (d. 1373) who explained that this verse instructs women to cover their whole body including their face from above their head with the jilbab, leaving only one eye showing (Ibn Kathir 1981, 114). Similar controversies arise in the interpretation of Quran 24:31, which instructs believing women “to cast their veil over their bosoms.” The Arabic term for “their bosoms” is here juyubihinna, which means neckline and the one for “veil” is here khimar. While a khimar is understood by our respondents as a veil which covers head, neck, and shoulders in the form of a cloth that comes down to the waist, with a hole cut out for the face, it is not clear what this garment looked like in the seventh century. Muslim scholars often argue that women at that time covered their heads with cloths and shawls that fell backward over their shoulders, leaving the neck, face, and neckline free. Quran 24:31 has therefore extended existing habits of dress by the instruction to cover the neckline on the upper garment but leaving the face uncovered (al-Qaradawi 2007). For other scholars, in turn, like the former Saudi Arabian Mufti Ibn Baz (n.d.), it is evident that this Quranic verse instructed women in early Islam to drop their clothes from the head over their faces up to their breasts in order to cover all of these three parts of the female body. Still other scholars explain that Quran 24:31 does not at all prescribe that women cover the hair because it mentions only the breasts, which had been exposed in clothing habits before the revelation of the Quran (al-Barudi 2009). Besides the Quran, Muslim scholars often refer to a Hadith according to which the prophet Muhammad declared that after puberty a woman should cover everything in public except her face and hands. Still other Muslims can find neither in the Quran nor the Hadith a duty to veil

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at all. They argue that the relevant passages have to be placed in their historical context and that the aim of the veiling was to make Muslim women recognizable as respectable and free women and to protect them from sexual assault, which can also be done today in other ways, such as legislation (Barlas 2006, 53–8; al-Banna 2008). Sofiya, a 31-year-old nurse and practicing Muslim, whose parents immigrated from Morocco 40 years ago, explains that she used to sometimes think about wearing a headscarf, “because that was just so common when you practice religion with zero existing knowledge,” but then moved away from this idea completely: “Because this shitty scarf has such negative connotations. […] I don’t see that as a religious necessity and that my hair excites someone’s sexuality.” In the case of other Islamic regulations on body practices, however, she relies on scholarly guidelines, based on the literary wording of corresponding passages in the Quran and Hadith: “I wanted to get a tattoo, maybe 10 years ago. Just something small, like a little star on my arm. But then that [i.e. the opinion of many Muslim legal scholars that tattoos are not conform to Islam] convinced me not to do this.”

Hypervisibility and Self-Positioning as Veiled Women in Germany Regardless of religious considerations and convictions, Muslim women are not a homo islamicus in the form of ahistorical “others” whose lives are only determined by Islamic jurisprudential norms and values. Their clothing practices are—like that of non-Muslims—also strongly connected to a variety of other factors such as cultural and regional habits, consumer cultures and practices, local and global fashion trends, legal requirements as well as personal preferences, and individual tastes. Furthermore, changing challenges in everyday lives lead to pragmatic reinterpretations of religious considerations or their dynamic adaptation. Circumstances such as work or social environment influence women’s veiling decisions. Leyla, for instance, a 27-year-old sports student, usually does not wear a turban in her everyday life but uncovers her neck when she does sports:

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In the beginning I did not dare to tie the headscarf at the back, because I thought it was against the code of wearing a hijab. [...] But in sports in general I tie the headscarf at the back, purely for safety reasons and because I also know how uncomfortable it is when you sweat around your neck.

Almost all of our other interlocutors expressed the impression of being hypervisible to their non-Muslim majority surroundings, because their head-covering clearly identifies them as Muslims and thereby “aliens.” One of the many ascriptions that they often encounter in Germany is that they are not “modern” and cannot be really fashionable, both defined as “Western” attributes. Lewis (2018, 142) also observed this in her research and explains that in European societies the body dressed in relation to religion is regarded “as somehow intrinsically outside the vagaries of the fashion industry and as emblematic of unchanging ahistorical collective religious or religio-ethnic identities rather than as part of the modern world marked by fashion as change and bound up in processes of individuation.” This binary demarcation is also indicated by the term “Islamic fashion.” In particular, for Muslim females, the hijab is a clear indicator that the wearer is Muslim and the entire clothing style of so-called “hijabistas,” is often referred to as “Islamic fashion.” Academic literature on “hijabistas” also sometimes constructs a dichotomy between the clothing practices of Muslim women and “Western” fashion or “Western” consumer culture. Kavakci and Kraeplin (2017, 866), for instance, describe hijabistas as heavily influenced by “Western secular norms” with a “fashionable body” which seems to be more significant for them than their “religious body.” Similarly, Cheruvalli-Contractor (2018, 87) states that fashion choices are one of the ways that Muslim women “bridge cultures” and describes Islamic ethical fashion as a “syncretic stance that brings together their hybrid identities as Muslim and Western.” Siham, a 23-year-old fashion blogger who is very active on Instagram, is annoyed by this practice of othering: “Somebody wrote about me that I was westernized, but the thing is: I have only lived in the West! This is the only society I know, so how can I possibly be westernized? I am part of the West. So, there is still this mentality, as if, like,

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Islam is an ethnicity and not a religion.” She assumes that “there is this idea that anything that is fashionable, pretty, whatever, just belongs to the West.” From her point of view this is “like a post-colonial practice of, always portraying what is western as better than anything else.” For Mona, a 22-year-old turban-wearing student who works part-time as a model, “‘western’ doesn’t necessarily mean revealing. ‘Western’ can also be ‘Islamic’ or ‘modest’. For example, I can wear jeans and then just wear a longer blouse over it.” Young veiled women in Germany are not the exceptional “others” to their non-Muslim peers in all areas of their life. Often, they buy their clothes in the same stores as them, and just combine them in a way which is acceptable from their Islamic perspective, but also follows current trends (Moors 2013, 20). Therefore, the term “Islamic fashion” can be just another way of emphasizing presumed otherness instead of looking for common ground. From our viewpoint, the term “modest fashion” seems to cover the wide spectrum of Muslim women’s clothing practices much better. Choosing to dress “modestly” can be motivated by various reasons, including non-religious ones such as for example personal preferences, dissatisfaction with one’s own body or feminist reasons. Modest fashion—just like fashion in general—is dynamic and should be understood as an embodiment “that is spatially and temporally contingent and changeable” (Lewis 2018, 142). Many of our other interviewees expressed that veiled women’s bodies in German society are not only regarded differently in regard to fashion than non-veiled women, but also become deindividualized, because the veil indirectly forces them into a representational role. Leyla, for instance, told us how her own opinion frequently is assumed to reflect that of all veiled women: “When I am somehow the only Muslim woman in a group or in a workshop, people often ask: ‘What do hijabis think about this or that?’” Ilhana, in turn, remembers that teachers at her school frequently expected her to have theological knowledge just because of her hijab: “He always asked: Well, how do you [Muslims] do this? […] There were occasions when I asked my mother afterwards: How do we actually do this?”. One’s own identification with Muslims and the sense of belonging to an imagined umma also increases the feeling of being responsible for this

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community and for representing Muslims and “the” Islam in a positive way. As Nadia tries to convey a positive image of Islam by smiling at people, even if she does not feel like it, Samira tries to do the same with her clothes. She used to wear a niqab for a year, but this is no longer an option for her because she now thinks: “I want to show that religion is beautiful, and I don’t want to scare people away. I don’t want people to have to think about whether they can shake my hand or whether they can pat me on the shoulder.” Her Somali-born parents were first against her niqab, now against the hair sticking out of her turban. Meanwhile she ignores the manifold criticism: “My husband also doesn’t like it at all, but I don’t care at all.” However, most of our interviewees told us that their way of covering has changed over time and might change in the future as well, according to living situations. Iman, for example, a 21-year-old student, explains that she wore for a while khimar and jilbab, at first in different muted colors, later only in black: “But then I slowly noticed that this can be quite impractical. In summer with the heat, but also in winter with jackets. You either sweat or freeze. Then I put on my hijab again.” For her, it is necessary to adapt the way of covering pragmatically: If you no longer have a car and have to ride a bike, you have to wear wide trousers; with a khimar and jilbab it doesn’t work. [...] I formerly also rode horses and wore riding breeches and riding boots and then a long top over them, which covered my thighs a bit while riding, but I didn’t feel comfortable with that, and I think that I should be more creative next time.

On the other hand, is not always easy for veiled women to switch back and forth between different veiling styles. Mona told us, that she often gets compliments from non-Muslims because her turban “looks so ‘exotic’” and feels uncomfortable changing her veiling style: “I admit, I have been wearing a turban for a long time now and not so often a face-framing headscarf anymore. Now I am almost afraid that if I want to wear a face-framing headscarf again, people will look at me strangely, because many only know me with a turban. It really shouldn’t be like that.”

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(Re)Claiming the Body as a Site of Resistance Through Clothing Practices According to Amila (2019, 88) clothing practices in general trigger feelings of “comfort and discomfort” that are evoked in different social situations and are internalized, so that we come to know which way of dressing is socially appropriate in different social contexts. Veiled women, who live in predominantly non-Muslim countries often experience social discomfort in everyday situations, because many consider their veil an inappropriate garment whether in a professional or private context. This is illustrated by Leyla’s experience when she was denied a new job with the explanation that “wearing the headscarf might rather scare people off.” The headscarf does not seem to be an appropriate garment for German television either, at least when the show does not explicitly deal with topics related to the hijab, as Mona told us: “My mother loves quiz shows and once she had the chance to take part in a casting for Jörg Pilawa’s quiz show.7 She answered all questions correctly to get into the show. But they required that she take off her hijab for TV and she refused. Therefore, she unfortunately never got on the show.” Almila (2019, 104) distinguishes in the case of veiled woman between religious and social comfort. These can be in balance, when a veiled woman feels that she is fulfilling a religious duty as well as dressing in a socially appropriate manner or are in conflict with each other, when she feels two kinds of pressure. When considering religious comfort more important than social comfort, social capital can be generated, if the social discomfort is interpreted as a sacrifice for being brave enough to put on the headscarf in a potentially hostile environment (ibid., 110) or, as Leyla describes it, as an act of resistance: Of course, I had to learn again and again how to deal with it. It is not only the cloth that I bind, but also my attitude [...]. Of course, my reason for wearing the headscarf has remained the same, but more things have developed or have been added. It is no longer faith alone that makes me wear it, but it also to some extent represents resistance. If you see yourself as a woman with a feminist background, as I do, then there is already a certain resistance in you.

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For Maryam keeping her hijab on—although the thought of taking it off has crossed her mind sometimes—is also some kind of resistance, because taking it off would give victory to anti-Muslim racists in her eyes. Siham also shares that opinion and considers her hijab a superhero cape: Your life would be twice as easy if you didn’t wear it, it’s like a superhero’s responsibility. Because the minute you take off your cape, you’re just normal, and like everyone else. And everyone is going to stop noticing you. But then you’re going to stop benefitting society or working for a cause and all that.

On the other hand, there are also women who cannot withstand the pressure. Nermin, a 23-year-old woman, born and raised in Germany, decided four years ago to cover her hair. She soon chose a khimar with which she at first felt very comfortable: “In the first six months when I covered, I was like on cloud nine, so totally happy with my khimar, that it was so loose, so wide, so very airy.” During that time, she met her husband and even thought about wearing a niqab, which he appreciated a lot and contributed to his decision to marry her. Now, however, she has changed the khimar into a hijab but feels so annoyed by gazes at her headgear that she sometimes doesn’t even want to leave the house and thinks of taking off her headscarf: I’m really sick of it. I don’t want to do it anymore... I just don’t want to go out anymore. I always notice that people look at me and I don’t want to justify myself. [...] I’m always the center of attention. I also want to be inconspicuous sometimes [...] I believe in it, I am convinced of it and if someone asked me about it, I would answer in the same way as before, as you would answer in Islam. But when I experience racism in everyday life, I can’t say: ‘Oh, okay, it’s difficult, I am in a non-Muslim country, I have to get through it now.’ [...] I would have wished that I were so strong, but I’m not. Maybe I was disappointed too much. I don’t know how this will end.

She thinks “Allah is generous and would forgive me in my current mental condition,” but the issue of covering is a conflict in her married life. She has often talked to her husband about her discomfort with the veil and

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still hopes that he will accept her decision to take it off, but he explains that this would be like allowing a sin: “I said: ‘I can’t staple that thing to your head, I’m not there all day, so what you’re doing I can’t control,’ but I can’t say: ‘Yes, go ahead’ or ‘I’m okay with it for a certain time,’ because I know it’s a sin.” Furthermore, he also adds that this would emotionally affect him “[…] for very selfish reasons. I mean, we know why Allah put this [veiling] on women. And for me personally, however, in terms of jealousy, it also plays a role. For me, it’s part of her awra and only I have the right to see it and everyone who is mah.ram [a member of one’s family with whom marriage would be considered prohibited in Islam] but not others.” Hence, veiled women are not only subjected to pressure from the predominantly non-Muslim society, but also from their Muslim community—whether the issue is to take off or put on the hijab or which form of veiling is considered appropriate. Many of our interlocutors also narrated parental opposition against their way of dressing. Ceyda, for instance, an 18-year-old student at a vocational college, would like to wear a niqab outside her school but does not dare to do so because her Muslim parents are strictly against it. However, she looks for situations where she can put on a niqab unnoticed by her parents, such as guest lectures in her mosque, where she can meet and interact with other like-minded young women: I always try to borrow my parents’ car on such occasions. It is better to come by car so that no relatives see me on the street and tell my father [that I am wearing a niqab]. I really enjoy meeting here other niqabi-sisters that I know and those from different towns and even other European countries.

Nadia, a German-born 24-year-old student also had to struggle with her Algerian father, when she decided to wear a black khimar and black jilbab: “For my father, it would be enough if I wore a headscarf and that was it, but for me personally it just doesn’t work. […] I believe that it’s haram, that it’s forbidden and he believes that it’s allowed.” Asye, a 23year-old woman born in Germany with parents of Turkish origin who initially did not want her to cover at all, also wears a khimar and jilbab.

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She describes the conflict with her parents, when she started to cover as a conflict between, on the one hand, her conviction that she should respect and obey her parents according to Islam and, on the other hand, her conviction that her wish to wear a khimar which contradicts her parents’ wishes, is an essential requirement to follow religious duties: I spent a year preparing, so I bought clothes that were decent and they [parents] said from the beginning: ‘No, don’t do that’ and so on, ‘you will have a lot of disadvantages.’ [...] Three months after I started to wear a headscarf, I also got my first khimar. I wanted to wear it right away, but then I waited three years [...]. My mother really yelled at me for getting it. [...] In the beginning, I was, yes, subordinate. But over time I just said it was my own way. I have the Islamic justification for it, so why should I be ashamed of it?

At the same time, for some women the hijab also affects their religious mindset and helps to construct their pious self. As Lewis (2013, 43 f.) argues, it is “through the act of wearing, being seen in and comporting appropriately the veiled body” that the pious disposition is cultivated and exercised. Veiling is often considered as a process on the way to a more pious self (Mahmood 2005, 156). As the headscarf requires certain behavioral habits such as modesty or shyness, the veiled women act appropriately until these behaviors become internalized and an integral part of their natural behavior, so that they do not need to simulate (ibid., 156 f.). This kind of behavior is not understood by the women interviewed by Saba Mahmood as hypocrisy or dishonesty, but rather as a learning process by synchronizing the outward behavior with inward motives until the discrepancy between the two is dissolved (see ibid., 157). Leyla is also aware of this: You adapt a little bit without having to pretend, that’s for sure. So that’s how I use it [the hijab] to control my behavior a little bit, because I know that the real person inside of me would also like to dance [...] I like to dance and I think that I am a self-determined woman, but I wouldn’t go to the nightclub for example [...] I just think that it [the hijab] is my self-protection and when I cross certain boundaries I notice that I feel uncomfortable and probably many women feel that way.

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Ilhana is even convinced that without her hijab she would have developed a very different personality: The [hijab] was also what kept me away from that [inappropriate] kind of behavior, because I always had the feeling that it wasn’t right for me to go for instance into clubs. It kept me from alcohol, from clubs and drugs and so on. [...] I am honest, I would have certainly tried those things [without a hijab]! [...] Now I am just like that: I don’t want to, because it doesn’t go together, and then I have the feeling that it [hijab] saves me from something bad.

Through the repeated act of veiling Ilhana has managed to internalize these behavioral habits: “Actually, I don’t know a life without hijab. It’s almost an identity of mine, simply because it also makes up my personality, which I have developed as a consequence. It simply belongs to me.”

Community Building on Instagram Social media platforms such as Instagram, which emphasize visual representation, made participation in global modest fashion easier. All veiled women we talked to have their own Instagram account and some share photos and videos of their everyday life with their followers on a regular basis. Leyla mentions the solidarity she experiences through the exchange on Instagram: “I notice in myself that solidarity is strengthened and encouragement grows.” For instance, under the hashtags #hijabista, #hijabstyle, or #hijabfashion, there are millions of posts of hijabis in all veiling variations from all over the world and the page “surviving Hijab”—to give just one example— provides a global community dedicated to “reinventing the Hija-babe.” These online interactions can also result in real-life meetings, as in the case of Nadia, who participated in a so-called “sisters meeting” organized by a “sister” in faith via Instagram. On Instagram, hijabistas do not present themselves as experts in the field of Islam, but rather as fashion experts (Moors 2013, 28). Even

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though these women would not describe themselves as religious interpreters and intermediaries, their discussions about fashion can influence how religion is experienced and lived in everyday life. Lewis argues that this online exchange enables the emergence of new religious interpretations far from those of conventional male religious authorities: Lateral relationships allow new practices to be spread online and to be implemented offline (see Lewis 2013, 48). Although Siham does not believe that social media contribute to the reconfiguration of interpretations of religious texts and dress codes, she believes that veiled women are empowered through social media: Facebook groups and influencers and so on have empowered Muslim women to see a different narrative of themselves and have legitimized their dreams in some way. Because now there is such a wide spectrum of visibly Muslim women doing all sorts of things and legitimizing dreams and things that seemed to be impossible. So, the idea is: ‘I can do it, so can you.’

However, in this kind of posts and stories discussions about what “Islamic dress” actually is and how the hijab should be worn “correctly,” are usually avoided: “[…] [T]hey present it as more or less self-evident and, by doing so, contribute to its normalization” (Moors 2013, 27). Siham rejects religious discussions for two reasons: First of all, she thinks that she is not a religious expert, but only a practicing Muslim woman, so it is not up to her to discuss expert knowledge. Moreover, she feels that it’s time to talk about us as human beings and not as somebody who wears… who covers their hair, basically. Because there’s much more to that. I am a human being, I have feelings, emotions, dreams, aspirations, you know. I have skills, actually, I have intellectual properties and everything. So that’s why I almost never talk about it, and plus I think it’s quite plain to see that I wear a hijab and that I am Muslim, so that does its thing, that’s enough [...] And also because I feel there’s enough talk about hijabis, so to say, strictly linked to religion, on TV […].

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Her aim is to contribute to normalizing the hijab and she is convinced that social media like Instagram “allow us to tell our stories, not our stories to be always told by somebody else.” Of course, this does not mean that different religious opinions or discussions are not to be found in the comments, but it is not the creators of the content who push to do so. Mona, who models for a modest fashion brand, often sees comments on the photos posted on the fashion brand’s Instagram page where her turban is described as “not a proper hijab.” Ilhana, who at first hardly published any full-body photos of herself, was even criticized for her eyes being too seductive: Once, I had a situation where someone wrote to me [...]: ‘You always excite me a lot with your glances’ and I was like: don’t visit my page then! I think: if men are attracted to something like that, there must be something wrong with them and if not, then I’m sorry, but what kind of a man are you if you look at my pictures that much. They say that men should lower their gaze just as much as women, so why don’t you do it?

Siham notes that it is mostly men who “feel entitled to have an opinion on what you do with your body.” In her experience, women react very differently to practices that they do not approve of, as “women usually ask it as a question, you know. Most of them at least, are trying to find a polite way of like, figuring out why you’re doing it.” Veiled Muslim women face far more difficulties in predominantly non-Muslim societies than men. Soleiman, a 32-year-old man whose wife would like to wear a niqab but doesn’t dare to do so in Germany, explains: “Funnily enough, Muslim men’s beards and ankle-free trousers have become fashionable right now because of the hipsters. That gives us men a great advantage. You can hardly tell us apart, but it’s not the same for women.” Ilahna gets furious when she reads comments posted by Muslim men who criticize, e.g., the outfits in which women do sports, because I don’t think you’ve got a say in this, you’ve got absolutely nothing to say. You have no idea what it’s like for us. [...] Do you have any idea how hard it is for us to find the right clothes, something that is not too tight, something that is not too short, something you can still do sports in, something you won’t die in if you do sports, something you

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won’t drown in if you go swimming? First of all, this. And secondly, if [she emphasized] you find something [appropriate], do you know how expensive it is?

However, the fact that men often feel compelled to patronize women is something that is not exclusive to Muslim men. Siham argues that everywhere “there is always this massive concern with what women wear” and “nobody tells men what they should wear or should not wear, nobody puts it into laws, east, west, north, south, it doesn’t exactly work this way, whereas everybody is trying to protect women, as if we weren’t able to make proper decisions about our own bodies, as if they didn’t belong to us”.

Conclusion Just as Muslim scholars’ individual (and always historically, culturally, and sociopolitically embedded) interpretations of the right female dress code differ, the ways Muslim women implement such normative guidelines for their body practices in their everyday lives are highly heterogeneous. Veiled women in Germany face manifold challenges in their everyday lives. Critiques from their mostly non-Muslim sociocultural environment in which many oppose the idea of covering at all, but also from other Muslims who object to their way of veiling as inappropriate can present sometimes ambiguous demands they have to navigate. Social contexts may be crucial for their decisions on the visibility of their religious orientation and which style of clothing they regard as most adequate. While some of our interlocutors make a particular effort to not frighten others by their choice of covering, to not be too conspicuous and to convey a positive image of Islam, for others, experiences of Islamophobia and exclusion or parental opposition result in highlighting the duty to cover, which they also perceive as an act of resistance. But not only the social context and religious guidelines play a role for clothing practices, but also (changing) individual tastes and preferences as well as global fashion trends. Their interaction and as our article has shown, also pragmatic

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considerations can shape their experiences of religious commitment and dedication by ambivalences, dynamics, and transformations. Due to their hypervisibility, Muslim women living in predominantly non-Muslim societies are more conscious about their outer appearance and more aware of their clothing choices and of the social or religious comfort or discomfort these might produce. As veiled women in Germany are mostly perceived as “Muslimwomen” their gender and religion become strongly intertwined into a homogenized single image. This contributes to a dichotomy between the clothing practices of Muslim women on the one hand and “Western” fashion on the other as well as the belief that Muslim women are either too religious to be “Western” or too “Western” to be religious. Many women we interviewed have, however, shown how they develop their own agency starting from an externally determined position: Because their perceived Muslimness is emphasized, they develop a stronger identification with and a sense of belonging to an imagined community of Muslims. Although they felt pushed into a representational role of Islam, they embraced this role and turned it into a way of expressing resistance against biases and anti-Muslim racism in society. Resistance is also mirrored when women refuse to take off the hijab for reasons that are not their own and thereby (re)claim their bodies as sites of agency. The attempt of some of our interviewees to use the veil as a mean for self-discipline and for achieving a more pious self can also be regarded as an act of agency. Another way of (re)claiming agency is by telling one’s own story and gaining self-determined visibility. The so-called hijabistas we talked to use Instagram to empower others to follow their lead. By avoiding religious discussions, they present their way of veiling as a common bodily practice and thereby contribute to its normalization. Without actively trying to do so, Hijabistas open the way to the emergence of new religious (re)interpretations of Muslim clothing outside the authority of male religious scholars.

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Notes 1. During the 1950s and 1960s, West Germany signed bilateral agreements for the recruitment of so called “guest workers” with a number of countries. Until the stop in labor recruitment in 1973, approximately 14 million mostly male foreign workers came to Germany for jobs that required few qualifications in the industrial sector. Turkish citizens became the largest group of them. While around 11 million eventually returned to their countries, other remained and their families joined them. 2. An abaya is a loose long-sleeve robe-like dress which is worn as a kind of overgarment over the normal clothing and covers the whole body except of head, feet and hands. A traditional abaya is plain black, but in recent years a number of fashion designers, including Western Haute Couture ones, have created abayas with different colors and embellishments. 3. A hijab is a veil that usually covers the hair, ears and neck. 4. All of the interlocutors have been anonymized. 5. A khimar is a veil which covers head, neck and shoulders, usually in the form of a cloth that comes down to the waist, with a hole cut out for the face. 6. Translations of Quranic verses are taken from Arberry’s (1955) translation. 7. Jörg Pilawa’s well-known quiz show is broadcasted on the national television channel ARD.

References al-Banna, Jamal. 2008. Al-Mar’a al-Muslima Bayna Tah.rir al-Qur’an wa-Taqyid al-Fuqaha. Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq. al-Barudi, Muhammad. 2009. Sha’r al-mar’a laisa ‘awra. https://www.ahl-alq uran.com/arabic/show_article.php?main_id=5898. Accessed 20 June 2020. al-Qaradawi, Yusuf. 2007. Fatawa wa-ahkam. Libas al-mar’a al-muslima. Hukmuhu wa-Ausafuhu. https://www.al-qaradawi.net/node/4286. Accessed 21 June 2020. Almila, Anna-Mari. 2019. Veiling in Fashion: Space and the Hijab in Minority Communities. London: Tauris.

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Amir-Moazami, Schirin. 2014. The Performativity of Face-Veil Controversies in Europe. In The Experiences of Face Veil Wearers in Europe and the Law, ed. Eva Brauns, 263–277. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Arberry, Arthur J. 1955. The Koran Interpreted . New York: Allen & Unwin. Barlas, Asma. 2006. Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an. Austin: Texas University Press. Bendixsen, Synnøve. 2013. The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin: An Ethnographic Study. Leiden, Boston: Brill. Brigitte. 2016. Hijabfashion: So stylish kann Mode mit Kopftuch sein. https://www.brigitte.de/mode/styling-tipps/hijabfashion--so-vielfaeltigkann-mode-mit-kopftuch-sein-10852500.html. Accessed 18 March 2020. Brunke, Elisa. 2015. Bloggerinnen mit Kopftuch: Hijabistas sind die muslimische Antwort auf Fashionistas. https://www.cosmopolitan.de/bloggerin nen-mit-kopftuch-hijabistas-sind-die-muslimische-antwort-auf-fashionistas67301.html. Accessed 18 March 2020. Cheruvalli–Contractor, Sariya. 2018. What Is Islamic and Ethical in Islamic Fashion? In Contemporary Islamic Fashion, ed. Jill D’Allessandro and Reina Lewis, 84–89. Munich et al: Prestel. Cooke, Miriam. 2007. The Muslimwomen. Contemporary Islam 1: 139–154. Damir-Geilsdorf, Sabine, and Leslie Tramontini. 2015. Renegotiating ShariahBased Normative Guidelines in Cyberspace: The Case of Woman’s Awrah. Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet 9: 19–44. Dawah2do. 2012. Das Kopftuch. https://dawah2do.blogger.de/stories/212 8880. Accesssed 21 June 2020. Der Weg zu Allah. n.d.. Unsere Pflicht Niqab zu Tragen. https://weg-zu-allah. de.tl/Unsere-Pflicht-Niqab-zu-tragen.htm. Accessed 21 June 2020. Elturk, Melanie. 2014. Ask Haute Hijab: Is Hijab Really Mandatory? https://www.hautehijab.com/blogs/hijab-fashion/10399809-ask-hautehijab-is-hijab-really-mandatory-fard. Accessed 21 June 2020. Emma. 2019. Nützliche Idioten des Polit-Islam. https://www.emma.de/artikel/ nuetzliche-idioten-des-politischen-islam-336653. Accessed 18 March 2020. Ghumkhor, Sahar. 2020. The Political Psychology of the Veil: The Impossible Body. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ibn Baz. n.d. Hukm al-niqab li-l-mar’a. https://binbaz.org.sa/fatwas/17670/% D8%AD%D9%83%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D9%82% D8%A7%D8%A8-%D9%84%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B1%D8%A7% D8%A9. Accessed 21 June 2020.

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Islamfatwa. n.d. Darlegung über die Pflicht des Niqab. https://islamfatwa.de/ m/kleidung-schmuck/139-niqab-gesichtsschleier/217-darlegung-ueber-diepflicht-des-niqab. Accessed 21 June 2020. Kathir, Imad al-Din. 1981. Mukhtasar tafsir Ibn Kathir. Beirut: Dar al-Qur’an al-karim. Kavakci, Elif, and Camille R. Kraeplin. 2017. Religious Beings in Fashionable Bodies: The Online Identity Construction of Hijabi Social Media Personalities. Media, Culture & Society 39 (6): 850–868. Lewis, Reina. 2013. Fashion Forward and Faith-Tastic! Online Modest Fashion and the Development of Women as Religious Interpreters and Intermediaries. In Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith, ed. Reina Lewis, 41–66. London: Tauris. ———. 2018. Modest Fashion and Anti-Fashion. In The Routledge International Handbook to Veils and Veiling Practices, ed. Anna-Mari. Almila and David Inglis, 139–151. London: Routledge. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Moors, Annelies. 2013. ‘Discover the Beauty of Modesty’. Islamic Fashion Online. In Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith, ed. Reina Lewis, 17–40. London: Tauris. Muhajabah. n.d. Evidences for Jilbab. https://www.muhajabah.com/jilbab.htm. Accessed 21 June 2020. Philips, Bilal. n.d. Der Gesichtsschleier (Niqab). https://diewahrheitimherzen. net/islamische-bekleidung/543-der-gesichtsschleier-niqab. Accessed 21 June 2020. Spielhaus, Riem. 2018. Zwischen Migrantisierung von Muslimen und Islamisierung von Migranten. In Postmigrantische Perspektiven. Ordnungssysteme, Repräsentationen, Kritik, ed. Naika Faroutan, Juliane Karakayali and Riem Spielhaus, 129–143. Frankfurt, New York: Campus Press.

“How I Wear My Headscarf.” Narratives About Dress and Styling from Young Muslim Women in Copenhagen Gülzar Demir, Marie-Louise Nosch, and Else Skjold

Introduction and Literature Overview Muslim women’s dress, the headscarf in particular,1 is both highly debated and has generated a vast body of scholarly literature. According to Susan Rasmussen, “most popular images of the veil and veiling remain emotion-based, culture-bound, and de-contextualized”

G. Demir Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] M.-L. Nosch Centre for Textile Research, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] E. Skjold (B) Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_4

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(Rasmussen 2013, 238). Her analyses highlight three interrelated challenges: that the headscarf covers a wide range of practices, that the headscarf has become a sign of oppression of women to the non-Muslim public, and that, consequently, the headscarf has become an emblem for wide generalizations concerning Islam. Indeed, most scholarly literature and the media focus on the political and religious aspects of veiling and tend to overlook other aspects, such as comfort, aesthetic value, age-specific choices, and fashion. A new trend in research on Muslim women’s dress is studied with a more situated national or local scope, e.g., in Britain and France, Niger and Mali, and in Malaysia (e.g., Rasmussen 2013; Thimm 2015, 2018). These studies highlight local meanings and situated developments in dress practices, and reveal the diversity of experiences and meanings, hence challenging the “monolithic interpretations of women’s dress in Islamic communities” (Rasmussen 2013, 244). Indeed, in many Muslim communities, “veiling is not solely a religious symbol, but is also considered an aspect of women’s fashionable dress” (Rasmussen 2013, 239). Viola Thimm pioneered this more individual and diversified approach in her surveys of how Malay middle-class Muslim women choose the SaudiArabian abaya as fashionable wear; there it functions as a souvenir from a pilgrimage and as a sign of middle class and modernity (Thimm 2015, 2018), while in the Arab Peninsula, the abaya has a different connotation of anti-materialism, religiosity, and return to spirituality (Thimm 2015, 106–109). Likewise, in her survey of Saudi women on vacation in Malaysia, Thimm observes how they abandoned the abaya (a long black Arab dress) and niquab (face veil) for the duration of their trip, and instead wore colorful dresses accessorized with handmade ballet flats, expensive handbags, and jewelries (Thimm 2015, 107–109). Indeed, Muslim women’s dressing practices are multiple and complex.

The International Modest Fashion Industry The headscarf has been studied in past decades as a part of the emerging modest fashion industry, and the UK is the epicenter of modest fashion in Europe and offers the greatest range of prices, qualities, and trends.

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There are several UK-based and globally known modest fashion shops such as Inayah (www.inayah.com). Currently, Inayah has 600 K followers on Instagram and Inayah’s motto on Instagram is “Contemporary Modest Fashion for All Women.” The British online fashion retailer ASOS (www. asos.com) sells a modest fashion line on their website called “Modest Fashion Edit” with the description: Our modest fashion edit has everything you need if you’re choosing to be more covered. Created with long sleeves, floor-length hemlines and opaque fabrics, each piece can be worn on its own – no layers necessary. So, you can stay true to yourself and still have fun with fashion.2

Modest fashion is becoming increasingly influential in the western fashion system as a hybrid style that combines the aesthetics and values of western and Muslim dress, as was described in the pioneering works by, e.g., Tarlo (2010), Tarlo and Moors (2013), and Lewis (2015a, b). Even if a majority of international studies point to the fact that modest fashion is indeed vividly explored and challenged from the inside—as for example Lewis’ studies of the “dejabbing” phenomenon on Youtube (Lewis 2015a, b)—western media has had a tendency to paint a very uniform picture of veiled women and ideologically represent them as a threat to secularity and western democracy (Tarlo 2010, 57). As the number of autonomous fashion weeks for modest fashion is on the rise, Muslim women trace a new pathway by shaping their own dress identity. Modest fashion bloggers on social media are an empowering influence for young Muslim women through their displays of styling, trends, and peer-to-peer advice on the appropriate dressing. Moreover, modest fashion is increasingly influencing young women of non-Muslim cultural backgrounds, suggesting that multiple meanings and values have become embedded in the headscarf. Modest fashion has been described as a temporal hybrid between style and fashion, in the respect that while fashion is often defined as a rapidly changing phenomenon, religion and religious attire is most often connected with stability (Lewis 2013, 12). Moreover, definitions of modesty are constantly being negotiated, tested, and developed, particularly in online communities. Here, modesty becomes an alternative

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to the sexual objectification of women in most western fashion and is explored in interreligious groupings of Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and other non-religious women who perceive the style as inspirational (Cameron 2013, 147). As such, the rise of blogs, social media interactions, and physical and online shops for modest fashion can all be viewed as part of the revival of Islamic values among Muslim women living in secular, western societies from the 2000s onward. This rise among Danish Muslim women is described by Monique Hocke (2014) who perceives the reemerging religious interest as an act placed between resistance and accommodation, opposition and appropriation. As such, modest fashion can be inscribed among twentieth-century oppositional styles that emerged and grew increasingly popular on the mainstream market, as marginal groupings made use of their attire to challenge mainstream western culture. The renowned are probably rockabilly and hip hop, both hybrid styles deriving from African Americans (Skjold 2010). Such styles are typically viewed as “style wars” (Craik 1994), a term that covers both clothing style and body techniques. The rise of modest fashion today is evidenced in the global modest fashion market, which is estimated to represent US$373 billion by 2020 (Thomson Reuters 2018, 103). Thus, in the past decade we have witnessed an increased commercialization of modest fashion and a growing market for appropriate designs. Designers, retail, and sports brands have aligned in a shared effort to make Muslim women’s dress a modern, profitable fashion item (Thimm 2015, 107–109). This includes the differentiation of clothing (everyday wear, festive, sportswear), trendy branding, and expanded choices in terms of design, drape, pattern, and cloth quality. In this growth, the headscarf follows the development that is seen globally for halal industries.

Modest Fashion in Denmark Comprehensive research on modest fashion has been conducted in the UK, since the British fashion industry is tightly interwoven with the country’s colonial past, which is accordingly reflected in scholarly research that addresses colonial and postcolonial perspectives (Breward

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et al. 2010). Denmark also has a colonial past (in Africa, India, the Caribbean, and the Arctic), though this does not coincide as directly with the areas in the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey from where immigrants and refugees have come to Denmark in the past generation’s time. In the European VEIL project Values, Equality and Differences in Liberal Democracies: Debates about Muslim Women’s Headscarves in Europe, policies and legislation across Europe were compared and it was suggested that Denmark has experienced particular difficulties in relation to globalization and immigration from non-western countries because of Denmark’s apparent homogeneous population in terms of ethnicity, language, and religion, and the fact that immigration is a fairly rare and recent phenomenon in Denmark beginning in the 1960s. So, contrary to Britain, Denmark does not have decades of experience with large-scale immigration. This has generated a liberal yet heavily polarized policy approach and debate on the topic of veiling, particularly in the years preceding 2008 when Denmark first introduced legislation prohibiting judges from wearing religious symbols in court (Siim 2011). This regulation targeted the use of headscarves and came in a time of increasing polarity on the topic of Muslim immigration. This debate was influenced by the 1991 war in Iraq, the 9/11 attack in the US in 2001, the 2004 war in Iraq, and the “Muhammed crisis” of 2005 in which a Danish newspaper published highly controversial, satirical drawings of the prophet Muhammed, generating demonstrations, attacks on Danish embassies and a diplomatic crisis with Muslim governments. All of this fueled hostility toward Muslims in Denmark, and the veil in particular became a debated symbol of this sentiment. Instigated largely by the populist Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party), attempts were made to install regulation on veiling from 2003 onward (Schmidt 2007), leading to the prohibition of face coverings in 2018. Extensive research conducted on the significance of the headscarf in a Danish context has been done by scholars such as Schmidt (2007) and Degn and Søholm (2011) on female dress, migrants, and legislation. Hald (2018) explored female self-representation and modest fashion in Copenhagen. Christensen (2013) undertook interviews of high-profile Muslim women represented in the media. What emerges from these situated studies are the efforts of the individual Muslim woman to

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adopt their perceptions of Danish fashion and style, while still respecting Muslim modesty and style preferences their country of origin, friends, and family. Hybrid styles reflect hybrid lives, and young Muslims living in western countries are often referred to as “cultural commuters” (Mørck 1998, 121) in the sense that “ethnic youth can to a certain extent, just like all people living in modern society, combine various cultural wardrobes” (Mørck 1998, 79). Tarlo (2010, 54) observes how the hijab acts as “collective affirmative device” in a sort of Islamic sisterhood both in social interactions and in the virtual world. We also observe how the headscarf becomes instrumental in the impression-management practices of being visibly female and visibly Muslim while simultaneously navigating between various social attachments and culturally affiliated sartorial references (Tarlo 2010, 54). We posit that the headscarf signifies a variety of different meanings to the wearer that cannot be confined to religious matters alone. This same perspective was introduced in the pioneer work of Danish ethnographer Henny Harald Hansen, who conducted studies of women and headscarves in the Middle East from the late 1950s to the early 1960s (Hansen 1964). Contemporary Danish fashion is known for specializing in the midprice, “democratic” category due to the small size of the population and the absence of a wealthy elite to consume high-level couture. Stylistically, it is connected to the functional aesthetics of Scandinavian Modern furniture of the 1950s, combined with a relaxed and informal “bohemian” style (Riegels-Melchior 2013), which became an international breakthrough for Danish fashion designers of the mid-2000s such as Munthe plus Simonsen, Bruuns Bazaar, DAY Birger et Mikkelsen, Julie Fagerholdt and by Malene Birger. The sartorial style, according to Riegels-Melchior (2010, 334) is feminine, dressed-up yet practical, created through the use of embroidered fabrics, color and pattern mixes, layers, braiding, and a frequent and often lavish use of sequins. It is also characterized by a decorated yet simple and relaxed look with toned down colors, often drawing from feminine Muslim style, with loose-fitting silhouettes and dress types such as the caftan or shirtdress. This style derives from the so-called “ethnic” inspiration of the 1960s and 1970s when many Danes went traveling and brought back clothing and interior goods from “the

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hippie trail” from India (Engelhardt Mathiasen 2014). It is therefore paradoxical for the mid-2000s that while Danish fashion designers were celebrated widely for appropriating Muslim culture in their design, the hostility toward Muslim women and their attire in Denmark grew. From 2017 to 2020 we have conducted the interdisciplinary research project THREAD (Textile Hub for Refugee Empowerment, Education, and Entrepreneurship Advancement in Denmark) investigating opportunities for entrepreneurship and the employment of immigrant women in Denmark through their textile skills and fashion knowledge (Malcolm-Davies and Nosch 2018; Malcolm-Davies and Skjold 2018; Nosch 2018; Skjold et al. 2020a, b).3 The project involved numerous textile workshops, events, and other activities with Danish fashion brands and retailers, local integration authorities, migrant and refugee community organizations, and hundreds of immigrant women in the areas of Kolding and Copenhagen. This included a small-scale series of wardrobe studies conducted in the homes of refugee and migrant women living in the city of Kolding. The study uncovered the situated strategies of individuals who use the styling of their clothing as a way of connecting their past, present, and future identities. Specifically, how these women navigated the dilemmas of dressing appropriately and fashionably for family and friends, as well as for the Danish population at large (Skjold et al. 2020a, b). Of particular interest is how the respondents in the wardrobe studies navigated between the glittery, colorful attire they wore at social events with other Muslim women, and the more toned down, simple, and functional style they wore for work, school, picking up kids, or shopping. In the THREAD project, we welcomed open discussions as to how Muslim women living in Denmark perceived and interpreted Danish women’s way of dressing. These migrant and refugee women often mentioned being mystified why Danish women dressed so simply and in such dark colors, and did not seem to make an effort. This perception strongly effects how Muslim women choose to dress appropriately for participating in Danish society. It provided insights as to how Muslim women combine their own culturally important styles with their perceived notions of Danish fashion to accommodate themselves to their new life in Denmark. This again brings into question what Danish fashion is, and how it is in turn interpreted by ethnic minorities.

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In this chapter, we explore these compromises further by interviewing young Danish Muslim women in an urban setting on their dressing choices. What we wish to explore is how all of these interwoven references, perceptions, ideas, traditions, and expectations are currently being negotiated and interpreted by young Muslim women in Copenhagen; specifically, to understand where they draw their inspiration from, where they shop, how they perceive veiling as practice, how they negotiate matters of modesty and fashionability through the combination of Muslim and Danish dress references in their styling and their self-representation on social media platforms and in their private lives. These factors all influence the practices of “Daning up” described by the THREAD participants, who combined a variety of cultural references and ideas of modesty with “Danishness” in their everyday attire (Skjold 2020). We do not wish to define what Danish fashion or modest fashion is and will instead explore it through the words of our interviewees and online survey respondents.

Methodology Our methodology derives from an interest in the daily practices of dressing, and our analysis is based on the “wardrobe method,” which was developed during the 2010s by British and Scandinavian dress scholars (Fletcher and Klepp 2017; Klepp et al. 2014). This method typically addresses what Tarlo (1996) named “dressing dilemmas” that respondents are negotiating in their daily practices of dressing. It was introduced by Tarlo in her study of young, Indian high school students who literally changed attire between the westernized climate of their education and their home life with families who held on to their traditional values in an attempt to adapt their style to be appropriately dressed for two entirely different sets of expectations. The chapter builds both methodologically and theoretically on the insights we have gained in two collaborative research projects, such as, THREAD (see above) and The Fabric of My Life, an EU-research project (2019–2022) on the emotional aspects of clothing, integration, memory,

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and family history in which we crowd-source podcasts on emotional attachment to clothing from 1st, 2nd, or 3rd generation immigrants (Nosch 2019).4 We started research for this chapter with a literature review on headscarves in western societies, a survey on modest fashion shops in Copenhagen, international modest fashion websites, and Instagram. This led to identifying five key Muslim women living in the Copenhagen area between the ages of 20–45 with whom we conducted structured and detailed interviews through a semi-structured questionnaire (Questionnaire 1). These respondents are shop owners, influencers, or other drivers of modest fashion in the Copenhagen area who could describe the development within the last five years of the local market, demand, and matters of appropriate dress for aging, adulthood, professional life, and gender. The questionnaire encompassed multiple aspects of veiling and head covering, including terminology, context-specific data, history of purchase, wardrobe contexts, and dressing practices. This led to the creation of Questionnaire 2 (below) that narrows the demographic target to a younger group of respondents of Muslim women aged 18–25 years and asks six key questions about shopping choices, fashion communication, dressing practices, and wardrobe choices. Questionnaire 2 was written in Danish, and is translated into English here: Questionnaire 2: Q1: Where do you find your inspiration and style? Q2: What kinds of headscarves do you prefer? Q3: How do you style your headscarf, i.e., with jewelry, make-up, and clothing? Q4: Where do you purchase your headscarves? Q5: How was the situation five years ago regarding questions 1–4? What has changed? What are your reflections? Q6: Your age and origin (family, country, residence). Q1–4 concern the present, while Q5 takes a historical and autobiographical perspective.

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The criteria (C) for participation were to be C1 female, C2 of Muslim faith or culture, C3 aged 18–25, C4 living in the greater Copenhagen area, and C5 Danish-speaking. In order to contextualize and verify C1–5, Q6 collected data on family origin, place of residence, and age. The respondent was asked to provide a surname (their own or freely chosen) and each questionnaire was given a random number in a sequence. No other personal data was recorded. The interviews for Questionnaire 1 were conducted in January and February of 2020. The total number was 5 (N = 5). Questionnaire 2 was conducted partly as electronic survey and communicated via Facebook, Instagram, and e-mail (N = 16). All answers were given in Danish and passages and quotes used in this chapter were translated into English by us. Sampling and gathering of data: Questionnaire 2 was shared on two social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to reach the specific target group. All of the respondents were young Muslim women living in Copenhagen who originate from places such as Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Morocco, Republic of North Macedonia, Kurds from Turkey, and Berber from North Africa. In total, there were 16 respondents between 18 and 25 years of age. Evaluation of answers: Q1–4 were formulated to enable quantitative and qualitative assessment and target the present situation of the respondent herself. Q5 opened for an opportunity of reflection. This question was deliberately phrased to encompass both personal development in dress practices as well as the development of general dressing practices and commercial/shopping opportunities in the respondent’s context. This gave the opportunity to address various aspects or choose what developments they found most significant. Q6: Age, (family) origin, and residence: The answers adhered to C1–5. A follow-up questionnaire was designed and completed in August of 2020 to collect further data on site-specific taste patterns of young

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Muslim women in Copenhagen. Three respondents participated. This questionnaire was similar to questionnaires 1 and 2 but included Q7: What do you think is special about modest fashion in Copenhagen compared to other places in Denmark?

Insights from the Study: Development of the Modest Fashion Market in Copenhagen, Denmark Based on desktop research, observations, and site-specific studies, as well as questionnaire 1, it seems the modest fashion market in Denmark is expanding rapidly. Young Muslim women are increasingly taking part in the fashion industry. They keep track of trends, and endeavor to creatively reconcile them with their faith’s guidelines on dress. A number of Danish Muslim fashion bloggers and shop owners in the larger cities of Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Odense have emerged as competitive trendsetters. Furthermore, young Muslim consumers are able to represent themselves and mirror each other through the latest fashion trends. In Copenhagen, there are two large stores that cater to this need with rather high-quality clothing: Liva Shop and Sabaya Copenhagen. According to Cathrine Strynø, Muslim owner of Sabaya Denmark, modest fashion is an important influence for Danish Muslim society in Copenhagen. Strynø has worked with modest fashion since 2013 and created her own modest fashion brand, and she has witnessed the development of Muslim clothing in the city. During the interview in August 2020, Strynø said: Fashion means a lot if you are a Muslim woman living in a non-Muslim country. Clothing helps Muslim women feel accepted by the society. I design clothes and headscarves for a specific target group living in Copenhagen/Denmark.

Strynø is working on two platforms where she shares her collections, and to promote her designs she has created an Instagram account called “sabayadenmark” where she has around 12.5 K followers. Her slogan is

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“Modest Fashion Store – we unite modesty, fashion & simplicity! ” which highlights her views on modest fashion. Strynø believes that young Muslim women living in Copenhagen have changed their perspective on modest fashion throughout the last 5 years, and that this development has affected other young Muslim women living outside the capital. Strynø explains that modest fashion in Copenhagen is “a combination of practical outfits, an acceptance from society, and a touch of being fashionable.” The Muslim owner of Liva Shop is Seri Korkmaz; she is 45 years old and has been working in this field since 2017. The customer profile of Liva Shop is Muslim women wearing hijab who want to be a part of the modest fashion concept without compromising their religious convictions. Korkmaz imports clothing and headscarves from Turkey, and she undertakes three to four business trips to Istanbul each year where she selects specific dress items for her shop and customers in Copenhagen. She uses her Instagram account Livashop.dk as her main communication tool to reach out to her target customer group; here she creates outfits based on her collection and shares “stories” and “posts” to her page. Besides Sabaya and Liva Shop, many smaller shops located in the Nørrebro area of Copenhagen sell less expensive headscarves and clothing of significantly lower quality, but the modest fashion retail profile in Denmark is not up to par with the greater supply and diversity of choices offered by shops in places like the UK. Instagram is an active and growing social media platform for modest fashion where young Muslim women find inspiration from the international modest fashion industry and from each other. One of the pioneers of Danish modest fashion is blogger Zaineb Oussaidi, who opened her Instagram account in 2012. Oussaidi’s screen name is Ziziosashion, and her Instagram account with 145 K followers presents her outfits. Her YouTube channel of the same name features hijab tutorial videos, and while she mainly speaks to fellow Danes, she has a global appeal (Cakir 2015; Gestsson 2015; Sig 2016). Oussaidi is not the only Danish Muslim influencer; another popular Instagram figure is Isha, or “ishaloona.” Based in Copenhagen, her account focuses on hijab styling, make-up, and fashion. Her 255K Instagram followers are young Muslim women from all over the world.

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Another trendsetting Danish Muslim fashion blogger is Funda Satan who lives in Copenhagen. Instagram is her main social media platform, where she uses her account as a brand ambassador for Danish brands. Satan is currently collaborating with Sabaya Denmark to present modest fashion for young Muslim women living in Denmark. She explains how modest fashion has developed in the last 5 years in Copenhagen: Now it is possible to buy different types of headscarves and clothes in Copenhagen, which was not possible 5 years ago. The modest fashion market in Copenhagen today is very good compared to 5 years ago.

Our research shows that modest fashion in Copenhagen is undergoing development. The few modest fashion shops in Copenhagen are trying to design collections that go hand in hand with religious rules, while being as fashionable as possible and adhering to a certain local Nordic look. Modest fashion in Copenhagen is therefore not directly comparable to other European capitals. The answers from our survey questionnaires suggest that young Muslim women get inspired by each other on social media platforms, and that the modest fashion concept is a relatively new way of dressing in Denmark (Fig. 1).

Insights from Study: How I Wear My Headscarf Most of the respondents purchase their headscarves from small shops in Copenhagen. Zaïnab explains how modest fashion has inspired her daily hijab life: I love the idea of modest fashion; with modest fashion it is easier and more fun to shop as a Muslim girl who is wearing hijab. Additionally, it is nice to find trendy clothes which still cover my body in such a way that I can show my femininity according to my religious conviction.

Moreover, in Questionnaire 2, the respondents report that they use a range of different qualities and fabric types of scarves in their daily life.

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Fig. 1 Modest clothing in the Nordic nuances in the Sabaya Copenhagen shop

A scarf is not only a piece of fabric; during the last 5 years, a wider variety of headscarves have become accessible to fulfill the requirements of consumers and the modest fashion industry. Liva Shop offers a wide range of scarves, defined in Danish by an international terminology, consisting of chiffon, jersey, wrinkle, pashmina, silk, and lycra. According to both questionnaires, Muslim women select their headscarves based on factors such as the fabric quality, the context and occasion, fashion, and how the headscarf makes them feel. Madiha said:

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I usually wear soft colors, nude colors or pastel colors, which is consistent with the rest of my outfits… Apart from the color coordination, the hijab is equivalent to one’s hairstyle; therefore, I don’t use loud colors because it will look unnatural.

Another respondent, Rabia, explained how she divides her scarves into two categories: daily use and special occasion. She then associates these two categories with fabric types: chiffon scarves for special occasions because the fabric is more delicate than wrinkle and jersey. This signifies a close association between context/occasion and fabric/fiber, and that fabric types (more than patterns or drape) are used to signal the difference between daily routines and festive events. The respondents reflected upon dilemmas concerning the headscarf ’s multiple meanings as a sign of devotion and as fashion, as well as their associated values of vanity or spirituality. Some contrast the two sides, others see opportunities to reconcile them. Below are two slightly different opinions: Kevser wrote: What has changed the most is the headscarf ’s meaning and significance. The spiritual aspects were more prominent 5 years ago. The shops did not offer much choice and neither did the shops online. There was no variation in headscarf styles. Now, one can purchase headscarves everywhere, and not only scarves, the fashion industry has so much more to offer now: long dresses, coats... This gives, of course, more opportunities to form a personal style. Right now, there is a clear difference between those who see the headscarf as a fashion item and those who wear it only for religious purposes. Personally, I am quite reluctant to follow new trends, so I am not influenced by fashion bloggers or “influencers,” but clearly these innovations make it more attractive to compromise concerning the religious meaning in order to look fashionable. To me, one can definitely have a cool style and still wear the headscarf for religious purposes. But it has become more acute to express the difference between the two.

Berna stated: o me, a headscarf is first and foremost a religious symbol; it reminds me of my identity as a Muslim. It is a constant reminder of how my nature

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should be and what I stand for as a Muslim woman. Moreover, I see it as a kind of “empowerment”, because just as any woman has the right to show her body, so she should have the same right to cover it.

Both Questionnaires 1 and 2 illustrate how the wearing of a headscarf is a combination of religious beliefs and fashion trends.

Insights from Study: Modest Fashion in Copenhagen in a Five Year Perspective Questionnaire 2 asked the respondents to assess the developments in modest fashion and consumer opportunities in the past 5 years, as well as inviting them to share the development of their own wardrobe choices in that time. There is an agreement among the respondents that modest fashion businesses, boutiques, trendsetters, and blogs in Denmark have grown in the last 5 years, and that this is a positive development; Kevser emphasized that “the market for scarves and modest clothing has developed (…). Earlier, there was not a big choice of headscarves in the shops and online web shops.” Nour stated that “the headscarf market was limited and was not as interesting as it is today.” According to the respondents, the modest fashion industry is in continuous development in Denmark, and they hope that it will become even larger and more diversified in the future. The respondents described how five years ago there were only a couple of shops in the Copenhagen district of Nørrebro where it was possible to buy scarves, pins, and accessories. The quality of the clothing was not high and the range of fabrics was narrow. Zey observes that “ the market for headscarves was not hyped on modest fashion as it is today.” Seda, a professional respondent from Questionnaire 1, describes the expansion of the modest fashion market in Denmark: “A major development has occurred. Eight years ago, one could not find anything appropriate in the shops. Now, ZARA, H&M and others have all the clothes we are looking for.” The respondents describe the Danish modest fashion market as mainly driven from Copenhagen. Seda was born and raised in Denmark’s second

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largest city, Aarhus, but moved to Copenhagen during her high school years (2011–2014). She explains the differences between young Muslim women from Copenhagen and Aarhus: When I remember my high school years, young Muslim girls from Copenhagen had a different way to style their headscarves and clothing compared to young Muslim girls living in Aarhus. The girls from Copenhagen were very colorful in their outfits, so we called them “rainbows”. In Aarhus, we would dress in a parka with fur fringe, tight jeans, black heavy headscarves, long nails and a short upper body garment. During my stay in Copenhagen for three years, I found my own way to style my headscarf and clothing that was not possible in Aarhus.

Insights from Study: International Context and Social Media The global modest fashion industry has inspired Muslim women in Denmark to become more fashionable, using the social media platforms Instagram and YouTube to reach out to their community. Consumers today have access to a greater variety of styles and fashion tips from bloggers and influencers. The respondents in Questionnaire 2 described their use of social media for inspiration and knowledge on how to drape their headscarves according to their religious conviction and global fashion trends. The five respondents from Questionnaire 1 explained that they are particularly inspired by the Turkish modest fashion industry and its tutorials on how to drape headscarves. Seda describes in Questionnaire 1 the modest fashion development in Copenhagen from her professional point of view and the differences between the style worn in Copenhagen (simple/plain), in Turkey (colorful), and international trends (nude colors): Well, the style [in Copenhagen] has become simpler. Style depends on where you grow up and where you live. In Turkey, people wear more colorful dress than in Denmark. But if you follow trends on the social media, you will see the international style and taste where right now the nude colors dominate.

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Seven out of sixteen respondents in Questionnaire 2 find their style through Instagram and YouTube and Questionnaire 1’s respondents also used Instagram and YouTube as their main source of professional inspiration. Therefore, despite the age difference in target groups and mode of interview, our surveys suggest a certain commercial and aesthetic mainstreaming in the modest fashion milieu of Copenhagen, driven by a shared experience of social media.

Discussion and Preliminary Findings on Modest Fashion in Copenhagen This paper delivers the first survey of headscarf practices in Copenhagen with the specific approach of headscarves as aesthetic and fashionable items, rather than the mainstream studies of veils as purely political, gendered, and religious tokens. As expressed by respondent Zey, age 25: “My opinion on modest fashion is that one can care about looks and style and still dress appropriately, that is, cover bodily forms.” According to Viola Thimm in the introduction of this volume, religious fashion worlds are feminine worlds that are highly challenged by gendered relations therein. Islam is generally governed by men, in everyday life as well as in religious institutions. Our survey, however, illustrates the domain of women, specifically young women, who decide and negotiate fashionable norms. The context in which they operate may be outlined and bordered by religious conventions and social norms, but within this domain young women display numerous ways of expressing identity in an otherwise limited field. According to Woodhead (2013, xvii), women play a dominant role in Muslim fashion both as producers and consumers. In this chapter, we can also observe how the intermediate level of influencers, shop owners, and Instagrammers carve out their own sphere of influence on consumers as well as producers. It seems highly significant to us that digital media is the favorite source of inspiration of all the respondents, mediated via influencers or commercial, digital venues hosted by boutiques and online shops. The

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importance of digital media is shown for the eight respondents of Questionnaire 1 and also for the younger women between 18 and 25 surveyed in Questionnaire 2. We observe throughout the analysis that dressing is phrased by the respondents as an entirely personal and individual choice, an autonomous action taken by the Muslim women of Copenhagen. This observation challenges the western media’s appreciation of the headscarf as a sign of oppression and dependence. It is therefore important to contextualize our study of young Muslim women’s dress within western society, which values the freedom to choose what to wear independently and individually. The legislation passed in multiple European countries such as Denmark and France banning the use of religious headscarves or face coverings is intended to liberate women from religious conventions and social norms; however this also serves to strip Muslim women of autonomy over their level of bodily exposure in public (Thimm 2015, 109). This observation and comparison should encourage us to stop considering Muslim women’s fashion and style in a political, religious, and social vacuum. Dress and womanhood have no universal expression; likewise, this demonstrates how research designs in our field should focus on the complexity of each case, its context and locality, and avoid grand-scheme, de-contextualized comparisons. We have explored ways to express gendered religiosity among young Muslims in Copenhagen, particularly gendered clothing practices. When reviewing and analyzing the responses to the Questionnaires, certain tropes reappear. However, we also observe how other tropes are totally absent in the data. The respondents illustrate how they navigate and negotiate to be fashionably Muslim around their youth, their religious beliefs, and Danish societal expectations. This enables us to explore the discursive distinctions of modesty and aesthetics in dress. On the discursive level, the respondents often categorize clothing for “every day” and “festive events.” The wording, however, mainly gives us the discursive expressions of clothing and wardrobe choices; the body remains strangely absent in many answers. The women mention their bodies only as facial skin or hair, and only indirectly via clothing do the bodies appear. However, as is illustrated in the quote above by Madiha, the headscarf

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works as a proxy for hair: “[T]the hijab is equivalent to one’s hairstyle; therefore, I don’t use loud colors because it will look unnatural.” The discourse of the interviews focuses on the visual and on the most iconic feminine aspects of clothing and styling. We observe that less or non-feminine aspects of clothing are absent from the answers; moreover, the tactile, sensory elements of dress are strangely absent. This is probably due to the research design, as it is based on text, writing, and words, not delving into ideas of softness or tactility. There are also no comments on the practicality of movement, transportation, or the Nordic climate as limitations to dressing practices. In terms of identity, the interviewed women never relate their dress to ethnicity or nationality, but instead place the headscarf either in the context of dress and fashion, or spirituality and religion. The Questionnaires capture young Muslim women’s voices. However, the visual appearance of modest fashion in the Danish/Nordic fashion context cannot be captured by words alone. In the public sphere of Copenhagen, we observe that many young Muslim women incorporate a visible cultural and commercial encounter between Danish/Nordic fashion aesthetics and modest fashion. Headscarf drapes, shapes, and accessories follow international trends, but the colors and color combinations as well as fabric qualities often adhere to traditional Danish/Nordic fashion aesthetics of bohemian style: earthy colors, grey and black, monochrome fabrics, and few decorative elements. This illustrates not only the normative aspects of dress but also the aesthetic, commercial, and embodied sides of dressing, enabling us to highlight the agency and creativity of our respondents.5

Notes 1. In this chapter, we will use the generic term headscarf for the many varieties of Muslim headgear for women and also as translation for the Danish generic term “tørklæde” used by the respondents. 2. https://www.asos.com/women/ctas/ss-fashion-trend-7/cat/?cid=20242. 3. https://ctr.hum.ku.dk/research-programmes-and-projects/thread/.

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4. https://ctr.hum.ku.dk/research-programmes-and-projects/the-fabric-of-mylife/Podcasts are collected on the platform: thefabricofmylife.com. 5. We thank Nancy Gregory for proofreading the English text.

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Trending Muslim Appeal and the Discourse on Intersectional Diversity Laura Haddad

Introduction: Looking Muslim and the Paradigm of Intersectional Diversity In this article, I want to explore the boundaries of Muslim dressing by drawing on two recent fashion trends circulating in Western (social) media: modest fashion and wearing a headscarf. These two trends are not necessarily discursively related, but, as I suggest, they both have an impact on the discourse about Muslim women in Western societies. In this regard, compared to the volume’s focus on Muslim women’s style

Many thanks to Marius van Hoogstraten for language editing and his helpful conceptual feedback.

L. Haddad (B) Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_5

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practices, my article rather takes an outside perspective on these practices and seeks to identify how Muslim appeal is discursively embedded into the discourse on diversity and intersectionality. To achieve this, I sketch the new paradigm of diversity in the fashion sector that can be traced back to virulent societal discourses on sustainability, other ethical dimensions, and, last but not least, the awareness of representation and power dynamics that are mirrored in the majority of fashion productions. Picking up on these aspects, mainstream fashion media especially uses the inclusion of Muslim women as consumers to mark a shift toward diversity. I argue this is built on the work of numerous social media activists, raising their voices for awareness and launching hashtags like “Modest Fashion” to not only address their sisters in faith, but also demonstrate their presence as consumers and providers of global and mainstream trends (Modest Fashion Forum 2018). The concept of intersectionality will be discussed with regard to embodiment and fashion (below). Originally, the concept of intersectionality has been developed for embodied identity markers, such as ethnicity, race, and sex (Meyer 2017, 127 ff ). The fact that religion has not been a core category of the concept refers to the argument that religious belonging is a deliberate decision and not an ascriptive manifestation. However, I will discuss whether this argumentation corresponds to social reality, in which visual ascription and the perception of how someone looks often decides how he or she is socially constructed referring to bodily dispositions. To examine this analytically, I elaborate on the concepts of fashion, intersectionality, and embodiment. With regard to the widely claimed connection of embodiment and fashion (see Bruggemann 2018), I argue the concept of embodiment needs an analytical differentiation, which I offer in Section 2 of this article, based on different approaches of the theory of practice. After this, I will sketch the methodological prerequisites for the data presentation by drawing on the methodology of discourse ethnography, which combines discourse analysis with an ethnographic and therefore selective approach. By presenting the sample and discussing the data, I hope to provide a more detailed answer to the question to what extent Muslim fashion is discursively embedded into non-Muslim fashion contexts than has been available before.

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Conceptual Thoughts on Fashion as Embodied Practice Thinking about embodiment and fashion, the relation seems very much straightforward and basic. However, looking closer, the connection becomes more blurred: How is fashion embodied, and, what is the relation of its embodiment to its apparent dependence on so many immaterial aspects, such as social codes regulating who can wear what within a certain time and place? In order to problematize this taken-for-granted relation of fashion and embodiment, I will discuss the interdisciplinary theoretical approaches on bodies in and beyond fashion contexts in the light of the concept of intersectionality. According to the widely influential constructivist perspective, the body is caught in practices (see Thomas and Maier 2015). The body, as for example Stefan Hirschauer holds, though it cannot be said to be merely discursively produced, does not exist independently of its social construction (Hirschauer 2004, 75). In contrast, scholars of intersectionality and political activists bring in a more essentialist perspective, stressing societal structures using physical conditions of bodies to categorize and discriminate the embodied subjects (see Crenshaw 1991). Bodyism, may it refer to ableism, racism, ethnicism, or gender, relies on effective manifestations of body images and their categorization (Meyer 2017, 72 ff.). Claiming that bodies are spontaneously produced within practices ignores this racified status that essentializes bodies in manifold ways. The term intersectionality describes multiple discrimination as an “event” (Puar 2011) by illustrating different identity categories as axes, intersecting with each other. While this picture has been criticized for its under-complexity, it still remains the dominant concept in Women´s and gender Studies (Binder and Hess 2011, 15; Sweetapple et al. 2020). “Intersectionality is thus useful as a handy catchall phrase that aims to make visible the multiple positioning that constitutes everyday life and the power relations that are central to it” (Phoenix and Pattynama 2006, 187). As a theoretical concept, its implications are debated controversially. Some criticize the essentialist implications that come along with the

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manifestation of the main axes of difference (class, gender, race/ethnicity) (cf. McCall 2015), while others argue that without the acknowledgment of certain social conditions, injustice cannot be addressed (see Crenshaw 2016; Sweetapple et al. 2020, 23 ff.). In the German context criticism addresses the repetitive tokenization of intersectional power relations without in-depth analysis of the same and the only focus on Anglo-American perspectives while marginalized German voices are still overheard (see Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2011). But even if we leave aside for a bit the power-critical approach of intersectionality, can we really imagine our bodies as only practically produced? Are we not neglecting the reality of bodies beyond and before practices? To elaborate on this question of bodies and their social constitution, I will examine the understanding of bodies implied in critical fashion studies as well as in the discourse on cultural appropriation in the context of a new awareness of diversity. When we think of fashion as intentional, meaningful way of getting dressed, it quite clearly involves and addresses the body. However, but its embodied dimension is less stable than for example the category of gender. Being dressed fashionably can be changed and abandoned from one moment to the other. Putting on a headscarf immediately does something to the appearance of a wearer, and this something is informed by the dominant visual culture in which this practice takes place. Fashion therefore seems to be a highly situative and instant practice, that is nevertheless embedded into its surrounding knowledge archive. As discussed within practice theory, there are two poles within the dimension of practices, which can be stressed, respectively (see Reckwitz 2004, 41). One pole emphasizes the moment of change and variation, as is the case for Butler’s approach to practices (Butler 1991). The second pole rather focuses on the static character of practice. For example, as Bourdieu argues in his theory on “habitus,” certain practices are manifested and inscribed into the body without the possibility to be deleted (Bourdieu [1979] 2004, 277). In this sense, the recent coinage of the term “antiMuslim racism” poignantly makes clear the static character of at least some aspects of “looking Muslim” within the concept of power relations and intersectional discrimination.

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In contrast, the above-presented definition of fashion would tend to stress the aspect of variation and changeability. Embodiment here means the performance of the body as the executing agent, through which it is produced mutually (see Hirschauer 2004). But at the same time, analogue to the concept of habitus, fashion as a certain way of styling needs a certain body (and mindset). Wearing fashion is more than carrying it or putting it on a desk, it is filling the clothes with a spirit, maybe even habitually dwelling in it. This approach rather stresses the aspect of persistence and embodiment as inscription into the body that is not so easily withdrawn. Like the habitus, embodied style inhabits the body as other physical entanglements and therefore relies on the bodily preconditions and shapes. In this sense, the body is not stuck in practices (see Hirschauer 2004), but provides the premises, at once both fixed and varied, to deal with fashion. Putting on a headscarf therefore not only differs in time and space, but also from body to body. This is where the concept of intersectionality comes in and “deshuffles” the localization of bodies within practices. For a young white woman in the twenty-first century in Western Europe, putting on a headscarf says something completely different than for someone already called and seen as a Muslim independently of their dress—e.g., based on their skin color—even if they do so in the same place and time. Theories on social practice are thus indecisive whether change or routine is the dominant element. While Butler rather stresses the notion of change and openness within practices, Bourdieu emphasizes routine, which stabilizes practice and thereby frames the habitus as pathdependent knowledge archive that lines these practices (see Haddad 2017, 86 ff.; Reckwitz 2004, 41). Analogously, I suggest the concept of embodiment must be used in a differentiated manner: practices that include and rely on the body must be analytically held apart from bodily dispositions that can hardly be changed. Nevertheless, both dimensions are necessary for the understanding and framing of dressing practices. Fashion, I submit, is located at the boundary of both of these aspects of embodiment. The relation of fashion and bodies is not to be taken for granted, as Bruggeman also states. In her essay “Dissolving the Ego of Fashion” (2018) she argues that the fashion industry in its current

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state relies too much on immaterial dimensions such as branding or the visible component of fashion, and not enough on the other sensual dimensions that constitute key features of bodily experience. In light of the discussion on different dimensions of embodiment, one could resume that Bruggemann is arguing fashion should become less stable and informed by societal knowledge archives, such as social and cultural codes, and more a direct and intuitive practice of approaching clothes. In this sense, she agrees with Hirschauer and the practice theory approaches, constructing subjectivity (in fashion) as a situative and easily changeable practice. This has to be acknowledged as a revolutionary approach. Fashion in tune with body dispositions and shapes has traditionally been received as an instrument to locate one’s societal position (Jäckel 2006, 225 ff.). Clothing has often been described as an emblem for demonstrating social affiliation and demarcation at the same time. Fashion reflects the social order, reproduces it, and, on the other hand, questions it as a subversive uncertainty of familiar visual communication. It is in the nature of fashion—in contrast to just getting dressed—that things are taken out of their usual contexts, may it be workwear that is converted fashionably or the like. Therefore, the call for a less discursive, less coded fashion practice seems a bit naïve and even fails to address issues of social justice and the use and tribute of cultural heritage. Currently, and increased by micro-blogs and social media like Instagram, we can observe the multifaceted ways in which getting dressed allows one to express, invent, and communicate different aspects of one’s identity. Subjective contradictions and identity fractions are also expressed more recently (see Harling Ross for The Man Repeller, March 20, 2020). Moreover, the current discourse on fashion and diversity is characterized by explicit references to body conditions, shapes, colors, and sizes as posts like: “How can the fashion industry be more inclusive?” show (see dazed digital on Instagram 0913/2019). Therefore, the material dimensions of bodies are not left to be negotiated implicitly, but are discussed verbally. This ability to express and negotiate aspects of fashion and the production of knowledge also leads to the critical reception of certain dressing practices, as can be illustrated by the discourse on cultural appropriation and fashion.

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Christine Delhaye sketches the practice of cultural appropriation and its genealogy as following: Cultural appropriation has occurred ever since the earliest histories of economic, religious, and/or military encounters. Yet in recent years these practices have sparked heated debates as they have become explicitly related to the exploitation of minority groups by dominant groups in the context of historically established structures of inequality. (Delhaye 2019, 247)

Moreover, she refers to a different approach on the effects of cultural appropriation and fashion. With Minh-Ha T. Pham, it can be argued that criticizing mainstream Western fashion practices for appropriating Non-Western aesthetics still leaves all the power of interpretation to the hegemonic West and does not deconstruct the underlying power relations. By this, injustice between societal groups is in fact made visible, but at the same time, even more manifested. That is why already in 2014 Pham advocated to “stop talking about it” (Pham 2014). This plea has indeed not been successful, but I will take her objection seriously and integrate it into my analysis of the media reception on the hijab trend in the following chapter.

Trending Muslim Appeal in Mainstream Fashion—Empirical Data Methodology To explore the mutual effects of Muslim women and other actors speaking for minority groups in social media and the coverage of mainstream media especially in the fashion segment, I use the methodology of Discourse Ethnography/Ethnography of Discourses and Dispositives suggested by Reiner Keller (2019, 57). Keller designed this approach to examine the interrelationships and specific or overarching knowledge that inform the involved actors of the field (see Keller 2019). I analyze communication contexts and practices that are located between spaces

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and communities. In this regard, Discourse Ethnography may contribute to the connectivity of lifestyles in postmigrant societies. I would like to emphasize a comprehensive approach in the notion of postmigrant societies, discussing, questioning, and challenging the dichotomy of migrants and non-migrants while at the same time shedding light on the social power relations that underlie this dichotomy (see Foroutan 2018, 269 ff.). This approach is intended to recognize moments of transgression as well as the reproduction of boundary-making and makes it possible to question notions of “Muslims” and “Non-Muslims” (Haddad 2017), in which practices situatively deconstruct this binary. Ethnographies of discourses are also capable of further developing ethnographic research at large, that still relies hugely on the idea of locally closed cultures and communities. To a certain extent, this is an essentializing and romanticizing construction, made visible by the various translocal interconnections between differently positioned actors communicating via social media and other media formats, where discourses on intersectional feminism, the place of Muslim women in the West and the critique on cultural appropriation are negotiated. This allows me to address the question of mutual impacts of the rise of modest fashion and the attempts of mainstream fashion actors to deconstruct the feudal structure of the fashion world. By this, I attempt to put into focus not one actor-group, but to gather different contributions to a contextualized discourse. For this purpose, I focus on different contributions in mainstream media, illustrating the significance of the discourse on intersectional diversity. Doing so, I will pay attention to the discursive arguments of meaning and implications of fashion practices and the social positions of the actors.

Diversity in Fashion—An Industry Is Awakening While the main focus of my analysis is on the German context, I also discuss one article published online by Dazed and Confused, the leading avant-garde fashion magazine originally published in the UK. In this avant-garde segment, national borders within Europe are quite ineffective and every well-sorted news stand all over Europe will offer a range of

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international fashion magazines. This sheds light on the affective belongings of actors, who are physically apart, but share the same cultural contexts such as fashion. Departing from that, I present my empirical data, which selectively illustrates the nexus of fashion and diversity, shedding light on the boundary-making of Muslim dressing vs. non-Muslim dressing, on the edges of embodiment and its twofold indications, as sketched above. I use data from established media formats, especially fashion magazines, adapting to these new claims that have been originally expressed in social media. In contrast to established media formats, social media offers more democratic and accessible conditions for participating in societal discourse. Accessible barrier-free exchange of content on the Web contributes crucially to the shaping of societal discourse and practices. This is illustrated by the emergence of influencers as actors who became famous via social media and now get paid for advertising (for example Dina Torkia alias Dinatokio). A remarkable event that illustrates the influence of social media into mainstream fashion media is the Vogue initiative “hashtag representationmatters,” which took place in 2019. That year marked Vogue’s 40th anniversary in Germany, apparently an occasion for reinvention and rejuvenation of the magazine. Launching the online project hashtag representation matters clearly positions the German Vogue toward the postmigratory avant-garde, while traditional readers have to be carried along by providing them with a glossary of terms and concepts, most of which the audience is presumably not familiar with. The initiative gathered 27 people of color, who were not necessarily directly connected to the fashion industry but rather public figures and partly outspoken within the discourse on diversity and intersectionality. Among these were a few Muslim women, of whom some were veiled and some were not. Neither body shape nor age however was selected diversely. It is rather a quite homogenous group of young and hip individuals, sporting high-class fashion. This event, that must be described as mostly symbolic and superficial, still marks a shift within the attitude of mainstream fashion media that can also be observed in the practices of retailers such as Nike and others, who launched compatible activewear including the “Hijab Pro” (Nike Online Shop 2020). A few years ago, in the beginning of the past

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decade, young women who wanted to dress modestly and were attracted by fashion mostly had to improvise to meet their needs and expectations of an appropriate and yet nice outfit. When I interviewed young women living in Hamburg in 2009, there was no such thing as a modest fashion segment within mainstream retailers. Although Muslim lifestyle and designer clothes were established, they were far away from being widely available (see Herding 2013; Lewis 2019, 21). The discourse about Muslim appeal ranged from questions about the suitability of interest in fashion for young Muslim women to the interpretation of headscarves as resistance practices against the political system (see Göle 2004). This has changed significantly since then, of course not only or primarily through initiatives of mainstream media, but rather by the establishment of platforms and infrastructure that concentrate on the empowerment of Muslim women. As a highlight of this development, the Modest Fashion Forum organizes Modest Fashion Weeks in Antwerp and thus delivers a platform that is not only a networking tool for designers, but also a shared space for women who want to dress modestly. Interestingly, the introduction of modest fashion by huge retailers has been described by the authors of the Modest Fashion Forum as “mainstreaming” modest fashion (Modest Fashion Forum, posted November 10, 2018). Their approach, that modest fashion should be available for women independent of their religious confessions, hints at the inclusivist position the forum engages in and refers to the embodiment as deliberate decision to wear whatever one wants, no matter what bodily dispositions are at stake. By examining the veiling trend in the following chapter, I will present some antithetic statements and discuss these as exclusivist conceptions of embodiment in contrast to the example made by the Modest Fashion Forum.

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The Veiling Trend—Fetishizing or Including Muslim Women? When in 2018 “covered heads were all over the runways” (Nayantara Dutta for Dazed Digital, March 12, 2018), the online branch of the UK-based avant-garde fashion magazine Dazed and Confused asked if the “fashion industry (is) fetishizing the hijab” (ibid.). This question recurs to the legitimacy of decontextualizing the headscarf. The observation points out a crucial aspect concerning the gaze practices of the hijab in Muslim-minority-contexts. Hijabs were everywhere at the AW18 shows [Annual autumn/winter fashion shows of the year 2018; L.H.]. The designers themselves may not have called them that – and, for the most part, the models wearing them weren’t Muslim – but in the eyes of many, their resemblance to the traditional Islamic garment was striking. (Dutta 2018)

This quote focuses on the different stakeholders of the trend. While models are mentioned with regard to their non-Muslim appeal, designers are presented as unaware of the effect on certain consumers. One designer even answered, when confronted with criticism of using Islamic symbolism: “By putting a blue-eyed, white woman in (the) first look, I thought it was actually saying, ‘Why should we actually be afraid of dressing in a hijab?’” (cited in ibid.). This answer is clearly marking the connection of habitual embodiment and dressing practices, and stresses how fashion and bodies are related and mutually effecting the respective apparel. The perception of a “blue-eyed white woman” in a veil is different to a woman who looks Muslim. The author of the article resumes: “If it (the hijab) is worn by a supermodel in a revealing outfit, this religious meaning is lost” (ibid.). This judgment reminds one of the discussion among Muslims about pious lifestyles and the appropriate way of dressing. Thus the right context and religious meaning of the headscarf is by no means homogenous, and it remains unclear for whom or for what “the religious meaning is lost.”

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The author perceives these impressions as alienating for Muslim consumers, as she states in the subheading and repeatedly during the article. Though to a Muslim woman catching up on catwalk coverage it may have been evident that some designers were sending out variations on the hijab, the reports did little to acknowledge any possible Islamic roots or references. (ibid.)

This (anticipated) consequence refers to the criticism of cultural appropriation by marginalized communities. The reference to Islamic roots resembles the cases against other cultural borrowings within the fashion world, such as dreadlocks for white models on a runway show by Marc Jacobs in 2016, that has been discussed controversially (for example Jenna Rosenstein reported on this issue for Harpers Bazar, posted on September 18, 2016). But in contrast to dreadlocks, the hijab is neither connected to a certain ethnicity, nor race (Lewis 2019, 22). Hence everyone can become Muslim, which is why religion has not been mandatorily included in the concept of intersectionality so far (Meyer 2017, 127 ff.). Religion has been framed as a deliberate practice and not as ascriptive and embodied disposition. As I mentioned in the beginning, this perception is changing thanks to the networks established in social media between different actors of manifold social positions and minority communities. This leads to more intersectional solidarity also with regard to different identity markers. Nevertheless, the question of deliberately performing a certain embodied appeal, such as Muslim appeal, in order to question the Western hegemony on aesthetics and fashionability (see Pham 2014), is silenced here. Moreover, the position illustrated by the article above can be described as an exclusivist approach, in opposition to the attitude performed by the Modest Fashion Forum, which encourages all kinds of women to dress as they please. However, when it comes to the headscarf, the discussion concerns not only cultural appropriation, but also whether the hijab can be removed out of the context of religion, and whether it is possible to wear it without making reference to the oppression of women in the name of

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Islam. A weekly published German fashion magazine, GRAZIA, dedicated a short article to the newly rising headscarf-trend, which was ambiguously titled “headscarf-debate”(Kopftuchdebatte, translation L. H.), referring to the discussion on Muslim headscarves in the public sphere in Germany. The article is written by a Muslim author originally from Kosovo. The editor’s note to the article states the following: A fashion hype makes for discussion: Are designers setting a wrong example with the new headscarf-trend? Our Muslim colleague is examining what she thinks about the discomposure on a piece of cloth. (Sulejmani in GRAZIA 2018, translation L. H.)

In this framing, the Muslim author is introduced as representative and somehow authority to elaborate on the topic, which is legitimized by her ascribed and self-ascribed position that she partly obtains from habitual embodiment. She starts her article with the statement: I am Muslima as well, but I never had to wear a headscarf, also because this custom is quite outdated within the Albanian culture. However, my cousin decided to cover after her marriage nevertheless. She bought scarves and puts them on, totally self confidently. And I think: Her new “look” looks great on her. And she is even on top of the fashion trends right now. (Sulejmani in GRAZIA 2018, translation L. H.)

Here, Sulejmani refers to several aspects of the generalized debate on Muslim headscarves within Muslim-minority contexts: First, the question of compulsion is mentioned. While saying that she was never forced to cover, she implies that this might be true for others and thus validates this stigma. This is even emphasized by the following sentence, which presents veiling as a premodern custom. At the same time, the localization of her descent is mobilized to differentiate and hierarchize different ethnic contexts. The universal community of the ummah is outplayed by regional and cultural affiliation. The following sequence again adds a twist to this first positioning. A cousin is introduced, who— after her marriage—decided to put on the veil “nevertheless” (ibid.) and is wearing it since then “totally self confidently” (ibid.). This add-on also

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addresses the not-mentioned, but presumed amount of women who do not cover deliberately. But it also addresses the acknowledgment of diversity among her fellow Muslims. This is even more stressed by the next phrase, which presents the bridge to the theme of the article (and the focus of the magazine as fashion medium). But it also refers to the nexus of religious veiling and embodiment on the level of fashion and visual communication. Ambiguously, the author argues that veiling should not be understood exclusively in terms of religion and no one who wants to follow the trend should bother about its implications. Otherwise, she argues for the recognition of diversity by the fashion industry and moreover recounts the Western traditions that used veiling as fashionable dressing, by mentioning Audrey Hepburn and ancient Roman women (ibid.). The second part of her argument questions or even deconstructs the first part: The justification addresses the underlying discourse on Muslims in the West and settles the urgent controversies of who is supposed to wear what for different reasons. The reference to headscarves as worn by women all over the world in various different situations and regions refers back to the question of cultural appropriation, and implicitly rejects this criticism. When the provenance of the headscarf is proven to be multicultural or even universal, then the claim for heritage by Muslims is made illegitimate. But the surprised historical discovery of non-Muslim women wearing headscarves without religious implication in different regional and chronological contexts only emphasizes the logic of the discourse that equals headscarves with Muslim stigmata. A similar argument is developed within the online lifestyle section “Iconist” of the German newspaper WELT. The author describes the headscarf-trend linked to the Queen of England and a general smugness associated with this garment. “Instagram-stars, models and pop stars wrap scarves round their heads – supposedly because there is no accessory more old-fashioned.” (Ihring in welt.de posted on May 27, 2019, translation L. H.). This recurs to the logic of fashion as a decontextualizing practice, using symbolic references as bricolage for putting together new, fashionable, surprising aesthetics. This—as a matter of fact—highly depends on the context. What is seen as surprising and innovative, or on the contrary unadventurous, relies on societal expectations and dominant gaze practices (Jäckel 2006, 225 ff.). The fact that the headscarf can

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function as a fashionable symbol is also due to the widespread perception of the veil as connected to Muslim (e.g., non-fashionable) subjects. This becomes clear by the second subheading: “The headscarf debate gets a completely different indication from this” (Ihring in welt.de posted on May 27, 2019 translation L. H). This sentence illustrates the dominant association of the headscarf with a controversial political debate. In addition, it contradicts the claim that the present trend does not have anything to do with Muslim veiling. This is even more stressed by the final statement: “The chaste accessory, which is still mandatory when visiting an Orthodox church, suddenly appears eccentric, like a winking homage to outdated dress codes” (ibid.). Here, religious connection is even made explicit, as well as the judgment of its non-actuality and inappropriateness within Western societies of the twenty-first century. Even in this account, habitual embodiment comes to play as absence of a certain disposition. Being an old woman, wearing a headscarf, underlines smugness. Being Muslim, wearing a headscarf is not necessarily fashionable. Being just generically young, putting on a headscarf in 2019, is trendy. This shows how even the most superficial trend corresponds with the embodied subject position of the one sporting it. Discussing these three differently positioned articles concerning the veiling trend, one could identify different states of awareness toward the nexus of diversity and fashion, which also deposits on the concept of embodiment that is applied. I will summarize and conclude these findings in the next section.

Conclusion: The Hegemony of Looking Good In this article, I applied the concept of embodiment to analyze the reception of the recent veiling trend. I selected several contributions to the discourse, representing different positions to fan out the currently possible positions in this debate. While the first two articles focus on the social positions and bodily dispositions of those wearing a headscarf, and thereby acknowledging the hijab as Islamic heritage that might or might not be taken out of the religious context, the third article denies the connection of the veiling trend with Muslim appeal altogether. By

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this last example, the characteristic of the fashion industry as Eurocentric and exploitative actor, picking exotic accessories and dropping them as it goes, is documented once more. The veiling trend remains a costume that may last one or two seasons. Apart from that, the presented data seems to be twofold. One line goes along with the argument that Muslims are conceptualized as a bounded community, demarcated from the mainstream society. This goes along with criticism toward the veiling trend as practice of cultural appropriation, as illustrated by the article in DAZED DIGITAL. The other line of argument is illustrated by the Modest Fashion Forum and the GRAZIA article, and aims to bridge the Muslim dressing practices to other religious minorities and moreover to women of no particular religiosity, who see modest fashion as a suitable (or maybe fashionable) way of getting dressed. While there are still perceptions of the trend that neglect the affected connection with the negotiation of diversity and especially the visibility of Muslim women, it is remarkable how mainstream media adopt the theme of socially constructed subjectivity and the implications that come with majority/minority positions. The reception of the veiling trend as the free choice of women to wear whatever they want, as well as the criticism of this very same practice as cultural appropriation, illustrate the de-stigmatization of Muslim appeal in mainstream discourses. In both accounts, compared to decades of denial of Muslim women in the public sphere, this seems to be a progress. As I argued, this trend is epistemologically connected to an overall criticism of the fashion industry in its present form. Therefore it is not by chance that the “admins of authority” (Wallet 2018) in fashion are currently discovering diversity and especially Muslim women as both consumers and inspirational agents (ibid.). If Muslim appeal is widely respected as “looking great” (GRAZIA), the boundaries of affective belonging among Muslims and non-Muslims might be transgressed more easily.

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Men’s Non-Fashion: Embodying Authority in the Gulf Viola Thimm

Introducing the Field: An Incident in Dubai Mall On October 29, 2012 Gulf News ran the headline: “Man arrested for turning up at Dubai Mall in underwear.” The article stated that [a]n Emirati man was arrested (…) after he turned up at Dubai Mall wearing only his white cotton underwear. He was with four friends, who were dressed in traditional clothing worn mostly indoors or for bed. (…) [This] Emirati man who works for a government department, was arrested for showing his underwear in public. Al Merri [the director of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Dubai Police] said that the man, who is 20 years old, was arrested along with his four Emirati friends. (…) “The man, who was wearing his white cotton underwear, was naked V. Thimm (B) University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_6

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on top,” said Al Merri. (…) “The five accused are facing charges of indecent behavior in public,” Al Merri said. “The mall is used by families, women and children and such improper behavior is unacceptable,” he added (Al Jandaly 2012).

Some of the keywords the director of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Dubai Police mentioned were “indecent behavior in public” and “improper behavior,” and he indirectly situated this in relation to “women and children.” Using these keywords, the newspaper article indicates that Emirati men are supposed to wear something over their half-naked bodies once they enter public spaces, obviously to not disturb women and children. The “use of clothing to conceal or reveal the body” (Frith and Gleeson 2004, 40) raises the question, inter alia, whether Emirati men can or should dress themselves in just anything or in something special? My inquiry in this ethnographic contribution is guided by the following questions: (1) Why does the (re)presentation of the male Emirati body involve a Criminal Investigation Department, i.e., how is the gendered body, its nakedness, and its garments a matter of judicial, political, and national importance? (2) How are the gendered body, gendered clothing, and embodiment of certain norms and orders intertwined? (3) In what way does the representation of the male Emirati body relate to male bodies from other nation states residing in the UAE? And finally, (4) How can we understand forms of embodiment when integrating comparable female conditions into the analysis? Emirati men commonly wear a white robe, the kandora, in the UAE. In fact, it is this garment in particular that the five male Emirati bodies lacked. I argue that their usual style of dress is based on the fact that the kandora represents national honor, with which Emirati men embody their traditional role as powerful men. Applying an intersectionality lens, this paper argues that these men bear responsibility for the image of their gender position, their culture, and their nation by wearing the kandora. Since Emirati men perform this accountability with a particular gendered garment, this clothing item has gone unchanged, design-wise so as not to distract from the images, normative orders, and social practices it represents.

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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation of seven emirates along the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Islam is the official and majority religion: about three-fifths of the population follow Islamic belief. Approximately four-fifths belong to the Sunni branch of Islam, with the Maliki school of jurisprudence (fiqh). A minority of Shia Muslims predominantly live in the emirates of Dubai and Sharjah. Very few Christians and Hindus exist in the country (Encyclopedia Britannica n.d.). The oil boom in the 1960s attracted many foreign workers who have since migrated to and lived in the country. As a consequence, intertwined disproportions concerning gender and citizenship have developed, especially in Dubai as the economic center of the country (see Elsheshtawy 2009). In 2019, 2.3 males lived in the emirate for every female. This disproportion can be explained by the high population of single foreign workers, especially from (South) Asian countries, involved in the construction sector (Hilotin 2019). Roughly 95% of the male population (15 years and above) is employed while only approximately 54% of females (in the same age range) are part of the workforce. Most females who are not engaged in wage work are housewives (Dubai Statistics Center 2019). However, the imbalanced gender ratio has been equalizing. This economically driven development led to Emiratis becoming the minority. Whereas they formed 19% of the total population in 2005 (Krause 2008, 29), they now comprise less than 8% of the UAE’s inhabitants (Dubai Statistics Center 2019; Khalaf 2005, 252–253; Mohammed Al-Fahim 2013). According to the most recent statistical data, the UAE consists of approximately 3,356,000 residents, comprising of roughly 263,000 Emiratis, and 3,092,000 non-Emiratis (Dubai Statistics Center 2019). However, there is an inherent qualitative divide between nationals and non-nationals. UAE citizens have different rights to non-citizens in their country. For example, citizens get free healthcare and schooling, and furthermore support and allowances for housing and marriage costs. These entangled conditions of gender, nationality, and power have deep repercussions for the appearance and attire of Emirati citizens. In order to represent their national identity and privileged position, they widely draw on their traditional dresses—kandora for males and abaya

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for females—to visibly embody their position. This has been particularly true over the last fifty decades and has been broadly practiced until today (Lindholm 2014). In the analysis to follow, the interlinkages between nationality and gender will be investigated by applying an intersectionality approach. This framework suggests that sociocultural categories and practices do not operate in isolation but are mutually constitutive (e.g., Crenshaw 2019, 1989; Brah and Phoenix 2004; hooks 1981; Phoenix and Pattynama 2006; Shields 2008). The intersectionality framework will serve in this chapter as a valuable tool to examine male Emirati clothing choices and experiences in contrast to those with different citizenship and those of different gender (women).1 Very few studies have explored connections between clothing, bodies, gender, and fashion by focusing on males (see Frith and Gleeson 2004 for a discussion). Most of the studies in this field deal with females and their style, clothing, and fashion habits and suggest that they are more dedicated to dress and fashion as they feel a greater need to manage their appearance than males do. This is embedded in the social circumstances in which that females are regarded as subjects that are available to men (Frith and Gleeson 2004, 41; Thanem and Knights 2012, 12). The rare studies focusing on men and their appearance reveal an even larger research void when it comes to studies examining the meaning of dressing in Muslim male contexts, and within this realm especially when it comes to the Arabian Peninsula. Suleyman Khalaf (2005) and AlMutawa (2016a, b) are exceptions in this regard. Both scholars have investigated the relationship between male dress and cultural and national identity. Since these previous studies lack an investigation of the intersectionally interwoven condition of embodied gender and nationality through male forms of style, this study wants to address this lacuna. This contribution is based on an ethnographic approach to fieldwork, data collection, and analysis. I undertook fieldwork in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman between April 2017 and April 2018 for a total of six months. Qualitative interviews, discussions, and conversations in various forms and lengths were conducted with Emirati, Omani, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian, and Qatari men and women in their everyday

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lives in both countries, and with designers and retailers of the kandora and of its gendered counterpart, the abaya, which is a long black dress for Arab women. However, not all of these interviews focused on gender and embodiment on the Arabian Peninsula. Some were related to broader research questions on gender practices, consumption, and mobility in transnational spaces between the Arabian Peninsula and Malaysia (see Thimm 2015, 2017, 2018, 2021, and forthcoming). The interviews were primarily open and narrative, and all of them were transcribed. Some of these interviews were recorded, some were not. In the latter cases, I took notes of verbatim statements made by my respondents. Interviews that are relevant for this study were conducted in English.2 Due to a high degree of gender segregation in the UAE, it was easier for me to conduct interviews with females. As a consequence, the gathered data presented here predominantly represent female voices and insights. In what follows, I will first give ethnographic insights into male clothing practices in the UAE, especially in the emirate of Dubai. I will describe where similarities and differences exist in styles of kandoras worn by Emirati males, i.e., men and boys, and by either foreign nationals residing in the UAE, or by Arab men from and in other countries (especially Oman). A twofold discussion will follow: First, male Emirati habits of dressing their bodies will be examined in relation to the clothing practices of non-nationals. As a result, it will become clear that Emirati men and citizens embody their cultural and national identification through their kandora. Second, the forms of male Emirati attire will be investigated in contrast to female clothing practices. While females have developed very fashionable and sophisticated abaya (the gendered counterpart of the kandora) males have not similarly altered the design of their simple garment. Considering the two relationships, the intersectional condition of male Emirati embodiment of nationality, culture, traditionality, and gender through the kandora will be revealed.

Men’s Garments The newspaper clipping cited above deals with the underwear the five Emiratis wore in Dubai Mall. A printed photograph shows three of the

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five men. Two of them were wearing white shirts and a skirt (one shirt was white, one was checkered in white and brown); the other young man showed his naked upper body but wore white underpants. The shirt and skirt worn by two of the men show that they follow typical Emirati clothing habits. How and what do they normally wear on top? I asked my 27-year-old Emirati respondent Arwa from Sharjah, an emirate that neighbors Dubai, about this custom. Our conversation went as follows: Arwa: Men don’t wear clothes under their kandora, just their underwear. Viola: So when they come back home, they change their clothes? Arwa: They change clothes or they just wear their underwear then. This is their clothes [laughing]. For us [females], we wear regular clothes and cover them with the abaya [long black Arab dress]. Once they [the men] come back home, they just wear their underwear or other clothes. Their underwear is a t-shirt and long trousers. In the UAE, some of them wear “wusar ,” which is like a skirt. I think it comes from the long Indian influence. The wusar is part of their underwear.

This information makes clear that the two Emirati men’s skirts were wusar and that their national identity was thereby underscored by their clothing. Arwa’s statement furthermore intimates, among other things, that Emirati men usually wear a particular garment over their underwear, the kandora. This gendered clothing item is of special interest for the following argumentation. The character and meaning of the kandora 3 can easily be revealed by looking at male clothing habits in the UAE on Fridays. Friday is a special day for Muslims; it is considered to be the “head of the week.” For Friday prayer, which is the prayer at noontime, men—explicitly not women— gather together in the mosques. They pray together and additionally listen to a speech delivered by the mosque’s imam which is prepared by the seven Emirati governments for each emirate. Men wear colorful kandoras on Fridays. Particularly during the so-called winter (approximately from November to February), men in the UAE attire their bodies on Fridays with pigeon-blue, grey, or dark-yellow kandoras, sometimes with subtle embellishments in the same color. Many men additionally wear a matching colored cap. These clothing habits during Friday prayer are applicable not only to Emiratis but also to men from the manifold

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nationalities residing in the UAE (especially in Dubai), for example those from India, Pakistan, Sudan, or Oman. Whereas local Emiratis still wear kandora in ordinary life, those from South Asia or Africa usually wear a kurta which is a South Asian two-piece garment consisting of trousers and a long loose shirt. Seemingly, Muslim men in general wear the Arab male dress for Friday prayer in the UAE. Yet Arab men wear this dress as an ordinary garment but do so in a more festive way when it comes to the Friday prayers. South Asian or African men wear their traditional or cultural clothes in everyday life but the ordinary Arab dress during (Friday) prayer. Why do Muslim men in the UAE wear the kandora for Friday prayer but only Emirati men wear it during the rest of the week in public spaces? What kind of meaning is assigned to it? An important differentiation between the kandora worn by the Emirati men and those by men from diverse other countries is its appearance, which incorporates distinct codes. Whereas South Asian, African, or Arab men from other nation states (especially Oman) wear colored kandoras—only on Fridays in the case of foreign laborers and in everyday life in the case of Omanis—Emirati males, i.e., men and boys, exclusively wear white ones throughout the week. Mahmood, a retailer of kandora in Dubai, summarized this situation with his statement: “The traditional color of the kandora [in the UAE] is white.” A further particularity exists regarding the kandora in the UAE besides the color. The clothing Emiratis wear is very simple in design and style. This is in stark contrast to the Arab dress worn on Fridays by men from other nation states residing in the UAE, or to that worn by Omanis, for instance. Nevertheless, the simplicity of the Arab kandora( s) still inheres unique nuances that can be traced (see Khalaf 2005, 245). Later in the interview, Mahmood explained: A kandora with a Chinese collar and two buttons is a Saudi one. The ones with a Western collar are the Qatari ones. And kandoras without collar are from Oman or the UAE. The only difference between the Omani and the Emirati one is the pompon [tarbousha]; the Dubai one has a long one in front, the Omani one is small and is placed at the side.

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Arwa complemented this information with reference to further national differences in style: The buttons make it unique Emirati style. The Omani kandora is softer in terms of the material, the Emirati one is harder. And the Omanis prefer colors. (…) My dad likes the Kuwaiti design with a pocket [on the chest] and hidden buttons.

Knowledge is needed in order to recognize these minor differences. I realized this when I talked to 33-year-old Emirati Rashida, who could hardly identify the special style of her compatriots’ clothing. She said: “I cannot differentiate a unique Dubai or Emirati kandora style well [giggling]. The males know the difference, I cannot define it. The way they wear their clothes is unique. (…) The males would know better what the differences are.” Presumably, identification of the distinct Emirati kandora is similarly difficult for non-nationals such as those who wear the Arab garment only for Friday prayer.

Embodying Nationality and Culture As we have seen, the whiteness and the very precise and differentiated design of the male clothing is something very specific to the common Emirati style. This distinction of how Emirati citizens style their bodies obviously refers to internal and external ascriptions and thereby to their national and cultural identification. Arwa’s 49-year-old mother Abiha put it in a nutshell: “Kandora is something men wear since they are little kids beside the shirt and pants [i.e. their underwear]; it is our national dress.” As citizens in their own country, Emirati males have a certain responsibility toward their nation state and their culture, which they embody through their clothing. This explains the involvement of the Criminal Department of the Dubai Police in the incident in Dubai Mall: male Emirati clothing habits are of national interest. Their responsibility and its embodied practice are embedded into the political and socio-structural context of the UAE. As Ledstrup (2016, 2) points

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out, presenting oneself wearing the kandora in a public space means displaying one’s so-called “national dress” (see AlMutawa 2016a, 2–3) like a uniform. The uniformity refers to a process of standardization that the male clothing has undergone. Whereas men previously wore various styles of attire according to ethnic background, occupation, or family during the pre-oil area and before the foundation of the nation state (AlMutawa 2016a, 10), their outfits are nowadays highly regulated. Body practices have therefore been disciplined toward less fluidity and (re-)negotiation. The notion of a uniform furthermore incorporates the status of the kandora as the usual formal clothing for Emiratis beyond wearing it as their traditional everyday clothing.4 This was supported by Rashida, who stated: All local [Emirati] men wear kandora. But there are some who are more into Western culture, who studied abroad, worked abroad. They can’t wear kandora for a long time. But for Eid [Muslim feast at the end of Ramadhan] or for a wedding, it has to be kandora. You cannot go to your grandfather’s house during Eid wearing trousers! It must be kandora. It’s an official thing for men to wear kandora. In work contexts you rarely see men wear anything other than kandora. Even my husband, if he goes to the immigration department [his workplace], he has to wear kandora.

The formality of the kandora in the UAE is not only observable in the contexts of Muslim celebrations or work but also, for instance, in the education sector. The kandora serves as a school uniform and at universities wearing it is obligatory (Khalaf 2005, 245; Ledstrup 2016). In addition male headgear can also communicate formality. Male Emiratis, predominantly men, wear a white, square piece of cloth (guthra) on their head, which is held in place by a black, round cord (agal ). An Emirati police officer explained to me once that in fact the guthra not only represents a formal style, but also the opposite, a certain nonchalance. If an Emirati man wears a red and white guthra, he said, his style is semi-formal. A guthra that has interwoven patterns or is colored represents a casual wearer. Arwa complemented this information by stating: “[I]t’s Emirati style when they [young men] don’t wear agal

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but just the guthra, what we call ‘asama.’” Arwa was thereby describing the most recent development regarding male Emirati headgear which, according to my experience, had only developed a couple of years before. This uniform or formal and national dress has further meaningful implications. It is connoted as “traditional” or “authentic” in terms of cultural and national identification and thereby indicates belonging to a particular social group (see Miranda et al. 2016). AlMutawa (2016a, 1) comes to the heart of this by stating: “[T]o be an authentic khaleeji (from the Gulf ) one must don the appropriate attire” (emphasis in the original). In a similar vein, Ledstrup (2016, 5) points out: “Male national dress is (…) perceived in media and scholarship to be an important expression of Emirati identity.” To showcase this national identity in public is, Ledstrup argues, “important in light of the country’s rapid development and the accompanying immigration of expatriates from all over the world.” He thereby points to the fact that Emiratis comprise less than 8% of all residents, as shown above (see Khalaf 2005; Krause 2008, 29). Furthermore, most Emiratis consider the high percentage of foreign nationals to be a threat, as Ledstrup showcases in his study. Building on this argument, AlMutawa (2016a, 7) incorporates additional dimensions into the meaning of the kandora: In the eyes of Emiratis, national dress asserts that they have maintained pre-oil traditions in the face of modernization and a large population of foreign residents. (…) National dress signals to fellow citizens, as well as foreign residents, that the person wearing national dress has more privileges and may be regarded as superior to the foreigners in that society.

Obviously, the intersectionally interwoven condition between attiring the male body with the kandora and the representation of authenticity, culture, and nationality is not something undertaken individually but is the result of negotiation processes that involve the perpetuation of Emirati identity and culture. Males’ mutually constitutive “visual selves” (Frith and Gleesond 2004, 40) are collectively practiced in the realm of normative orders. This, then, forms the basis for Emirati men in this context to claim their bodies by concealing them with certain gendered garments in order to identify themselves as individual privileged citizens, but also as a group.

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Gendered Fashion and Non-Fashion Besides the embodiment of cultural, national, and traditional identification, a further axis of differentiation plays a role when analyzing the meaning of wearing “authentic” garments in the Gulf. Since the kandora is strictly meant for and worn by males only, the gendered notion it implies is of further interest here. When I talked with Layla, an Emirati abaya designer in her mid-thirties, about the male counterpart to the garments she produces, she recalled: The kandora never changed. They created it [the kandora] and after that nothing changed. They do have colors now, I mean moderate colors like beige and brown, since three to four years ago. It’s traditional clothing here [in the UAE], it’s very famous, but it stays the same. Because it contains the men.

With her words that “[t]he kandora never changed (…) [b]ecause it contains the men,” Layla clearly revealed that the kandora is very stable in its design and that this is due to the fundamental role it plays in symbolizing masculinity. Moreover, she implied that it is expected that this masculinity should be maintained. Layla underscored this entangled condition by continuing the conversation as follows: “[M]ost designers are female, they design female [she emphasized] clothing. Maybe it [the kandora] would change, if female designers were designing kandora.” With this statement, Layla opened up the perspective that female garments, in contrast to male ones, have in fact been altered design-wise. Iman, another abaya designer whom I met in her office and production site in Deira, the old part of Dubai, perceived both gendered Arab dresses (kandora and abaya) and the gendered relationship between these two similarly to Layla: [The] kandora is [somewhat] fashionable but men are not as interested in fashion as the women are. The kandora has been the same for a very long time, there is no need to change it.

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Iman disclosed that women are more interested in fashion than men, which has led to the unchanging appearance of the kandora. Clearly, the kandora has not been incorporated into the fashion scene. Since there “is no need to change it,” according to Iman, the simplicity and stability are normatively set. The question arises, why males want to and are required to represent their culture and tradition through the stability of the kandora in contrast to females, who have transformed the abaya into a fashionable piece (Thimm 2015, 2018)? Whereas both men and women can and do claim their status position and privileges based on their citizenship and cultural identity via their visual appearance, their gendered relationship toward one another integrates a layer of differentiation within this social group. Men’s traditionality in the UAE (and the broader Gulf ) is saturated with power. This power relates to their citizenship and identification as Emirati (in contrast to foreign workers) as discussed above and additionally to their gender (in contrast to females). Male authority in the UAE was strengthened especially in the course of the economic rise based on the oil boom. As Wanda Krause (2008, 30–31) explains, women in the region known as the UAE since the establishment of the nation state performed very important roles in the pre-oil era, whether in desert oases or in the mountains (see AlMutawa 2016b). During that time, the raw materials of the UAE economy were fish and pearls. Men usually worked either as pearl divers or as craftsmen embroidering sandals, for example, and selling them to influential pearl dealers or sheikhs.5 These economic activities influenced the roles of women. The pearl divers had to leave their families temporarily, for three months or longer. The women then had to manage everything on their own at home. They cared for all relatives, took care of food and clothing, and did maintenance work on the house. They weaved and dyed the palm leaves from which the houses were constructed. They were also responsible for the animals (e.g., milking), mostly sheep and camels, and for the production and maintenance of fishing equipment, pearl diving equipment, and food storage. When the men went fishing, the women sold the fish at the market. In addition, many women were also spiritual and herbal healers (Krause 2008, 30–31).

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Despite this important position for Emirati women, after independence and the formation of the UAE as a nation state, i.e., in the course of formalizing politics and policies, their position and roles in public life were marginalized (Krause 2008, 35). Yet the gender situation in the UAE has been highly ambivalent ever since. For example, education for women is considered essential for national development (Chatty 1997). Education of women serves unity, identity building, and stability, and thereby has been profoundly supported by the state (Krause 2012, 100). The proportion of women at state universities is about 75%. This is due to the fact that Emirati women, unlike men, are not encouraged by the state to study abroad (Augsburg et al. 2009, 11; see Ridge 2010). Women are now working in male domains. More and more Emirati women are involved in the fields of engineering, computer science, media, academia, and business—and in formal politics (see Carvalho Pinto 2019). In 1980, i.e., about 10 years after independence, women made up only 3.4% of the workforce. In 2000 they comprised 15% of all employees, including non-nationals, although the majority of university graduates were women. Nevertheless, UAE society is still highly segregated by gender, with women supposed to be at home and men in public spaces and places (Krause 2008, 41–45). Even though the development of women’s roles in Emirati society has been constantly negotiated, male authority is still operative. Men are the heads of the state as well as of the family, for instance. Given this situation, Hisham Sharabi (1998) has coined the term “neopatriarchy” to describe postcolonial state formations in the Arab World from an internal perspective. Sharabi argues from a Marxist angle that the sultanates, the historical patriarchal authority structure of the region, have not yielded to “modernization” and have not been profoundly altered. Instead, he claims, they live on as neopatriarchy, which hampers cultural, social, and political change. The overall powerful status of Emirati men, then, leads back to the way they attire and claim their bodies. Their status position, I argue, explains the steadiness in the kandora’s design. The male dress not only represents culture and citizenship (as the abaya does too) but furthermore masculinity and it thereby becomes a complex intersectional garment. Intersectional connections between Emirati identity,

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nationality, and masculinity are claimed and embodied via the gendered way of dressing. Whereas the power of masculinity is not meant to be questioned, the national power of women can, to a certain extent, be transformed, as their gendered socio-structural position is lower than the males’ (Krause 2012, 2008). Thus, if the kandora, which represents this male authority, was to be introduced into the fashion market, the identity of the kandora and therefore the identity of male Emiratis, would presumably be undermined. Their social position and power would be thwarted and no longer embodied as a result. Contrastingly, Emirati women have conquered the local and global fashion markets (particularly with their fashionable abayas; see AlQasimi 2010; Lindholm 2014; Thimm 2015, 2018). They thereby strengthen their social position, for example through their resulting better economic situation. In doing so, Emirati women challenge male authority to a certain extent, at least within this economic area of the fashion sector. Within this entangled context, power, gendered status positions, marginalization, and visibility are constantly negotiated. This situation likely means that the larger and more sophisticated the local Emirati fashion market becomes, the more stable and unchanging the kandora will be—in order for male bodies to express their dominant position as Emirati and as male.

Conclusion Dressing, not in the sense of fashion but of attire, is a form of embodiment about which males and females are similarly concerned. They strategically use their garments to form and to express their identifications and thereby work on social conditions and relationships. This situation is understudied, particularly for Muslim contexts, but this contribution shows the worthiness of the subject for future scholarship. In the Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), or Oman, men have commonly been wearing a simple, long white robe ever since. In most parts of the Arabian Peninsula, this garment predominantly expresses national, ethnic, and traditional identification in contemporary times. One common fact regarding this

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gendered clothing item is that it has been very stable, design-wise, all over the region. In contrast to typical female clothes in the Gulf, the white robe for males has not been subject to any form of fashionization. In summary, the ethnographic observations discussed here suggest that the connections between the body, subjectivity, and everyday practices showcase a high level of normativity that is embedded into intersectionally interwoven privileges as males and as Emirati citizens. Thus, Emirati males make sense of their bodies in relation to sociocultural and political ideals and simultaneously embody these ideals via their clothing. The male Emirati supremacy over non-nationals and women is maintained and embodied via their traditional garment (the kandora). The profound importance of this gendered clothing item means that it has been maintained so as not to distract from the authority of the wearer, which it represents. As a consequence, men in this regional context are not as enthusiastic about fashion and design as local women are.

Notes 1. I want to stress here that gender identifications and practices are not limited to males and females, but equally include transgender, non-binary, and queer people. 2. Interviews with Malay people were undertaken in Bahasa Melayu (Malay) or Manglish (a particular mix of Malay and English). 3. The term “kandora” is in the UAE not solely used for the male garment but also for a dress worn by females of the elder generation. It is a dress with a round collar and slit and embroidered seams. The garment can be colorful and with or without patterns. The younger female generations no longer wear this type of kandora but instead wear Western clothes underneath their abaya. 4. In contrast to the white kandora in the UAE, Omanis, for example, who generally have a much greater variety of dishdasha (the Omani name for the kandora) in terms of design and color, display formality by wearing a khanjar (traditional dagger) along with their Arab dress. 5. Other people grew dates in oases, lived their lives as nomadic cattle herders, or as small-scale traders.

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Normative Orders, Subjectivation and Counteractive Practices

The Halal Nail Polish: Religion and Body Politics in the Marketplace Özlem Sandıkcı

Wearing nail polish is a contentious issue for practicing Muslim women. Because nail polish sets a permanent barrier between water and nail, wudu (a ritualized body cleansing procedure that every Muslim should undertake before salat —daily prayers) cannot be performed without first removing the nail polish. This severely limits the use of the product. In recent years a new breathable line of nail polish, which allows water to penetrate the nail, became available. Although not developed with the Muslim consumer segment in mind, this innovative line appeared to be appropriate for the use of Muslim women. With the introduction of technologically similar other brands, the so-called halal nail polish category flourished. However, the product generated not only interest but also a lively online debate. A multitude of participants, including consumers, company spokespeople, and religious scholars have engaged Ö. Sandıkcı (B) Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_7

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in passionate discussions about the product’s suitability (Sandıkcı 2020). In this study, I use the controversy over the nail polish to interrogate the complex ways through which social, cultural, material, and religious interpretations of body intersect with marketplace dynamics and inform identities. The perception and evaluation of one’s own body and physical appearance contribute significantly to self-concept (Entwistle 2000; Featherstone 1991). Within the logic of market, a body turns into a site of consumption, open to endless choice and possibility. However, religious norms and discourses complicate the relationship between body, consumption, and choice. In the context of Islam, modesty plays an important role in shaping subjectivities and bodily practices (Ahmed 1992; El Guindi 1999; Mahmood 2005). While modesty requirement applies to both men and women, it is predominantly the female body that modesty becomes embodied, interrogated, and regulated. Increasingly, the discussions of the modest female body take place in the marketplace. The so-called modest fashion industry and related Muslim lifestyle media promote products and images that promise women stylish yet faithful looks (Gökarıksel and Secor 2009; Jones 2007; Lewis 2015; Sandıkcı 2017; Sandıkcı and Ger 2010). Given the visibility of veiling, much of the existing research in the area focuses on clothing and explores how dress and dressing practices mediate the relationship between modesty and body. However, the expansion of halal to almost every domain of the economy renders other consumption domains, such as cosmetics, leisure, and food, potentially rich contexts to explore the interplay between bodies, identities, and social relations (Sandıkcı 2018). The nail polish provides an interesting case to trace and explore how the interactions between religious and market logics inform as well as complicate different understandings of the properly faithful Muslim female body. In this chapter, I trace these interactions through a netnographic study of the debates surrounding the nail polish. Data collected from various blogs, forums, and websites indicate three frames underlying the discussions: piety, modesty, and authority. First, there is a debate about the material and symbolic effects of wearing nail polish on wudu and, in extension, fulfilling the requirements of a pious self. Second, there is a dispute over what constitutes a modest female Muslim body and bodily

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practices. While references to scriptural texts and norms seek to limit the boundaries of the Muslim female body by emphasizing the ethics of modesty, arguments highlighting the aesthetics of modest appearance seek to expand the very boundaries of religiously appropriate forms of bodily consumption. Third, the debate about the nail polish brings forefront the question of who has authority to speak on behalf of women and what defines being a pious and modern Muslim woman today. Overall, reactions toward the nail polish highlight the significance of embodied practices in shaping religious identities and relations. The body features both materially and symbolically in the interrogations of proper Muslim female identity. The controversy over the status of the nail polish indicates that products shape women’s relationships to their bodies by enabling or preventing performance of certain practices and contribute to their sense of being a “good” Muslim. While the introduction of halal nail polish appears to be yet another example of the growth of the halal economy, it also shows the significant role everyday objects play in the construction or contestation of pious identities.

Faith, Fashion, and Body There is a complex relationship between faith, fashion, and the female body. Fashion is a domain which is viewed to be oppressive, liberating, or both. Some scholars argue that fashion objectifies women (Wilson 2003), generates distorted self-perceptions (Hollander 1993), and creates an illusion of choice (Winship 1987). Others, however, perceive fashion as liberating and argue that playing with looks, styles, and meanings can generate feminine pleasure that goes beyond the reproduction of patriarchy (Scott 2006) and women can use their clothes in a variety of ways to subvert and resist the dominant power relations (Craik 2003). Similarly, dressing practices related to faith can be construed as liberating, constraining, or both. For example, in the case of Islam, the veil represents both the embodiment of women’s oppression and the key to their potential liberation. Since the colonial encounters between the West and the East, a prevailing view of the veil is that it is the ultimate symbol of women’s inequality, segregation, and lack of freedom under Islam (e.g.,

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Mernissi 1991; Stowasser 1994). As Hirschmann (1998, 349) points out, “feminists as well as non-feminists often assume that veiling is in and of itself an inherently oppressive practice.” On the other hand, a significant amount of research points at the complexity and multiplicity of veiling practices and argue that Orientalist readings ignore that many Muslim women do not only voluntarily adopt the veil but also defend it as a mark of their agency (e.g., Abu-Lughod 2016; Ahmed 1992; El Guindi 1999; Göle 1996). Moreover, an interdisciplinary body of work discusses the emergence and spread of “fashionable veiling” and “modest fashion” in both Muslim-majority and minority contexts (e.g., Abaza 2007; Akou 2007; Balasescu 2003; Bucar 2016; Gökarıksel and Secor ; Jones 2007; Lewis 2010; Moors 2009; Sandıkcı 2017; Sandıkcı and Ger 20072010; Tarlo 2010). These studies demonstrate that young, urban middle-class Muslim women spend considerable time, money, and effort to construct the desired looks that they hope fulfil the requirements of both religion and fashion. Despite the prevalence of a discourse that situates the veil outside the fashion system and, hence modernity, these women assert themselves as fashionable and modern individuals, making informed consumption and lifestyle choices. Constructing a fashionable and faithful look is a socially structured embodied practice. Dress, as Joanne Entwistle (2000, 10) argues, is “always more than a shell, it is an intimate aspect of the experience and presentation of the self.” Dressing constitutes one of the ways in which body is produced through everyday practices. As Judith Butler’s (1990,1993) seminal work on the social production of gender highlights, everyday, repetitive stylizations of the body play a significant role in the performance of gender. Clothes can hide, elucidate, adorn, protect, or improve the body in various ways, making the body more or less acceptable in different social contexts. Gender becomes regulated and constructed through iterative bodily performances (Butler 1993) to which clothing and other forms of adornment are often constitutive components. Overall, bodies are not only constitutive of subjectivity, but also mediate the relationship between people and the world. Bodies participate in the agency of selves and form and connect to social reality. The

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dressed body constitutes one of the most easily identifiable markers of religious identity (Gökarıksel 2009; Thimm 2018). However, the body can be dressed not only through clothing but also through makeup, tattooing, hair coloring, and other practices. The focus on veiling and clothing practices of Muslim women results in a limited understanding of how other objects and practices related to the body are implicated in the relationship between, faith, fashion, and identity. The controversy over the so-called halal nail polish provides new insights into the ways everyday bodily practices contribute to the cultivation as well as problematization of religious identities.

The Nail Polish Controversy Nail polish is not typically considered as part of the grooming rituals of practicing Muslim women. Given the problems it poses for the performance of wudu, many women choose not to wear nail polish. Some women use it only on their menstrual period, during which they are exempted from daily prayers. Others wear the product in between praying times, put it on only to take it off in a couple of hours. Henna, which is deemed as religiously acceptable, provides an alternative for those who want to enjoy decorated hands. In fall 2009, the Polish cosmetics company Inglot launched O2M, a new line of nail polish. Inglot claimed that O2M, which stands for oxygen and moisture, was a revolutionary breathable nail enamel that ensured oxygen and water vapor permeability. According to the company website, the product was created specifically for health reasons and designed as a better alternative to standard nail polish. The use of nail polish became a topic of heated discussion when Mustafa Umar, an Islamic scholar and a director of education and outreach at the Islamic Institute of Orange County, USA, published the results of a test conducted by one of his students on his blog on November 2012 and declared the Inglot O2M brand nail polish “halal friendly.” In his blog entry, Mr. Umar explained his interest in the product in the following manner:

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One of my students decided to perform a test to see whether or not water actually seeped through when using the Inglot O2M nail polish. As a test case, she applied standard pink nail polish and purple O2M on a coffee filter and allowed both to dry. She then placed another coffee filter below the painted one, squeezed two drops of water over the polish, and applied some pressure with her finger. After about ten seconds it was clear that the water was prevented from seeping through [even to the back side of the first filter] on the standard polish but clearly went through the O2M and even wet the second filter. This is sufficient to show that the claims made by the manufacturer are correct and water does indeed permeate through to the nail. (Mustafaumar 2013)

The blog entry, which came to be known by many as “the nail polish fatwa,” went viral. The news of Inglot’s breathable nail polish spread quickly over the internet, leading to a sharp rise in interest in the product. Mr. Umar explained that he decided to study the matter because Muslim women had already been discussing the product in online forums and there was uncertainty over whether it was appropriate to use. His blog entry and the subsequent consumer interest drew further marketer attention to the product category. Soon, other brands using similar technology and often explicitly positioned as halal were introduced (Sandıkcı 2020). Among the prominent so-called halal nail polish brands are the UK-based Nailberry, Canada-based Tuesday in Love, USA-based Acquarella, Orly, Maya, Amara, and 786, UAE-based Hand Lyn, and Malaysia based Modern Inai. I explore the debate surrounding the nail polish using data collected from several online sources including forums, blogs, videos, and websites (for data sources, see Table 1). As past research indicates, Muslim women frequently use digital spaces to negotiate the meanings and practices of veiling (Akou 2010; Lewis 2015) as well as to articulate their opinions regarding female bodies and subjectivities (Baer 2016; Echchaibi 2011). Similarly, online environments provide a fruitful context to explore the meanings, tensions, and negotiations characterizing the controversy over the nail polish. Data analysis follows the principles of grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1990). Using open and axial coding, I identify the themes underlying the debate; I, then, move back and forth between data and theory to identify patterns and relationships. Next, I discuss

Fashion Magazines

Newspapers

Company websites

Videos

9 blogs/ ~ 750 comments

7 articles

23 articles

6 forums/ ~ 550 comments

Data set

(views/comments) Muslimah2MuslimahTV, Inglot O2M Breathable Polish: Full 13.920/41 Review + Application (March 7, 2013) VOA News Halal Nail Polish Allows Muslim Women to Pray 53.115/130 in Style, (May 21, 2013) Let the Quran Speak Using Permeable Nail Polish? (Jun 5, 96.980/181 2013) Dina Tokio, Halal Nail Polish? (July 5, 2013) 375.108/690 Dina Tokio, Halal Nail Polish? (July 5, 2013) NourKaiss, Pray With Nailpolish On??? (Jan 17, 2017) 106.814/187 Hashima Watts, Orly Breathable Nail Polish Review - Halal 26.810/97 Certified? (April 14, 2017) Hashima Watts, Halal Nail Polish-9 Brands-Wudu Ready? 8.801/46 (Jun 4, 2018) www.tuesdayinlove.com; https://www.maya-cosmetics.com; 8 companies https://amaracosmetics.com; https://www.786cosmetics. com New York Times, USA Today, Huffington Post (USA), Financial Times, Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent (UK), The Japan Times, The National (UAE), Times of Israel Vogue, Glamour Magazine UK, Muslim Girl

ummah.com; virtualmosque.com; muftisays.com; suhaib webb.com Mustafaumar.com; expresstibune.com; hautemuslimah.com; modeststyleguide; ummahsonic.com; hijablijious.com

Forums

Blogs

Exemplary sources

Type

Table 1 Data sources

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three frames that structure the online discussion: piety, modesty, and authority. In order to stay true to the emic nature of the data, spelling errors, and grammatical mistakes remain uncorrected.

Piety Piety, as research indicates, is an embodied performance (Brenner 1996; Gökarıksel 2009; Göle 1996; Mahmood 2005; Secor 2002). Religious practices, such as veiling, wudu, salat, and hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca), are integral to the making of Muslim identity. In each of these practices bodily gestures and recitation of bodily enactments play an important role in the construction of the pious self. For example, in her ethnographic account of the mosque movement in Egypt, Saba Mahmood (2005) explores the motivations, desires, commitments, and aspirations of the participants. She demonstrates that veiling is a conscious act of self-cultivation in which the body is an instrument utilized toward piety. Mosque participants “treat the body as a medium for, rather than a sign of, the self ” (Mahmood 2005, 166), through which a sense of modesty and humility is realized and cultivated. The various movements of the body “comprise the material substance of the ethical domain” (Mahmood 2005, 31) and help construct a sense of moral self. The presence of a layer of coating on fingernails complicates this very sense of moral self. As the analysis indicates, a prominent criticism toward the nail polish stems from its effect on the performance of wudu. Those who object the product believe that wearing nail polish invalidates wudu, hence salat. However, wudu is not only about a physical sense of cleaning the body; it is also about purification. That is, it is also about symbolically and spiritually preparing self for daily prayer. Anything that could jeopardize such purification, makeup, improper attire, or jewellery, should be eliminated. As critics emphasize, praying is about submission. During this spiritual connection, bodily concerns should be minimized: Muslim doesn’t understand the point in prayers… its about vulnerability... to be grateful of what you have… its almost like wearing full makeup when praying when wearing such colours on nails… henna is

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fine because those are plants and does not involve chemicals… its okay to wear nail polish… even normal nail polish… but the right thing to do is just to remove it during prayers… it doesnt even take 5mins to clear every nail…. (Reemfaruqi 2015)

The above quote also indicates that nail polish can be used if a strict temporal regiment is followed. However, in the context of everyday life, practicing a cycle of use-removal can be burdensome. Indeed, many complain about such difficulties and acknowledge that they hardly use nail polish even though they might want to do so. The water permeability technology seems to offer a solution to this problem; yet, it also creates further tensions as product claims remain questionable. Following Mr. Umar’s publication of the results of the coffee test, several replications of the test appeared on other blogs and forums. The results, however, were inconclusive. Some reported similar observations while several others documented failure. In response to the increasing number of queries to his verdict, Mr. Umar posted an update on February 2013 and explained that “permeability may be affected by wearing more than one layer [e.g. a base coat, top coat, etc.]” (Virtual Mosque 2013a). In the coming months, Inglot and Tuesday in Love, another brand that had recently entered the market, posted on their websites experiments that explained the workings of the new technology and assured consumers that breathable nail polish allows water to permeate the nail. Despite the companies’ efforts, opinions regarding water permeability technology and its effects on wudu continued to polarize. For those who are critical of the product, the technology is dubious at best. In addition to the inconclusive results, they highlight the distinction between water vapor penetrating the nail and water thoroughly touching and wetting the nail and urge fellow Muslim women to refrain from engaging in “doubtful” practices: Concepts like these create doubts- no one is sure whether the wudu was hampered or not. So its better to avoid it till the techniques is perfectedwhich will be difficult coz some part of the nail will have to be covered with a non-permeable membrane to hold the permeable part intact. Unless it can be totally permeable- and the nail completely exposed to

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running water- there is no point in being ecstatic:). (The Express Tribune 2013) Personally I’d rather stay on the safe side…if praying with nail polish is risky and not completely known to be halal or haram then it’s better to just avoid it. Imagine praying all your life with nail polish on then finding out … that your prayers weren’t valid. It’s just nail polish, it’s not necessary to life lmao. Just wait until your monthly visitor then you can paint your nails all you want. (Lei A 2017)

However, in contrast to those who consider the nail polish as a threat to the fulfilment of religious obligations, for others, the product is a “huge breakthrough,” “a great idea,” and a “source of happiness.” As they argue, there is no point in judging someone more or less pious based on some physical features alone as no one, except Allah, can know the person’s true intentions. Rather than condemning painted nails as a sign of compromise, they emphasize individual preferences and suggest that women can decide on how to best follow an Islamic life: Some people enjoy painting their nails and some don’t. That’s okay and entirely up to each individual but there is no need to look down upon others and see yourself as more pious or religious because you would “never do such a thing” inshallah Allah will guide us all to the straight path and may we learn to treat each other’s opinions with respect. As Muslims we must be more compassionate towards one another, not turn people away from our religion because of the rules and strict regulations we choose to impose and all the limits we set. Do things within the boundaries of Islam and with a pure intention and inshallah Allah will be satisfied with all your doings. (Virtual Mosque 2013b) I think it is a great idea. I do not think we sisters are less Islamic by wanting to paint our nails. As long as we pray, follow an Islamic life, be kind, treat others as we should. There is nothing wrong with painting our nails for a wedding or an event. There are lots of Muslims out there who pray 5 times a day but living a more sinful life and do not make me go there and rant about what that is. (The Express Tribune 2014)

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Overall, the debate over the suitability of the nail polish invokes both the embodied and symbolic aspects of piety. Emphasizing the embodied nature of piety, the opponents reject coloring nails as a practice that physically impedes performance of a pious Muslim self. For the supporters, on the other hand, judgments based only on bodily inscriptions can be misleading and disguise the true meanings and identities. Both perspectives, nevertheless, underscore the importance of cultivating the body according to gendered religious and social norms. However, the lack of consensus over the boundaries of such norms further pluralizes the opinions about the nail polish.

Modesty Modesty has an essential place in Islam. Modesty principle encompasses all aspects of life and calls for decency, humility, and moderation in speech, attitude, dress, and total behavior. Modesty prevents human beings from indulging in indecency, vanity, and obscenity, and therefore should be adopted by both males and females. However, while modesty requirement applies to both genders, it is the female body that is most prominently embodied in the form of dress and appearance (El Guindi 1999; Makhlouf 2016). According to the Quranic injunctions, a woman should not display her “beauty and ornaments” to unrelated men who may be sexually attracted to her and, hence, should cover certain parts of her body. However, what constitutes beauty and ornaments is a heavily debated issue (Abbas 2015; Akou 2010). According to classical interpretations, they refer to anything that enhances a person’s appearance. While some religious scholars advocate that a woman should cover everything but her hands and face, others consider even the hands and face as impermissible. The Quran does not specifically address the issue of nail polish; thus, the scriptural verdict on its use remains indeterminate. Those who subscribe to a stricter interpretation of modesty oppose the use of nail polish, arguing that it is not acceptable for Muslim women to beautify themselves for the admiration of strangers. As they claim, a Muslim

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woman’s duty is foremost for her husband; hence, beautifying herself for others negates centuries-old customs and norms: Why is there a need for nail polish in the first place? Is it to beautify herself for her husband or for herself? I’m asking because I’ve always thought that a woman’s beauty is for her husband. its extremely rare to find nail polish on women’s hands whose nails is not grown or long either, so will they be keeping there nails short as they should and still where nail polish or will they be violating shariah on cleanliness as wel? (Virtual Mosque 2014) It seems some hijabi sisters are so concern about their beauties that they want to look beautiful all the time fr head to toe. In Islam as muslimah, we should dress modestly and for the sake of Allah and not to attract others attention. So, what’s the purpose of putting nail polish & also wearing heavy make up? Is it for Allah? or to attract compliments? (Virtual Mosque 2013c)

Evident in the quotes above is the discomfort with the perceived potency of the nail polish for amplifying the sexual attractiveness of a woman. For the opponents, colored and grown nails embody indecency and promiscuity and upset the established understandings of a virtuous, modest Muslim woman. Such reading of the nail polish also aligns with the feminist interpretations that regard wearing makeup as a normative and oppressive feminine ideal rooted in patriarchal expectations (Gill 2003). As an embodiment of female sexuality, the polished nails deviate from what critics argue a proper Muslim woman looks like. Yet, a different interpretation of modesty, one that emphasizes aesthetics as much as ethics, produces a contradictory reading about the suitability of wearing nail polish. Those who show a more supportive view of the product claim that Muslim women have both the right and duty to beautify themselves. Citing various religious references and historical figures, they argue that Islam encourages people to craft an aesthetically pleasing look that appeals to both believers and nonbelievers:

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Do you think that the mothers of Islam did not do things to make themselves feel beautiful? We may have different cultures now, as I’m sure Allah did not intend for Muslims to be caught in a time warp, but women want to feel good about themselves in any era. Did women living during the time of the prophet (saw) wear henna? Did they wear silk or jewelry? Did they darken their eyes with kajul? What makes you think they would not have worn nail polish had it existed? I’ve grown tired of all the Muslims who seem to think a woman must be completely plain and nonexistent to be modest. This culture of scrubbing the earth of femininity is wrought with absurdity and leads to a great burden being placed on women that I don’t think is required by Allah so much as it is by men. Stop worrying about women’s modesty and start worrying about why women’s behaviors are limited to any reaction by men (in this case, to merely seeing nail polish on fingernails). If we start there perhaps some of the bigger issues our ummah faces will be resolved as well. (Virtual Mosque 2013d) I’m not convinced that nail polish is immodest. Is the issue that the nail polish is attractive? Or is the issue that it brings attention to the hands which could be seen as attractive? Surely we are beyond discussing whether a woman’s hands can be shown, right? If a women’s hands are showing, so would any jewelry she is wearing, and those are adornments too. Did people not wear jewelry in the Prophet’s (SAW) time? So, quite frankly, if a guy is aroused by a woman’s nail polish, he’d probably be aroused by her rings, or by her naked hands. I would consider him to be the one with the problem that needs to be fixed, and not prohibit women from yet another thing becuase some weird guy is finding it attractive or it is bringing attention to something that is permissably shown. (Virtual Mosque 2013e)

As the quotes above show, rather than objecting to new products, one should question social norms, customs, traditions, and power relations that limit women’s behavior. Changing times require adjustments to the dominant modes of thinking and acting. More specifically, it calls for questioning patriarchal dynamics and rethinking what is acceptable and unacceptable in terms of gendered appearance. In contrast to those who are critical of the product, supporters perceive the polished nails as an embodiment of reconciliation of the demands of faith and

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beauty. Neither seductive nor submissive, wearing nail polish can help craft a Muslim female identity that is faithful, aesthetically pleasing and appealing.

Authority The controversy over the use of nail polish also brings forefront the question of who has authority to speak on behalf of women and define the boundaries of a pious and modest body. As primary authorities on faithrelated issues, religious scholars, and leaders participate in the debate and express their opinions. However, rather than reflect a consensus, their views diverge. For example, according to Sheikh Ali Barakat, the imam of Noor AlIslam’s mosque in Sharjah, UAE, “the condition of validity of wudhu agreed by the majority of scholars …is the removal of any substances that prevents water from reaching the body” (Arab News 2013). Hence, “if this product allows water to reach the nails then there is no harm in using it” (ibid.). On the contrary, another UAE-based Islamic scholar, Shaikh Ahmad AlQubaisi argues that because finery acts are not allowed, “whether it [nail polish] allows the passage of water or not, it is haram (forbidden by Islamic law)” (ibid.). Some religious figures even offer practical recommendations to assess the validity of the product’s claims and advise conditions under which women can or cannot use nail polish: If this is claimed to be a breathable nail polish which does not make a coat on the nail, a woman must try to peal it away. If it does not peal, then yes it might be ‘halal’. … However, if the woman tries to peal it and finds a pealed part coming out, then it is not ‘halal’, as it covers the nail and creates a shield on it. Thus, women cannot put it and pray. (Emirates 24/7 2015)

Such conflicting judgments do not only add to confusion and uncertainty but generate criticism. Many participants complain about the authoritarian tone underlying the verdicts and draw attention to the fact it is always women’s bodies that become subject to scrutiny and

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discipline. The debate over the nail polish renders visible the often invisible convention of men telling women the boundaries of their bodily freedoms and provokes strong reactions: My point is that in the past six months I’ve received a spate of articles on this website about what women can and cannot do while not seeing any articles about when men can or can’t do. That’s a fact I think we can both agree on (if I’ve missed one, please let me know, I’d love to read it!). I find it a concerning pattern when there is a trend of focusing only on rules that would limit female behavior. Women, wear hijab. Women, don’t wear nail polish. You’re right that women can benefit from these articles. But where is the discussion about men’s requirements to wear beards? the role of the turban or hat? Or what clothes are appropriate for a man to wear? Surely men can benefit from a discussion of these topics, too, right? (Virtual Mosque 2012)

In recent years, the relation between women and religious authority has gained increasing research attention (e.g., Echchaibi 2011; LeBlanc 2014; Krämer and Schmidtke 2006). Scholars have analyzed how women challenge religious and other authorities and claim legitimacy and authority within their communities. New technologies, such as the Internet, play an important role in creating new spaces for disseminating religious ideas and debating what it means to be Muslim in the contemporary world (Bunt 2009; Eickelman and Anderson 2003). In the context of women’s bodily practices, the Internet and social media enable women to come into contact with each other and discuss different aspects of modest appearance. While the Quran and the hadits are the supreme sources, in the absence of established practices or when there are conflicting interpretations of practice, new experts, such as modest fashion bloggers, emerge as cultural intermediaries (Lewis 2015; Prodanovic and Khamis 2017). A similar pattern is visible in the debate over the nail polish. As the controversy intensifies, modest fashion bloggers, such as USA-based Dina Tokio and Sobia Masood and Canada-based Nour Kaiss, assume responsibility in testing products and advising their followers for or against the use of a particular brand. Typically, these bloggers perform a version of the original coffee filter experiment and, based on the

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results they get, share their individualized interpretations. However, they receive mixed reactions. Some followers praise their motivations and respect their interpretations; others accuse them of disseminating “pseudo-science” and lacking “true knowledge of Islam”: … I admire this young lady on showing the halal nail polish. I’m definitely going to buy it:)… Above all she could be someone who has an excellent heart and God loves her so much for it. We don’t know. This is part of ISLAMIC TEACHINGS…..DO NOT BE JUDGEMENTAL. (Dina Tokio 2016) And you’re a scientist right ??? Pfffffffffffff. (Dina Tokio 2014)

Those who are critical, regard the bloggers as lacking authority and legitimacy. They argue that people like Dina Tokio and Nour Kaiss mislead women by “making up own rules for Islam” and “giving false fatwas.” Instead, they urge followers to consult real experts—religious scholars—and trust only their opinions on matters of faith. It is against such traditional sense of religious authority that supporters advocate a notion of Islamic piety as expressed through individualized practices and interpretations in the context of everyday life (Jeldtoft 2011; Schielke 2009). From the supporters’ perspective, as one cannot know the intentions underlying behavior, she also cannot judge the legitimacy of the person recommending that behavior. Such framing of intentions and practices allows for a space that positions wearing of nail polish within the context of everyday ethical struggles that Muslim women navigate and negotiate.

Conclusion With the increasing interpenetration of religious and market logics, new practices and products emerge and complicate the meaning of proper Islamic behavior. As this chapter has shown, mundane objects such as nail polish can become entangled in a web of religious, social, cultural, and material meanings that render its appropriateness contested. While

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Muslims are to refrain from haram and engage in halal, these concepts are neither entirely predetermined nor universally set. As many scholars point out not only there are different interpretations of religious texts and rules but these interpretations are sociotemporally situated (e.g., Asad 1993; Ismail 2003). The nail polish case draws attention to the complex negotiations underlying everyday consumption practices and the intersectional dynamics of piety, modesty, and authority in shaping religious subjectivities. Furthermore, the debate over the nail polish highlights how products shape women’s relationships to their bodies by enabling or preventing the performance of certain practices and contribute to their sense of being a “good” Muslim. The analysis of the discussions surrounding the nail polish reveals the complex relationship between religion and body as well as religion and everyday life. Informed by a set of values and norms shaped by religion, culture, and society, gendered Muslim identities can be cultivated and performed in and through enactment or avoidance of everyday embodied practices, such as wearing nail polish. As research on lived religion demonstrates, faith and morality do not exist only discursively but also in the visceral arena of everyday practices (Ammermann 2007; Dessing et al. 2016; Jeldtoft 2011). While religious principles define the boundaries of proper and improper behavior and appearance, such boundaries are open to negotiation. Conceptions and practices of a pious body play a significant role in the context of everyday moral struggles. Interestingly, depending on the underlying moral frameworks, the same object can be framed as an embodiment of properly or improperly crafted Muslim female body. Research on the relationship between faith, fashion, and body discusses in detail the significance of veiling for cultivating the body according to the religious norms. This chapter contributes to this literature by examining the role of wearing nail polish in the construction and performance of Muslim identities. By expanding the analytical attention to mundane objects and everyday practices, this study hopes to generate further interest in the analysis of the complex relationship between faith, body, and the everyday.

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Dessing, Nathal M., Nadia Jeldtoft, and Linda Woodhead. 2016. Everyday Lived Islam in Europe. London: Routledge. Dina Tokio. 2014. You Tube video comments. https://www.youtube.com/cha nnel/UC335AH93oikUFQhz1yFThhw. Accessed 20 September 2020 ———. 2016. You Tube video comments. https://www.youtube.com/channel/ UCoMKmXyFzA3nmcFUeXctJqA. Accessed 20 September 2020. Echchaibi, Nabil. 2011. From Audio Tapes to Video Blogs: The Delocalisation of Authority in Islam. Nations and Nationalism 17 (1): 25–44. Eickelman, Dale F., and J.W. Anderson, eds. 2003. New Media in the Muslim World: The Emerging Public sphere, 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. El Guindi, Fadwa. 1999. Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance. Oxford: Berg. Emirates 24/7. 2015. https://www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/dubaigrand-mufti-on-is-halal-nail-polish-really-halal-2015-08-03-1.598914. Accessed 15 December 2020. Entwistle, Joanne. 2000. Fashion and the Fleshy Body: Dress as Embodied Practice. Fashion Theory 4 (3): 323–347. Featherstone, Mike. 1991. The Body in Consumer Culture. In The body: Social Process and cultural theory, ed. Mike Featherstone, Mike Hepworth, and Bryan S. Turner, 170–196. London: Sage. Gill, Rosalind. 2003. From Sexual Objectification to Sexual Subjectification: The Resexualisation of Women’s Bodies in the Media. Feminist Media Studies 3 (1): 100–106. Gökarıksel, Banu. 2009. Beyond the Officially Sacred: Religion, Secularism, and the Body in the Production of Subjesctivity. Social & Cultural Geography 10 (6): 657–674. Gökarıksel, Banu, and Anna J. Secor. 2015. Islam on the Catwalk: Marketing Veiling-Fashion in Turkey” In The Changing World Religion Map, ed. Stanley D. Brunn, 2581–2595. Dordrecht: Springer. Gökarıksel, Banu, and Anna J. Secor. 2009. New Transnational Geographies of Islamism, Capitalism and Subjectivity: The Veiling-Fashion Industry in Turkey. Area 41 (1): 6–18. ———. 2010. Between Fashion and Tesettür: Marketing and Consuming Women’s Islamic Dress. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 6 (3): 118–148. Göle, Nilufer. 1996. The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Hirschmann, Nancy J. 1998. Western Feminism, Eastern Veiling, and the Question of Free Agency. Constellations 5 (3): 345–368.

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Hollander, Anne. 1993. Seeing Through Clothes. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Ismail, Salwa. 2003. Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and Islamism. London: Bloomsbury. Jeldtoft, N. 2011. Lived Islam: Religious Identity with ‘non-organized’ Muslim Minorities. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34 (7): 1134–1151. Jones, Carla. 2007. Fashion and Faith in Urban Indonesia. Fashion Theory 11 (2–3): 211–231. Krämer, Gudrun, and Sabine Schmidtke (eds.). 2006. Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies. Leiden: Brill. Lei A. 2017. You Tube Video Comments: ‘Using Permeable Nail Polish’. Accessed 16 December 2020. LeBlanc, Marie N. 2014. Piety, Moral Agency, and Leadership: Dynamics around the Feminization of Islamic Authority in Côte d’Ivoire. Islamic Africa 5 (2): 167–198. Lewis, Reina. 2010. Marketing Muslim lifestyle: A New Media Genre. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 6 (3): 58–90. ———. 2015. Muslim Fashion: Contemporary Style Cultures. Durham, London: Duke University Press. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Makhlouf, Carla. 2016. Changing Veils: Women and Modernisation in North Yemen. London: Routledge. Mernissi, Fatima. 1991. The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. Moors, Annelies. 2009. ‘Islamic Fashion’ in Europe: Religious Conviction, Aesthetic Style, and Creative Consumption”. Encounters 1: 175–220. Mustafaumar. 2013. https://mustafaumar.com/2012/11/is-breathable-nail-pol ish-sufficient-for-wu%E1%B8%8Du/. Accessed 16 December 2020. Prodanovic, Branka, and Susie Khamis. 2017. Representing the Veil in Contemporary Australian Media: From ‘ban the burqa’ to ‘hijabi’ bloggers”. In The Routledge Research Companion to Veils and Veiling Practices, ed. Anna-Mari. Almila and David Inglis, 125–136. New York: Routledge. Reemfaruqi. 2015. https://reemfaruqi.com/2013/04/02/inglot-breathable-nailpolish-coffee-filter-experiment/. Accessed 16 December 2020. Sandıkcı, Özlem. 2017. Cultural Industries and Marketplace Dynamics. In The Routledge Research Companion to Veils and Veiling Practices, ed. Anna-Mari Almila and David Inglis, 197–212. London: Routledge. ———. 2018. Religion and the Marketplace: Constructing the ‘new’ Muslim Consumer. Religion 48 (3): 453–473.

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———. 2020. Religion and Everyday Consumption Ethics: A Moral Economy Approach. Journal of Business Ethics 168 (2): 277–293. ———, and Güliz Ger. 2007. Constructing and Representing the Islamic Consumer in Turkey. Fashion Theory 11 (2–3): 189–210. ———. 2010. Veiling in Style: How Does a Stigmatized Practice Become a Fashionable and Ordinary Consumption Choice? Journal of Consumer Research 37 (1): 15–36. Schielke, Samuli. 2009. Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Egyptians. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15: 4–40. Scott, Linda M. 2006. Fresh Lipstick: Redressing Fashion and Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Secor, Anna. 2002. The Veil and Urban Space in Istanbul: Women’s Dress, Mobility and Islamic Knowledge. Gender, Place and Culture 9: 5–22. Stowasser, Barbara F. 1994. Women in the Qur’an, Traditions, and Interpretation. New York: Oxford University Press. Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin. 1990. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Tarlo, Emma. 2010. Visibly Muslim. Oxford: Berg. The Express Tribune. 2013. https://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/15815/halalnail-polish-say-what/. Accessed 7 February 2013. ———. 2014. https://blogs.tribune.com.pk/tag/religion/page/17/. Accessed 7 February 2013. Thimm, Viola. 2018. Embodying and Consuming Muslim Pilgrimage: Gendered Shopping and Clothing Practices by Malaysian Women on ‘umrah and ziarah Dubai’. Asian Anthropology 17 (3): 185–203. Virtual Mosque. 2012. https://www.virtualmosque.com/islam-studies/hot-top ics/is-breathable-nail-polish-sufficient-for-wu%E1%B8%8Du/? Accessed 7 February 2013. ———. 2013a. www.virtualmosque.com/islam-studies/hot-topics/isbreathable-nail-polish-sufficient-for-wud.u/. Accessed 7 February 2013. ———. 2013b. https://www.virtualmosque.com/islam-studies/hot-topics/ is-breathable-nail-polish-sufficient-for-wu%E1%B8%8Du/. Accessed 7 February 2013. ———. 2013c. https://www.virtualmosque.com/islam-studies/hot-topics/ is-breathable-nail-polish-sufficient-for-wu%E1%B8%8Du/?. Accessed 7 February 2013.

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Hijab as Migration: Embracing and Leaving Hijab in Contemporary Indonesia Yulianingsih Riswan

During the rising popularity of the so-called hijrah phenomenon in 2018, I asked my students taking an Islamic course at Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) what comes to mind when they hear the word hijrah. The majority of them stated “berhijab” (to veil). Their answer surprised me, not only because veiling (hijab) is already practiced by the majority of female students at this public university, but also because the students connected the two ideas. Another surprise came after class when a few students approached me and said that some students only put on the veil during the course and take it off after class. After I subsequently explained that covering aurat 1 (including veiling) is a personal matter, rather than an imposition by the teacher or the institution and would not influence the final grade, two students came to the following class Y. Riswan (B) Faculty of Philosophy, Universitas Gadjah Mada Yogyakarta Indonesia, Yogyakarta, Indonesia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_8

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unveiled. This experience, of witnessing students both embracing and removing hijab, led me to question why Muslim women veil and unveil in contemporary Indonesia, what it means for them to veil or to unveil, and the social conditions that led to this. In this chapter, I challenge the popular perception that associates hijrah (migration) with veiling, I view hijrah as a migratory moment and use it as a heuristic tool to analyze both embracing and leaving hijab, from being non-hijabi to hijabi or vice versa. This enables me to analyze an emerging third category, a self-categorized situational hijabi/non-hijabi, i.e., those who continuously migrate between the two worlds, navigating boundaries between veiling and unveiling with deftness and confidence. In the three categories, Muslim women change decisions, attitudes, and behaviors, to either wear or leave the hijab, based on various (personal and social) factors that interplay, sometimes in tension and sometimes in relative ease. In the three moments of embracing, leaving, or in between hijab/non-hijab, I argue, these women are constantly making deliberate decisions to adapt to their revolving reality. This way, they find a balance between fulfilling social and religious demands and accommodating their personal aspiration, at different times and places, to become a better Muslim. To examine this topic, I conducted an online survey with Indonesian females through WhatsApp groups, which attracted 105 respondents that can be arranged into three categories: hijabis (86%), non-hijabis (8%), and self-categorized “situational ” hijabis/non-hijabis (6%), who veil and unveil depending on the situation. The age of the participants ranged between 20 and 40 years. All of them were university graduates with different educational backgrounds, but many have a strong Islamic education. The survey was followed up with observations and interviews with women practitioners of hijrah, as well as with women leaving hijab, offline in Bandung and Yogyakarta as well as online via Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram. This sample was complemented by interviews with Muslim clothing entrepreneurs. All interviews were conducted in Indonesian and translated by me. As part of the observation, I participated in several events conducted by hijrah communities in three cities: Bandung, Semarang, and Yogyakarta.

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Studies on veiling in different phases of Indonesian history have been conducted by various scholars (Brenner 1996; Jones 2007, 2010; Nisa 2012; Smith-Hefner 2007; Sunesti 2014, 2016, Nef-Saluz 2007), but scholarly discussions on leaving hijab are minimal in the discourse of Indonesian Islam. Among the rare works on unveiling in the broader Islamic world is Alicia Izharuddin’s work in this volume and her previous article (Izharuddin 2018) on the subjectivities of unveiling Muslim women in Malaysia as a valuable exception. Other works mostly involve state-imposed campaigns of unveiling by secular regimes or in a Western secular context such as Belgium, Turkey, France, and countries of former Yugoslavia (Brenner 1996; Halper and Sedghi 2008; Fadil 2011; Perkins 2012; Zeghal 2012). Suzanne Brenner’s (1996) classical study on Muslim fashion under the Soeharto regime briefly mentioned Muslims opposition to veiling. These Muslims argued that “one can be a good Muslim without adopting Middle Eastern clothing and customs” (Brenner 1996, 674)—a point shared by this research as later explained. While, Nef-Saluz’s (2007, 25) work in the post-Soeharto era briefly talked about how Muslim girls leaving hijab is often perceived as an act of “personal failure” and “lack of stability, consistency and self control,” which shows “a sign of weak faith and little religious knowledge.” An important work dedicated solely to the discussion of unveiling was written in Bahasa Indonesia by Juneman (2010) a decade ago before the popularity of the hijrah phenomenon. The book tells the stories of four women taking off hijab from a psychological point of view. My research aims to fill this scholarly gap by investigating the dynamics of veiling and unveiling practices among Muslims in contemporary Indonesia, especially following the boom of the hijrah phenomenon. In the next section on the hijrah phenomenon and Muslim fashion industry, I analyze two varying trends of hijab within the hijrah movement represented by Dian Pelangi and Hijab Alila, and juxtapose the industry with experiences of embracing hijab at personal level. Subsequently, I will discuss processes of embracing and leaving hijab.

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Hijrah Phenomenon, Fashion Industry, and Veiling Experiences Veiling in Indonesia has become more popular recently in the midst of the so-called hijrah phenomenon. Hijrah—literally means migration in Arabic—is a term initially used by Prophet Muhammad for an event when Muslims migrated from Mecca to Medina to flee from the oppression of Jahiliyya society (“ignorant people“) and find a secure place. Over the last few years, the term has been transformed in Indonesia into a description for a social movement, mostly by young upper-middle-class Muslims in urban areas, seeking redemption and spiritual transformation to become a better Muslim. To carry out hijrah, according to my respondents, entails moving away from a dark, secular life to following the light of Islam, taking the term for the migration in the early period of Islam as a symbol of transformation from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge of Islam. Anthropologist Suzanne Brenner (1996) has termed the process as “rebirth,” when individuals adopt new (Islamic) values and abandon practices such as drinking, clubbing, and begin dressing appropriately according to Islam, which for the females in this study means adopting hijab or veil.2 “Hijrah” has been used by Indonesian Muslim activists for a long time to describe a spiritual change, at least since the 1990s3 ; and yet, as a social movement, hijrah only started to develop significantly with the rising popularity of Pemuda Hijrah (“Migrating Youth” or “Shift” in their own translation), a religious session group founded by Ustadz (Islamic scholar) Hanan Attaki and a handful of young Muslims in 2015 in Bandung, a so-called “fashion city.” This group grew from a small Islamic learning session (majlis taklim) guided by Ustadz Attaki, who is an Al-Azhar graduate in tafsir studies and has been preaching in alLatief mosque since 2008. For a few years, the taklim remained small and limited to the mosque, but eventually evolved into the larger Pemuda Hijrah movement. The Ustadz with the help of his students carefully crafted da’wa (Islamic mission) targeting the younger generation with its famous caption “Play and Pray” to create a distinct image of Muslim individuality: that you can be cool while still being a Muslim. The strategies include changing the traditional appearance of the Ustadz, who

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usually wear kopiah (male cap), common among religious preachers, into one who wears a skateboarder hat and beach T-shirt when giving lectures, accompanied by selling beautifully designed-hijrah merchandise, and expert use of online social media platforms. Coolness, as shown by the group, can be achieved by being religious and fashionable. Through this approach Pemuda Hijrah became so popular that Ustadz Attaki’s Instagram account now has 8.3 million followers as of September 2020. The group’s peculiar proclivity toward fashion and popular culture caught Indonesian public attention, especially that of the younger generation in urban areas, and the term “hijrah” was quickly appropriated by wider segments of society. Its success inspired the emergence of other hijrah communities in many cities throughout Indonesia, such as Pemuda Hidayah, Millennial Hijrah, and Markaz Hijrah. The group also inspired many celebrities to undergo hijrah, changing their secular lifestyle to an Islamic one, which in turn multiplied the effect of hijrah. Groups of pengajian or Islamic learning, subsequently emerged, featuring famous Ustadzs, and they eventually formed a huge network that triggered the creation of massive events such as Hijrah Fest and Muslim United . Hijrah, at this level, has become a new trend and commodity that covers almost all aspects of Muslim life in Indonesia. Everything that is marketed with the “hijrah” label seems more profitable now, be it pilgrimage (hajj /umrah) travels, banking, property, entertainment, books, or Islamic fashion (Yuswohady 2015). While the process of Islamization has been accelerating since the 1998 fall of Suharto after decades of authoritarian rule,4 the hijrah movement pushed this phenomenon to the next level, and the Muslim fashion industry is one of its most visible and most marketable components (Yuswohady 2015). And while women’s veiling has been the result of this long process of Islamization, hijab becomes one of the things that characterizes the hijrah movement—as indicated by the answer of my students in the class. The Hijrah phenomenon has served to further the demand for Islamic fashion as a commodity in Indonesia (Heryanto 2018; Jones 2007). The ubiquity of hijab among Muslims indicates the increasing consciousness of veiling as a divine command in Indonesian society. My survey of 105 respondents shows that 62% consider the rise of veiling in Indonesia as an indication of greater public awareness in understanding

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and practicing religion, and many hijabers consider the decision to veil as hidayah (God’s guidance). By contrast, 11% relate it to the increase of businesses selling Muslim fashion products, with the remaining 27% believing that the increase in veiling is related to the respect of the female body. As a new umbrella term for Indonesian Muslims seeking Islamic revivalism, however, hijrah consists of various groups and ideologies that may at times be contradictory in attributes but share similar goals, i.e., to become a better Muslim. The variety of ideologies made the interpretation and translation of “hijab” within the hijrah phenomenon far from uniform and thus creates a plurality of definitions. Two different hijab interpretations will be discussed here: one represented by Dian Pelangi (Pelangi), a hijabi model and writer, who promoted the so-called “trendy hijab” and the other by Hijab Alila, a brand which promoted “syar’i hijab.” Dian Pelangi is seen as one of the trendsetters and icons of Islamic clothing (Annisa 2018). In her book, Hijab Street Style, Pelangi (2013) collected images of veiling women on streets in big cities, such as Jakarta and Surabaya, celebrating the richness of forms of hijab while encouraging women to find hijab that fits their own style (Pelangi 2013, 14). As her name Pelangi means “rainbow” in Indonesian, she promoted bright, colorful hijabs. Pelangi believes in various routes for hijrah as long as they remain loyal to the principle of covering aurat. With her extensive network of Hijabers Community (HC) and powerful presence online, Pelangi has succeeded in transforming the previous image of hijab in Indonesia from “a picture of fundamentalist extremist,” “Arab,” “fanatical,” “sanctimonious,” “misguided” (Brenner 1996: 674–675) into “fun, friendly, fashionable”(Beta 2014: 380). In Pelangi’s hand, Muslim dress functions as something that can increase the wearer’s self-confidence and sense of beauty (Annisa 2018). Fashion, including Muslim clothing, I argue, reflects the social status and spirit of its wearer. With her fashionable Muslim style, Dian Pelangi represents an exclusive, bona fide social class. Members of Hijabers Communities (HC), which Pelangi established, wear different forms of

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veil and dress, accommodating distinct individual style as well as appropriating the latest trends in the fashion industry. It is this principle, recognizing heterogeneity and autonomy of styles, including the most glamourous ones, that marks the distinctiveness of Dian Pelangi. Hijab Alila (Alila), another powerhouse within the hijrah movement, promotes only “syar’i hijab” (a form of hijab allowed only by Islamic law). Initiated by Lin, better known as Umi Alila, the wife of a Hizbut Tahrir activist Felix Siauw, Alila is a brand that often exploits the term “hijrah” for its social media content and positions itself as a counterpoint to the rise of glamorous Muslim fashion, which Alila considers as “showy” (tabarruj ). Alila claims that its products are loyal to the principle of syar’ i (Shariah law) based on Qur’an Sura Al-Nur 31 and Al-Ahzab 59,5 which Alila interprets as “unattractive” dress, materialized in two pieces of baju kurung or gamis (a long, non-transparent robe with no cutting, covering the whole body, even the soles of the feet) and headscarf (khimar ) covering head to chest.6 Unlike many Muslim clothes made in various styles and lively colors, Alila uses soft colors for its long plain hijabs and one-piece robes, with minimal variations. Its campaigns on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, as well as WhatsApp and Telegram groups employ what one of my informants calls a “social and emotional approach,”7 evoking certain sentiments by quoting Qur’anic verses, excerpts, and Islamic preaching materials, to support why it is necessary to buy the product. Alila is acutely aware of using its social media content to promote a specific interpretation of hijab. In explaining the necessity of syar’i hijab, Alila often provides only two choices, right or wrong, arguing that “conducting hijrah is an absolute choice to leave that is evil and turn to that is good, to be Islamic in perfection (kaffah)” (Hijab Alila Instagram), thus leaving no room for the followers but to accept its interpretation of veiling. As of September 2020, it’s Instagram account has 8,000 followers, with hundreds of subaccounts belonging to its agents and promoters. This business social media content is interconnected with the campaign for hijrah and visual da’wa, creating an economy of hijrah as well as promoting certain ideas of social and political Islam, as especially believed by Hizbut Tahrir— a transnational Muslim group advocating for an Islamic caliphate (Nur Lyansari 2019).8

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Moreover, Alila does not just sell hijab and other Muslim products, but also actively uses social media platforms to promote certain types of Muslim femininity. Their products, marketed by young models, not only represent an image of young, vibrant, and pious female Muslims, but also dynamically respond to actual social phenomena. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Alila posted on Instagram “Corona virus attacks those with weak immunity (lemah imun), feminism virus attacks those with weak faith (lemah iman).” At this point, not only does Alila promote a particular form of hijab and modesty, it broadens its role to shape a holistic type of Muslimness. Hijab for Alila can, therefore, be interpreted as a way of veiling not only to protect the body but also to preserve a certain idea of truth concerning the body; a body that should be protected against, according to her, the aqida (creed) virus as well as impure practices. In this way, Alila becomes a new model for Islamic business which combines sophisticated marketing strategy with an appeal to religious sentiment. The two interpretations, as shown with Dian Pelangi and Hijab Alila have contributed differently to the Muslim fashion scene in Indonesia. On the one hand, Dian Pelangi has invited the Muslim community to be more familiar with hijab and encouraged them to find their unique Islamic style. Hijab Alila, on the other hand, asks Muslims to be more syar’i (abiding by Islamic law according to Alila’s interpretation) by promoting simpler and more uniform hijab based on the argument that “shari’a is not excessive.” The two trends also show how hijab can take two seemingly extreme positions among hijrah followers.9 According to Dian Pelangi, veiling implies “showing” (beauty, social class) and is related more to autonomy and independence, while for Hijab Alila, veiling is more about “covering” and is related more to obedience and piety. This element of “showing ” (either the beauty of the body or the ornaments that refer to class), can be understood by others as tabarruj (showing off ),10 which goes against the understanding of the veil as a covering. While Dian Pelangi is open to creativity and diversity (Pelangi 2013, 2014), and while she acknowledges imperfectness as natural in the process of hijrah, Hijab Alila, in contrast, pays concern to order and uniformity, with nominal variations and modifications, in order to obey

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God’s rule. Both Hijab Alila with its syar’ i hijab and Dian Pelangi with her trendy hijab, however, persuade female Muslims to be better believers by covering their aurat albeit with different interpretations. In both cases, religious values and the desire to consume and to capitalize smoothly unite; in other words, there is no big crash between capitalism and commitment to religious piety. Both can go hand in hand for different, and sometimes contradictory, reasons (Heryanto 2015, 40). Outside the world of Indonesia’s fashion industry, women’s motives for embracing hijab may differ from one individual to another. The majority of respondents in my survey consider hijab a religious obligation or order (perintah agama). They view hijab as on par with prayer (shalat ), while only the latter is one of the five pillars of Islam (rukun Islam).11 As stated by my respondent Patmi (aged 20), a Muslim student activist, “wearing veil is obligatory just like prayer (shalat).” Similarly, another student activist Ani (aged 23) said: Hijab is an order (by God) so that we do not fall into vice (maksiat ). As Adam and Eve were forced to leave the heaven without cloths while having been warned by God to stay away from maksiat (vice); similarly, we are ordered to veil to prevent us from maksiat (vice) and other evil things.

Stories of veiling women, however, show how hijab represents much more than just an obligation. Nancy Smith-Hefner (2007, 15) has recorded various motives of veiling among Javanese Muslims, such as comfort (nyaman). The majority of my respondents in the survey, while considering hijab as a religious obligation or order (perintah agama), also mentioned comfort as a reason for veiling. For Najma (aged 22) veiling is both a strategy to prevent outside danger, as well as a comforting cover for her personal issues. I come from a secular and multicultural family. Since my father died, I began to care about religion. I started to pray and study Qur’an. When I decided to study at an Islamic university, I had a reason to wear hijab. But I got involved with a bad crowd and I was ashamed (malu) to wear a veil, which is a sacred symbol in contrast to my (bad) behavior at the time. I was down and I didn’t want this Islamic symbol sullied because of me so I took off the hijab. Now I feel more comfortable

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(lebih nyaman) wearing hijab again because I am tired (capek) of bad guys always approaching me.

Leaving Hijab and In-Between World Despite massive veiling among women in Indonesian society today, a small but striking number of hijabi women have left hijab, or are putting it on and taking it off, on a steady basis and for various reasons, though not leaving their faith (iman). Based on the online survey and interviews I conducted with my non-hijabi respondents, a different array of expressions emerged, including both “belum nyaman” (uncomfortable) and “nyaman” (comfortable), on why Muslim women decide to unveil. The idea of hijab as an obligation and the need for women to express their autonomy becomes a recurring theme among non-hijabi s. “Uncomfortable” comes with variations, including “belum nyaman di hati” (not yet comfortable at heart), “merasa malu” (feeling ashamed), “belum pantas” (still unworthy), or “belum mampu memenuhi harapan” (not yet able to fulfill the expectation). Hijab here implies an ideal state, a level of piety that is either set by religion and/or society that these women feel they have yet to achieve. While, “nyaman” (comfortable) is articulated in relation with the need for women to express themselves by unveiling. A young lecturer (aged 30) Sasa described, veiling had been a matter of obligation since her childhood in Aceh, a special province in Indonesia which applies shari’a law and punishes women who unveil. When she went to Gadjah Mada University, she abandoned her hijab and felt less pressure (merasa lebih santai meski berbeda). I took off the veil because I felt it was never an option but an obligation as there has been Islamic law applied since my childhood in Aceh. I feel that I am unable to meet the expectations that my family and people around me have for a pious, veiled woman.

Although she took off her hijab during her study in Yogya, she continued to wear hijab every time she went home to Aceh per her parents’ request, especially to prevent the scrutiny of the shari’a police.

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The psychological dilemma that Sasa faced is shared by other non-hijabi s with similar type of reasoning. For them, unveiling becomes a struggle to be true to themselves and, if they do so, it is a gutsy act vis-a-vis their demanding environment and society, be it friends, families, or religious people. Leaving hijab in this sense can be interpreted as establishing one’s autonomy. Unlike Sasa, who may still consider the status of hijab in Islam as mandatory but yet unfulfilled, other respondents believe that hijab is not obligatory in religion. Ria (aged 25) decided to take off her veil soon after graduating from university. Though she had had the intention of doing it during her study she refrained from doing so due to her involvement in an Islamic student organization. She admitted that it was, initially, difficult for her to be someone going against the trend, especially in the city of Makassar where nearly all Muslim women wear a veil. My mother said, “all people now veil. You are wearing no veil like a Christian.”… As I have done both [veiling and unveiling], there is no way for me to judge which one is better. If people now consider modesty [kesopanan] as wearing veil, I am afraid we have lost our consciousness to make decisions since others and the environment decide what happens to our body. In fact, no one ever really knows what the real value of covering the body is but herself.

In a similar tone, Tami (aged 25) said that she felt uncomfortable wearing a veil and emphasized that she disagrees with the word “obligation” with regard to using the veil. For her, women can wear any dress according to the custom where they live. Personal comfort and local tradition serve as the standard of modesty. Tami also claims further that the trend of Muslim women wearing hijab coincides with the growth of intolerance and the decline of women’s position in society by saying: “[T]hose who strongly advocate hijab are those who tend to diminish women’s rights in society.” Her decision to unveil in a sense can be understood as a resistance to orthodox Muslim groups. Other respondents referred to unveiling as a kind of “spiritual transformation.” A few cases show how leaving hijab is believed by respondents as a personal change that involves a shift of heart and behavior after

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knowing a different interpretation of hijab. Education, here, plays a crucial role in the respondents’ decisions. Sari claimed that her decision to leave hijab sprung not from trivial consideration but from a moment of religious transformation. “[I] wore a veil on account of [my] spiritual process, and [I] took it off on account of [my] spiritual process and [my] accepting different interpretation of hijab.” She believed that modesty is much deeper than appearance and broader than just covering the head. Another respondent, Nur (aged 40), who grew up in a traditionalist Muslim family and who earned a doctorate degree from Gadjah Mada University suggested a similar view by saying “veil is a matter of attribute, not a measure of ‘piety’.” Nur formed much of her opinions about hijab from the works of Quraish Shihab,12 one of the most respected Indonesian Qur’an interpreters (mufassir) today. Nur explained, Veil as hijab, yes, but what I mean by women obliged to cover aurat is not in the physical sense, but rather covering the heart from dirty feelings and thoughts, such as envy, lust, and everything of the ego. That is aurat. That is why the text mentions “cover the chest” that symbolizes the heart (qalbu) (pointing to her chest).

Nur’s higher education background has exposed her to various readings, including what she called “liberation theology” (a theology that emerged and developed among Catholic theologians but later influenced many Muslim thinkers, such as Farid Esack). Though Nur refers to particular textual interpretation and the influence of broad readings to back up her decision, her status as a university lecturer and her extensive transnational travel certainly contributed to the feeling of comfort when she unveiled, as she explains. In another case, as veiling is positioned as a strategy to move away from the male gaze, unveiling is practiced as an act of resistance against what some respondents call “the hypocrisy of men.” A few non-hijabi s of this study believed that men by nature are “depraved” (bejat ), while women are in the wrong position at all times (serba salah). Tika (aged 27) said:

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In my opinion, veiling is not necessary because women who cover their aurat also continue to be victims (of sexual harassment) and are blamed for it, with the solution offered favoring the abusers rather than the victims. This is because the patriarchal culture remains thick. I don’t have a problem with those who want to veil and those who unveil. But I think it is a silly patriarchal mindset that ultimately compels women to conceil their aurat. Maybe because it is also believed that depraved males could not control their lust.

Women’s bodies in this case serve as a site for contestations, and, for some women, it is through unveiling that they can fully claim their bodies back. The statement above also implies that the central problem is not the women, but men who cannot control themselves. Muslim women leaving hijab face mixed responses from people around them. While many are accepting and leave the decision to each individual, unveiling women often face cibiran (scorn) and sindiran (scoffs) from others. Despite a relatively accepting environment, Nur mentioned through WhatsApp that some of her highly educated female friends gave her an uncomfortable response concerning her decision of leaving hijab. As mentioned above, one respondent said that her mother is unhappy with her decision, comparing her to a Christian, while another described how her close male friend at the university body-shamed her by calling her ugly (jelek) without the veil. At offices, a non-hijabi PNS (state official) was asked by her senior to be “more polite” (lebih sopan) by wearing a veil when interviewing pejabat (senior state officials) as part of her job. Another respondent said that for years she has been comfortable being a non-hijabi by working at one of the national banks. But since her promotion as a branch manager of the bank’s shari’ah line, her senior asked her to wear hijab. These cases indicate that the social environment poses the biggest challenge for Muslim women when they decide to unveil. My survey also indicates that by and large Indonesian society today is relatively more acceptable to veiling than unveiling women. Indeed, face-veiling (niqab) is even more tolerable for the society than leaving hijab. When asked about how they would respond to an unveiling friend, 26% of my survey respondents “appreciate” or “support” the decision,

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65% “regret” it, and the rest respond with different expressions, such as “giving her advice,” “questioning the reason,” “inviting her back to hijab,” “buying a veil for her and praying for her to be istiqamah (sustainable in veiling),” or merely judging her wrong. Whereas to a friend who becomes a niqabi, 89% “appreciate” or “support” the decision and only 3% “regret” it. In many cases, however, family, friends, and sometimes the workplace also provide the most significant support. To her surprise, Nur’s family (as well as Sasa’s), for example, was relatively receptive to her decision, which made her feel “supported” and “happy.” In addition to the two categories above, my study found an emerging third category of women, i.e., those who consistently shift between veiling and non-veiling, as represented by Lia. Lia (35) comes from a modernist Muhammadiyah13 family though the family is non-veiling. She started wearing hijab upon her entry to university and she spent her days at the university among environmental activists. She later took off her hijab publicly a few years after she finished her study. Lia has been donning and doffing hijab since then and she insists that during both processes of veiling and unveiling, she felt neither difficulty nor hindrance. She also maintained that wearing hijab is not better than not wearing it. I feel no difficulty in doing both – wearing hijab and taking it off; no feeling of being pressured nor hindered by my environment. I have no special reason why I remove hijab publicly since the practice (of wearing hijab and taking it off ) has been normal for me for quite some time, thereby no feeling at all. (For me) hijab trend does not necessarily make it ‘mandatory’ as the five pillars of Islam (rukun Islam). Only after the 1998 Reform people started to interpret it textually by believing it as mandatory. For Indonesia, with its specific history and culture, a modest dress covering the body in daily life is enough without necessarily covering the head.

Embracing and Leaving Hijab as Migration As we have seen from the cases above, “comfort” (nyaman) is the reason why many Muslim women decide to veil and, interestingly, is also

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used by non-hijabi Muslims as the reason for unveiling. Hijabis might feel comfort as a result of more acceptance in the society, thus siding with the in-group, non-hijabi s may feel comfort because they have done something “true” to themselves. Both cases, which require moral considerations in decision-making, indicate greater respect for a woman’s body through the practice of veiling and unveiling. It should be noted, however, that in today’s cultural climate, it is much easier to migrate to be a hijabi than to remove hijab. On one hand, wearing hijab amidst massive Islamisation in society certainly feels more welcoming to women, who gain a more positive image rather than a negative one. On the other hand, unveiling women are prone to scorn by others, males and females alike. The involvement of women negatively responded to other women leaving hijab suggests that women can play a role as “protectors of patriarchy” sometimes more than men do, as one of the respondents suggests. Women wear hijab for specific favorable situations shows that veiling has partly become a style, a trend, that does not necessarily relate to piety but rather a commodity and a desire to consume and meet society’s expectation (Jones 2007) (Fig. 1). Therefore, it is understandable that though practiced by a majority of Indonesian Muslim women today, most of my respondents agreed that the veil is not a reflection of piety. Piety, in other words, is much more than just veiling. Veiling is partly a trend and people can have different reasons for veiling, not just a total shift of morality. As part of a trend in a consumer society, seemingly paradoxical symptoms can happen in relation to hijab and Islamization. We can find, for example, high-class veiled women smoking in public places, like cafés in urban areas, or convicted corruptors wearing veils to change public perception about their cases, politicians continuing to veil during her campaign for her electoral benefit, or even a hijabi woman admitting that she continues smoking and occasionally drinks alcohol (though she takes it off while drinking). From the data discussed above, I have come to an understanding that embracing and leaving hijab is a migratory process that usually occurs in three phases: crisis, decision, and adaptation. Both hijabi s and non-hijabi s experience some crisis before deciding to embrace or leave hijab. The

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Fig. 1 Online survey on veiling, unveiling, and niqab for this study

crisis can be inconsistencies a woman feels between her religious belief and her behavior, or between social pressure and her personal desire. At this phase, one can either challenge or accept veiling or unveiling. After a decision has been made, women have to adapt to their new situation. For new hijabi s, it might take the shape of social acceptance and respect (for example, a new hijabi celebrity receives many invitations to speak about her experience from communities that previously rejected

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her secular life), or a feeling of comfort (hearing someone says “you look more beautiful wearing hijab”) and security in society. Meanwhile, new non-hijabi s often experience mixed feelings ranging from personal relief after deciding something true for herself to an awareness that a fierce challenge in the form of social scorn will soon come from the outside world (the demanding family, friends, or religious others). Hijab as migration (hijrah) is, thus, a process of moving from one condition to another, influenced by various factors in different time and space, revolving around piety that one wishes to attain, either by veiling or unveiling. The factors involved, however, are not necessarily related to religion; they can be anything from psychological issues to a shallow consumerist trend in society. To view hijab as migration, consequently, allows the emergence of the third category, the situational hijabi/non-hijabi Muslims who veil and unveil quite easily depending on the situation and context. These women constantly move between the two worlds, navigating boundaries between veiling and unveiling with relative ease and confidence, as indicated by the case of Lia. In situations where hijab becomes a banal, everyday commodity (Baudrillard 2016), hijrah practitioners may not experience a crisis phase. The transformation may take place only at the appearance level, changing secular dress to religious one by veiling or keeping beard, but not at a more profound level. In this line of thinking hijrah followers, while they completely change their appearance and behavior, might become more intolerant rather than more pious. Thomas Kuhn’s (2012) concept of paradigm shift is especially apt to capture both phenomena of veiling and unveiling. The concept was developed by Kuhn to explain fundamental changes in sciences. Kuhn says that the creation of a new paradigm is usually preceded by anomalies, which lead to a state of crisis, which in turn drives a new paradigm to emerge. Anomalies and patterns of crisis are also found among the respondents before they decided to adopt veil or unveil. This is prevalent especially among people who conduct hijrah from nominally Islamic (abangan) family.14 The crisis happens because these women have found something wrong in their life. For hijabi s, it can be in the form of feeling that she is not fulfilling the divine command or meeting her parents, her teachers, or any respected figure’s expectation to become

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a pious woman by covering her head. For non-hijabis, the crisis can happen when she feels inconsistencies between her true self, consisting of thoughts, emotions, and desires, and the outside world, continually imposing certain values through veiling. In both cases, in short, women consider the transformation as a process of migration from one state to another, from secularity to religiosity, and/or from being faithful at the surface to becoming substantially spiritual. In other words, both sides conduct hijrah. One to become a “kaffah” (complete Muslim) through veiling, while the other, to be Islamic in a “more essential way” by transcending the symbol of veil. In the cases above, Muslim women are (re)claiming their bodies, either by embracing or leaving hijab, or constantly moving between the two boundaries.

Notes 1. Parts of the body that should be covered. 2. Brenner (1996) also indicates ways where Muslims in 1990s might get “rebirth,” such as after attending Islamic sermons or basic trainings (batra) (held by Muslim student organizations at universities). But today, young Muslims can experience the same by accessing Islamic contents through Facebook, Instagram, or Youtube. 3. A song entitled Hijrah, written from a female perspective by a female activist, Asma Nadia, has been popular among tarbiyah activists in 1990s. It describes the perseverance of a Muslim woman in veiling though challenged by family and friends (Kailani 2009). 4. Reform (Reformasi) refers to the period following the fall of the thirtytwo years rule of Suharto’s presidency in 1998. It marks the shift from the authoritarian regime to democracy and freedom. During his reign, Suharto did not provide much room for expressing religion in public spaces. Hijab was prohibited in public schools and government offices. After the Reform era, Islamism and Islamization grew rapidly. Hijab users have been increasing with some institutions even require students and employees to wear hijab at schools, universities, and work (Hamdani 2007). 5. “…they should not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband’s fathers, their sons, their husband’s son, their

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9.

10.

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brothers or their brothers’ sons, or their sisters’ sons, or their women, or their slaves whom their right hands possess, or male servants free of physical needs, or small children who have no sense of the same sex; and they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments…” (QS Al-Nur 31). “…they should cast their outer garments over their persons (when abroad): that is the most convenient, that they should be known (as such) and not molested…” (QS Al-Ahzab 59). As explained in the Q & A session on Alila’s website. (“Apakah Pakaian Syar’i Untuk Wanita Hanya Gamis? – Hijab Alila”, n.d.). Interview with Iffah M. Dewi, owner of Sogan Batik Jogja (Tradisional Islamic Clothing, 20 December 2018. The style of hijab that Alila promoted is a standard in Hizbut Tahrir. As one of the advisors (musyrifah) of Hizbut Tahrir Muslimah Makassar stated “Muslim clothes consists of two pieces: the first piece is clothes or what we know as gamis or robe, stretched out from the shoulders down to the legs, and the second piece is the veil covering from head to chest as a minimum limit. If one wants to extend it, that is no problem” (Halim 2017). Even more extreme position is taken by niqabers, such as Niqab Squad group which claims that face veiling (niqab) is the true form of hijrah (Sunesti et al. 2018). According to Taqiyuddin al-Nabhani, the founder of Hizbut Tahrir, tabarruj is to expose or to show the ornaments and the beauty of the female body to other people (non-mahram men), as quoted from Halim (2017, 76). Muslims generally consider the five pillars/obligations in Islam (rukun Islam) as: confession (shahadat ), praying (shalat ), almsgiving (zakat ), fasting (puasa), pilgrimage (hajj). Quraish Shihab in his book, Jilbab: Pakaian Wanita Muslimah (Veil: Dress of Muslim Women) (Shihab 2018), explores different interpretations of aurat (parts of the body that should be covered) and jilbab (veil) by ulama since the early times of Islam. He, however, denies the allegation that he stated veil as not obligatory in Islam, rather he implicitly takes a tawaqquf position, that is not giving opinion regarding certain religious issue due to the lack of strong foundation in front of existing different argumentations (Shihab 2018, xii). Muhammadiyah is the second biggest Muslim organization in Indonesia after Nahdlatul Ulama (NU). Though has a more puritanical tendency and rejects local practices, together with NU it becomes moderate forces of Indonesian Islam.

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14. Brenner identifies that not all veiling women experience “wrenching emotional crisis” and dramatic transformation (Brenner 1996).

References Annisa, Firly. 2018. Wacana Tubuh Perempuan dalam Buku Autobiografi Dian Pelangi. In Dari Doing Ke Undoing Gender: Teori dan Praktik dalam Kajian Feminisme, ed. Wening Udasmoro, 70–90. Yogyakarta: UGM Press. Baudrillard, Jean. 2016. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. London: Sage. Beta, Annisa. 2014. Hijabers: How Young Urban Muslim Women Redefine Themselves in Indonesia. International Communication Gazette 76 (4–5): 377–389. Brenner, Suzanne. 1996. Reconstructing Self and Society: Javanese Muslim Women and ‘the Veil.’ American Ethnologist 23 (4): 673–697. Fadil, Nadia. 2011. Not-/Unveiling as an Ethical Practice. Feminist Review 98 (1): 83–109. Halim, Nur Tsabita. 2017. Pemahaman Hizbut Tahrir Terhadap Jilbab dalam QS Al-Ahzab 33: 59. (Unpublished Bachelor Thesis). State Islamic University Alauddin. Makassar, Indonesia. Halper, Louise, and Hamideh Sedghi. 2008. Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling. Politics & Gender 4 (4): 659. Hamdani, Deny. 2007. The Quest for Indonesian Islam: Contestation and Consensus Concerning Veiling. (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis). Australian National University. Canberra, Australia. Retrieved from https://openresea rch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/49310/3/01front.pdf. Heryanto, Ariel. 2015. Identitas Dan Kenikmatan. Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia. ———. 2018. Popular Culture and Identity Politics. In Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Indonesia, ed. Robert Hefner, 357–368. London: Routledge. Hijab Alila. 2020, October 30. Abaya. Telegram. https://telegram.dog/s/hijaba lila?q=abaya. Accessed 4 November 2020. Izharuddin, Alicia. 2018. ‘Free Hair’: Narratives of Unveiling and the Reconstruction of Self. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44 (1): 155–176.

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Jones, Carla. 2007 Fashion and Faith in Urban Indonesia. Fashion Theory 11 (2–3): 211–231. ———. 2010. Materializing Piety: Gendered Anxieties about Faithful Consumption in Contemporary Urban Indonesia. American Ethnologist 37 (4): 617–637. Juneman. 2010. Psychology of Fashion: Fenomena Perempuan [Melepas] Jilbab. Yogyakarta: LKiS. Kailani, Najib. 2009. Muslimising Indonesian Youths: The Tarbiyah Moral and Cultural Movement in Contemporary Indonesia. In Islam and the 2009 Indonesian Elections: Political and Cultural Issues, ed. Rémy Madinier, 71–96. Bangkok: Institut de recherche sur l’Asie du Sud-Est contemporaine. Kuhn, Thomas S. 2012. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nef-Saluz, Claudia. 2007. Islamic Pop Culture in Indonesia: An Anthropological Field Study on Veiling Practices among Students of Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta. Institut für Sozialanthropologie: Universität Bern. Nisa, Eva F. 2012. Embodied Faith: Agency and Obedience among Face-Veiled University Students in Indonesia. The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 13 (4): 366–381. Nur Lyansari, Kirana. 2019. @hijabalila: Digital Taqwa and Political Economy of Hijrah. Unpublished paper. 19th Annual International Conference on Islamic Studies. Pelangi, Dian. 2013. Hijab Street Style. Jakarta: Gramedia. ———. 2014. Brain, Beauty, Belief . Jakarta: Gramedia. Perkins, Theresa. 2012. Unveiling Muslim Women: The Constitutionality of Hijab Restrictions in Turkey, Tunisia and Kosovo. BU International Journal 30: 529–564. Shihab, M. Quraish. 2018. Jilbab: Pakaian Wanita Muslimah. Lentera Hati. Smith-Hefner, Nancy J. 2007. Javanese Women and the Veil in Post-Soeharto Indonesia. The Journal of Asian Studies 66 (2): 389–420. Sunesti, Yuyun. 2014. Negotiating with Modernity: Veiling in the Early Twentieth Century of Indonesia. Musãwa Jurnal Studi Gender Dan Islam 13 (1): 39–46. ———. 2016. Veiling: Between Social Imaginary and the Politic of Multiculturalism in Indonesia and Malaysia. Musãwa Jurnal Studi Gender Dan Islam 15 (2): 145–156. Sunesti, Yuyun, Noorhaidi Hasan, and Muhammad Azca. 2018. Young SalafiNiqabi and Hijrah: Agency and Identity Negotiation. Indonesian Journal of Islam and Muslim Societies 8 (2): 173–198.

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Yuswohady. 2015. Marketing to the Middle-Class Muslim. Jakarta: Gramedia. Zeghal, Malika. 2012. Veiling and Unveiling Muslim Women: State Coercion, Islam, and the “Disciplines of the Heart”. In The Construction of Belief: Reflections on the Thought of Mohammed Arkoun, ed. Abdou Filali-Ansary and Aziz Esmail, 127–149. London: Saqi.

After the Hijab: Liminal States of Post-veiling Embodiment Alicia Izharuddin

Unveiling in Modern Muslim Communities Women who have worn the hijab for many years and then make the decision to unveil face a set of new challenges when presenting and justifying aspects of their new selves to others. They would wear a range of head accessories and covering that appears to substitute the hijab1 before they transition to wearing their hair exposed and “free.” This chapter focuses on the liminal states of embodiment after Muslim women have made the decision to unveil. What are the hair and clothing practices chosen by these women and why? What new aesthetic choices do they make? These questions are critically engaged with using in-depth interviews with research participants from Malaysia and Iran. This chapter examines the conscious embodied reconfigurations of women who transition A. Izharuddin (B) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_9

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out from the “regimes of veiling” through the practices of improvisational and tactical modesty. Veiling has become a synecdoche of Islam since the advent of the global Islamic resurgence and the cataclysms of 9/11, homogenizing Muslim femininity with the hijab and rendering women who do not wear it as, at best, anomalies, and at worst, complicitous with agents of anti-Islam. For this reason, Muslim women who do not wear the hijab are typically invisible in the literature on gender and Islamic embodiment. The literature on unveiling, voluntary and otherwise, among Muslim women is comparatively scarce compared to the sheer abundance on veiling (Fadil 2011). Historically, enforced anti-veiling was part of both colonial and postcolonial nationalist campaigns in Turkey, Iran, Central Asian countries, and the Balkans to produce women who would be symbolic bearers of secular modernity (Cronin 2014; Najmabadi 2000). Voluntary unveiling, on the other hand, can illuminate the inevitable personal and discursive contestations against the predominating trends of the global Islamic resurgence. Rejection of the hijab demonstrates that Islamization in Muslim-majority states is not totalizing but rather incomplete in its mission to transform Muslim women into hypervisible bearers of the faith. Also incomplete, especially in places like Iran and Malaysia, is the redrawing of gendered boundaries in the public sphere where veiling functions to separate women from men. I would suggest that voluntary unveiling represents the unintended effects of Islamic resurgence and its production of inadvertent private, secular selves. Rebecca Ruth Gould (2014, 232) makes a similar observation in Iran where “bad hijab” or mis-veiling can be regarded as “the incompleteness of the Islamic Republic’s subjugation of women.” Writing about the Turkish context, Anna Secor (2005) argues that the debate over veiling/not-veiling rages against a context of changing the meaning of women’s role and visibility in the public sphere. In Malaysia, unveiling and de-veiling represent not only the limits of Islamization but also the cultural and political hegemony of MalayMuslim ethnonationalism. As I have shown in my own research (Izharuddin 2018), the effects of Islamization produced unhappiness, insecurity, and feelings of failure among Muslim women who refuse

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to conform to pious performativity. The negative affect associated with veiling is part of social changes of its meanings and patterns of adoption in Malaysia (Ong 1990; Stivens 2006). A preoccupation in the scholarly literature with the progression toward increased public piety rather than the other way round neglects to demonstrate that embodied religiosity fluctuates and is non-linear. As Jeanette Jouilli (2015, 92) argues in her study of pious Muslim women in Europe who frequently struggle in their striving toward ethical excellence, “subject formation [is] an inherently unstable process, fragile, and constantly prone to turbulence – in this case caused by competing ethical paradigms or by disparate and conflicting desires and assumptions.” In interviews with Muslim Malaysian and Iranian women who have voluntarily unveiled and how they rebuilt their identities post-hijab, I have found that practices of veiling and unveiling exist on a continuum. There is a period of “betwixt and between” (Turner 1987) whereby unveiling can be a long, drawn-out process of reflection, learning, and tactical experimentation. It can involve down-veiling or de-veiling (change from a full to smaller, more exposing hijab or head covering) and potential re-veiling once they have reached another milestone in their lives, such as marriage, starting a family or performing the hajj. This chapter argues that unveiling is not an event as it is very much a process of liminality comprised of sartorial-embodied tactics that traverse the dialectics of veiling and hair. In preparation of this chapter, which grew out of a larger, long-term, transnational project on the lived embodied experience of unveiling among Malaysian and Iranian women living in Malaysia since 2016, I conducted eight in-depth face-to-face and email interviews with women who spoke more specifically about the period in between wearing the hijab and going out in public without it. All women had worn an array of head accessories and were reluctant to completely reveal their hair in public immediately after deciding that the hijab was inconsistent with their “authentic” selves. Women who moved from a hijabi to a non-veiled identity turned to practices of “liminality” and “transition.” The tactical care taken by women who de-veil to minimize attention and scrutiny suggests the implicit threat that liminality poses to gendered boundaries in Muslim public spaces. Below, I borrow aspects of “liminality”

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and “transition” from the transgender experience to identify productive overlaps and critical divergences. All names of respondents have been changed in the writing of this paper. The women from the Iranian diaspora I interviewed studied, live, and reside in Malaysia. Despite their different nationality, once in Malaysia they share the same social and cultural conditions with local Muslim women that make unveiling possible. Although veiling is not compulsory in Malaysia compulsion to veiling is arbitrarily applied across culturalspatial means in schools, colleges, places of worship, and rituals. Most Muslim women in Malaysia wear the hijab, and, increasingly, so do pre-pubescent girls, an outcome of a systematic and bureaucratic-style approach to Islamization that began in the late 1980s. For decades since, Islamization was much contested in multireligious Malaysia where Malay-Muslims who make up 61% of the population live alongside ethnic Chinese (20%), Indians (6%), and a large variety of indigenous groups. The diverse cultural demographic is largely attributed to the waves of migration during the country’s colonial past. Veiling became not only a marker of Islam’s rise in the Malaysian public sphere but a means of engineering ethnic and gendered segregation and exclusion in a diverse multicultural national context. Being the bearer of Malaysia’s Islamic aspirations, the veiled Muslim woman embodies the boundary that separates Malay-Muslims from non-Malays and nonMuslims. Not being ethnic Malay, Iranian women are not subjected to such social engineering. But their experience of unveiling in Malaysia raises points of convergence and departure that furnish the contours of the veiling–unveiling continuum.

De-veiling as Tactical The practice of unveiling in stages, from taking off the hijab to wearing other forms of head covering, necessitates the deployment of tactics. Borrowed from Michel de Certeau’s (1984) concept of “tactics,” it is distinguished from “strategy” by virtue of their location within the field of power differences. Strategy is mobilized by individuals within positions of institutional power while tactics belong to people who are

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typically excluded from such institutions and must find ways to adapt, negotiate, and subvert, making tactics the tools and maneuvers of the weak. Tactics take on an ad hoc approach that relies on “tricks” and “opportunities” that are contingent on place and time. There are no fixed rules to de-veiling among the respondents I interviewed, all of whom live in the urban areas of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur as students or full-time professionals. However, the social cost of opprobrium and scrutiny concomitant with the policing of women’s bodies suggests that some tactics require more planning than others. By donning an array of other head coverings that conceal their aurat (ritual nakedness) in inventive ways women test the limits of modesty and inconspicuousness in every situation they find themselves in. A different head gear is worn in accordance with occasion, place, and time. A beret is worn when one aims to be stylish, a hoodie or buff in more informal and sporting occasions. Tactical de-veiling is also made possible in a continuously shifting cultural landscape in Malaysia where different types and increasingly trendy and more expensive veils are sought after by Muslim women. Focus on de-veiling draws attention to the “less visible” expressions of Muslim life and interrogates the publicness and visibility of being Muslim. There is an overemphasis in sociological and anthropological research of Islam and Muslim life on the hyper-visible aspects of Islam such as the hijab and the mosque (Bangstad 2011; Schielke 2009). In some ways, the management of the public self by women who wish to unveil is the mirror image of women who want to veil but face hindrances to do so. The reverse of this study, concerning women who want to wear the hijab but feel the anti-veiling pressure in their social environment, is played out where Muslims represent the minority in a traditionally secular context. In Jeanette Jouili’s (2009) ethnographic accounts, observant Muslim women living in western Europe must find ways to adapt to the constraints in the public sphere that limit practices of religious self and symbolism such as veiling, praying five times a day, and eating halal food. In a society where Muslim populations are perceived with fear, anxiety and suspicion, overt and tacit restrictions on Islamic public piety have pushed pious Muslims to enact particular tactics. Jouili’s interlocutors turn to wearing the beret in public

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and switch to the hijab in spaces where being openly “Muslim” is more welcome. The women who go from states of veiled to non-veiled and back again make an effort to maintain sartorial modesty by wearing clothes that cover parts of the body—the hair, neck, ears—that are typically concealed under the headscarf (Jouili 2009). The multireligious context of Malaysia where Muslims represent a modest majority makes for a more socially variegated terrain for deveiling women. The intimate sphere of the family and close friendship requires a more sensitively negotiated tactic of alternative modest dress than in other spheres of life, public or otherwise. For Malaysian Nurul, who is in her 30s, the choice to wear a beanie and a range of small hats during the phase between the hijab and without, was determined by convenience and the desire to escape extreme scrutiny from her family members. Although she did not want to wear the hijab anymore she still felt like she needed to cover her head in front of her family especially if they went out in public together. Avoidance of awkwardness was paramount: “[The beanie] wasn’t a tudung [headscarf ] so it wouldn’t be so awkward if I leave my family and then take it off. It’s very awkward to be seen with a tudung and then change out of it in a toilet stall.” A tacit mutual understanding of Nurul’s intention with her close family members made her sartorial tactic possible: “They sort of pretended they didn’t see the difference […] I think it was a sign that I was trying to respect their boundaries but I also wanted to do my own thing.” Nurul’s accounts demonstrate that tactical approaches to the gradual process of unveiling are relational and spatial, dependent on who will be accepting or otherwise of her decision to improvise her modest style. Indeed, women who dress tactically in this way occupy the sartorial purview of modesty. They may wear the same items of clothing, loose and covered, as they did when they wore the hijab but accompanied by another head covering. Without the hijab, these women wear clothes that are deemed “modest” by themselves and other Muslims but without the charged symbolism, identity, and the attendant practices of moral self-conduct and piety that the veil signals. They belong to a cohort of women whose modest dress choices are motivated less by faith than pragmatic reasons and a rejection of the sexualization of women’s bodies (Cameron 2013; Lewis 2013).

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Transition and Liminal Embodiment Transitioning out from veiling occurs in the “regime of veiling” or the “spatially realized sets of hegemonic rules and norms regarding women’s veiling, which are themselves produced by specific constellations of power” (Secor 2002, 8). Regimes of veiling help explain the sartorial choices women make alternative to the standard hijab (full headscarf that covers the hair, ears, and neck) before they stop wearing head coverings altogether and transition to wearing their hair exposed in public. Women I interviewed who have stopped wearing the hijab and in the transitional stage of their sarto-corporeality see themselves as already psychologically unveiled. They no longer wish to wear the hijab or may question its status as a religious obligation in Islam. But they must gradually dress in ways to adapt to their changing subjectivity. Their transitional phase occurs in a series of liminal states of unveiling; neither are they hijabi nor fully “free hair” yet (Izharuddin 2018) as they manage the perception of their family, friends, colleagues, and the public more generally. Somewhat similar to the transgender experience, the unveiling woman’s period of ““transition” conjoins expectations of ongoing, indeterminate process with expectations of eventual arrival and implies some shift in bodily self-presentation that is both central to, and inadequate to describe, the interpersonal/psychic experience of altering one’s social gender” (Carter 2014, 236). This is not to suggest that “transgender” is a homogeneous point of arrival for transitioning individuals. Rather, transgender is a site of diversity and fluidity outside the narrow and rigid confines of the male–female sex binary. Transgender is also a category in motion across space and time between the established poles of male and female (Stryker et al. 2008). Likewise, the practice of de-veiling with its lack of rules, is constitutive of a range of sartorial-embodied states along a continuum that necessitates a tactical movement across spatial and temporal planes to facilitate transition. There is a gap of perception for transitioning individuals and others around them and the transition helps to close that gap, either successfully or otherwise. As Julian Carter (2014, 236) argues: “Transitions function as the ramps and bridges over which [individuals] are guided from one

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point to the next; they are evaluated as successful when our presentation seamlessly supports our claims, weak when the seams show.” Yet, at the same time, transitions facilitate departures, ambiguity, and openness to liminal states of corporeality. The theory of liminality (Turner 1987) posits that a rite of passage provides structure or communal intelligibility to facilitate an individual’s transformation. In the in-between liminal stage, according to Turner, the subject separates herself from her existing social status and group by leaving behind the attributes of her previous self. In the transgender experience, liminality takes place on the gender spectrum; some individuals progress from the liminal space and complete their transition while others remain liminal, preferring a genderqueer or non-binary status (Dentice and Dietert 2015). Women transitioning out of the hijab have already “unveiled” in their minds and typically complete the transition toward unveiling. For some, the hijab is the last connection to their Islamic identity before becoming non-religious or renouncing it completely. Therefore, unveiling is a rite of passage; it is a symbolically significant step for the change of their identity to take place. The accessories and head coverings that the women adopt during this liminal phase also gain an in-between status, defamiliarizing the status of hats, berets, and beanies from unequivocally secular objects into modest materiality. Other headgears and similar accessories are as polysemic as the Islamic veil but they are not confined to the critical category of piety and modesty. Hats have a temporary quality, worn on occasions rather than integrated as part of one’s identity. Their temporariness throws into sharp relief the permanence and commitment to veiling. Although subject formation is an ever-changing, continuous process, who is to say when and where liminality starts and ends? The foregoing assumption is not without validity; a person may go through multiple embodied transitions in their lifetime that might cohere with changes in their inner life. Others may settle in the state of liminality and define their identity as de-veiled women. The adoption of liminality as a metaphor to describe the in-between embodied process toward unveiling may not proceed with the entry into what Turner describes as “communitas,” a “modality of social relationship” (Tuner 2017, 96), but

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instead leads to new practices of self that enable new associations and body techniques. In the accounts of women who remove the hijab, the veil was perceived as an impediment to spontaneous interactions with members beyond their closest kin. They aspire for what they regard as greater levels of freedom to associate with members of the opposite sex and other religious groups.

Transitioning Out from the Regimes of Veiling The moment my respondents have made a decision to unveil, they do not remove their hijab immediately. Rather, they go through months, sometimes years, of “transition” or a liminal “state of reflection” (Turner 1987, 14) before finally going “free hair.” Like most changes in identity formation applicable to the individual and at the societal level, gradual transitions are necessary to avoid the social shock of the new. The transitional phase is also a grace period of negotiation between self and others, of identifying what works and doesn’t. These women could no longer wear the hijab but could not maintain a double life; one identity in hijab with their family, friends, and colleagues, and at other times without the hijab when they are being their “authentic” selves. These women were aware they were wearing the hijab for the “wrong” reasons, that their inner selves were in irreconcilable conflict with their outer, material selves. A cultural context where veiling was not mandatory facilitated the impetus for unveiling for the Malaysian and Iranian women interviewed in this study. In the period of transition between the hijab and without it, they would wear a number of head accessories from hats, bandannas, buffs, headbands, turbans, and a “side hijab,” a long scarf that ties into a fabric ponytail, leaving the neck and ears exposed. The non-religious head coverings permitted the wearing of clothes denied to women who adhere to the ethical requirements of the hijab such as shorter sleeves, figure-hugging trousers, and mid-length dresses. Others signal their steps toward de-veiling by wearing sheer and increasingly looser veils that poorly conceal their hair.

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Malaysian student Fasya, in her 20s, experimented with different head accessories before complete unveiling: I wanted to take my hijab off even before I transitioned to other styles. For about a year before I decided to take my hijab off, I wore like a slempang tudung [loose headscarf ]/turban/side turban. Sometimes just a hoodie or cap. I decided to wear something else to ease my way into taking it out. When I wore the turban, people started questioning my intent but I didn’t really care. [laughs]

Sara from Tehran, a psychologist working in Kuala Lumpur, unveiled at the age of 30 but kept her hair tied into a ponytail or hair bun for eight years. She was not confident about coloring her hair or letting it free in public. After unveiling she spent three years acquainting herself with contemporary secular fashion, clothes that flatter her body shape, and getting used to outfits that reveal her legs. Sara’s reticence suggests the overlapping issues pertaining to the internalization of the hijab, its impact on body image, and the reconfiguration of comportment that may be familiar to other women interviewed in this study. Laleh, in her 40s, who is also from Tehran and lives in Kuala Lumpur, maintains a photo of herself in a side hijab in her mobile phone when she communicates with her family in Iran. Her photo in the side hijab portrays both her alter-ego and past self that enables her to maintain good relations with her family. The similarities in Sara and Laleh’s lives are striking. They became friends when they were pursuing their doctoral studies in Malaysia where they became disillusioned with pious modest clothing and Islam. Sara was disheartened by the xenophobic and anti-Shiite attitudes of her fellow postgraduate coursemates and university staff. Their negative experience in Malaysia led to a re-evaluation of their Islamic identity and finally a spiritual departure from the religion. There are spheres of intimacy—domains of family and friendship— that women must navigate before they step out in the open in the world of strangers without their hijab:

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Before I went totally un-hijabbed, I “insinuated” the desire to show my hair by mostly wearing see-through shawls and veils without any inner head cover or the care to cover my hair properly – and this was when I was around my family and friends. I think I chose to do that because tudung had long been my identity (whenever I met my friends or posted my photos online, most of my friends praised me for the way I fashionably styled my tudung [hijab], how “hijabista” I am, etc) and [because] some of them said they looked up to me that became a kind of “pressure” for me to still stick with tudung. [Hani, 30s, Malaysian]

Hani was raised in a conservative religious family and had worn the hijab since she was 10 years old. By the time she was 20 and unbeknownst to friends and family, she was wearing the hijab “part-time,” taking it off when she was playing sports and going out on dates with young men. Although it is common in cities like Kuala Lumpur to see women in the hijab out with their boyfriend, sometimes holding hands in public, such behavior is not widely acceptable. The hijab is closely associated with gendered boundaries and romantic intimacy between unmarried Muslims would be a transgression of those boundaries. As her hijab-wearing persona, she gained a reputation for wearing the latest Islamic fashion and the admiration of friends. As a woman who was known previously as a “hijabstar,” a term for an authority of trendy modest fashion, Hani faced significant pressure to keep up appearances and adhere to the aspirational ideal. Deviation from this ideal by removing the hijab was tantamount to betrayal, resulting in attacks and abuse. Najwa, a Malaysian university student in her early 20s, also faced significant fear and pressure to cover her hair by whatever means possible even though it did not involve wearing the hijab: I wore a shawl mostly, I guess the usual way people wore it. I wore it for about 10 months. Then I wore a beanie for about 2 months before I went totally free hair. I was scared to take it off immediately because I was scared people would judge so I did it gradually. It’s interesting that other girls do it too... I wasn’t working at the time but yeah, I would wear the shawl to weddings and stuff. But beanie to university and everywhere else.

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The Threat of Liminality For the women above, liminality was necessary for navigating toward a new subjectivity. Liminality must be tactical and gradual before external familiarity and acceptance were possible. But while they were on the pathway through the liminal phase, their transition was beset with risks. A major risk factor is the choice of head coverings alternative to the hijab. If they are “too fashionable” and ostentatious (an issue already of public debate which I discuss more below) they draw attention to the conspicuous absence of the hijab. The range of other “secular” head coverings such as hats, berets, buffs, and bandanas also signal differentiated meanings associated with the hijab. These head coverings alternative to the hijab do not carry spiritual meaning in Muslim communities but they divest the wearer from not only the “burden” of piety, but also from particular spheres of Islamic male authority (Gould 2014) and keeping up with fast-paced Islamic fashion trends and consumerism (Bucar 2016; Jones 2007). Unlike most transgender experiences, tactics of the transitional phase into complete unveiling involves the agentic navigation in discourses of shame and honor. By wearing “secular” head coverings unmarked by religious meaning, the women dislodge the fixed relationship between external expressions of their Muslim identity and the hijab. For women like Sara from Tehran who was uncomfortable about letting her hair go in public or coloring it, transitioning reveals the dialectics of veiling and hair. Across different religious and faith groups, hair is closely associated with women’s shame and honor. But in Iran, the eroticized meaning of women’s hair became intertwined with politics, religion, socioeconomic class, and educational background during several phases of cultural reform that began in the nineteenth century. Hair became the site of fierce control by a secular monarchy that enforced unveiling and the successive Islamist regime that sought to cover women’s hair by whatever means (Zahedi 2007). Before Nurul completed her liminal stage of hats and beanies, her attempt to “pass” as a modestyperforming woman and lack of hijab in front of her family did not go unnoticed. Still subject to surveillance, she was reminded that parts of her neck and hair, her aurat, were showing.

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Women who transition to complete unveiling participate in a practice of secular self. If veiling produces degrees of “undifferentiated” femininity in some Muslim-majority and minority societies (Berger 1998), then voluntary unveiling creates disaggregated, typically “secular” individuated selves. They participate in the reconstruction of new selves that depart from normative Muslim femininities but engage with other competing femininities produced through global discourses of consumerism, secularism, and sexuality (Izharuddin 2018). The liminal states of unveiling are temporary and carefully managed out of fear, intimidation, and pressure. Similar to the “impure” status of objects that defy clear categorical boundaries, liminal states of transition bear the threat of ambiguity and “pollution”. As Mary Douglas (2002) writes, “danger lies in transitional states, simply because transition is neither one state nor the next.” Being “structurally ‘invisible’” (Turner 1987, 8), there is no official classification for this transitional phase out of one’s veiled identity. Naming would entail the difficult work of confronting the unsettling inbetweenness situated between veiled/unveiled, Islamic/secular, and outwardly Muslim/inwardly Muslim in a sociocultural context where the boundaries of gender, ethnicity, and religion are strictly policed. In the recent decades, the transformation of the gendered public sphere by Islamic fashion and the rise of “hijabistas,” or Muslim modest fashion influencers, has redefined the meaning of women’s modesty. Haute couture western designer labels not known for modesty have identified a lucrative market in the burgeoning Islamic fashion industry to manufacture modest clothing for all women, not just pious Muslim women. But attempts to redefine women’s modesty within Muslim communities are never without cynicism and contestation (Jones 2010a). The adoption of turbans as part of modest fashion in Malaysia has attracted fierce criticism of the wearer’s vanity and lack of commitment to Islam.2 Turbans have become the headgear of Muslim female celebrities who aspire to modernity along the alternative axis of cosmopolitanism of the global Muslim community. However, without the hijab, public selfrepresentations of unveiling, de-veiling, or de-hijabbing by high profile personas and online micro-celebrities are typically excluded from the mediascape of modest style and fashion (Lewis 2015). At face value, the

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turban as an object of opprobrium is yet another reflection of the sartorial policing of Muslim women’s bodies. There is perhaps an anxiety that the turban can potentially diminish the distinction of the hijab and its wearer from other groups. Religiously motivated clothing functions to distinguish an exclusive group in conspicuous ways. In Malaysia, veiling is mobilized as a method of boundary formation and exclusion; a means of separating the sexes and religious groups (Tong and Turner 2008). The policing of Muslim women’s clothing coincides with the project of maintaining Malay-Muslim cultural and political hegemony. Thus, Muslim women in Malaysia, as bearers of cultural and religious difference, who do not wear the hijab but wear other head coverings not marked as “Islamic” trouble the state project of division and separation.

Conclusion For the women interviewed in this chapter, the hijab is not simply a piece of cloth but an object heavy with much symbolic meaning, sometimes too heavy for their inner selves to bear. The act of voluntary unveiling is a process that, when left to individual devices, comprises relatively brief or extended periods of transition and liminality whereby the state of mind and belief of the women are in flux and become embodied through the head coverings they wear and how they groom their hair. De-veiling and unveiling also reconfigure comportment and the relationship a woman has with her hair and body. Unveiling becomes a rite of passage for women who have psychologically “unveiled” and refuse to comply with the Islamic obligation of the hijab. For some, the hijab is the final connecting thread to their Islamic faith. To test the waters of acceptance, tactical liminality is enacted for protection and to foster a period of familiarity. However, liminal states of unveiling can be destabilizing and “dangerous” to the social order, which is why “transitions are brave work. Like birth, like writing, […] transition is when hopes take material form and in doing so take on a life of their own (Carter 2014, 236).” Voluntary unveiling and the liminal phase that entails before a woman steps out in public without any head covering complicate the apparent

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stability and coherence of covered and pious Muslim femininity. An inner state of religious consciousness does not necessarily “match” with an external expression of public piety, as Carla Jones (2010b) demonstrates in her accounts of moral anxieties surrounding imej (image) in Indonesia, whereby public religiosity can sometimes be a cover for grave misdeeds. Rather, a degree of flux and oscillation is assumed in personal belief, practices, and embodiment. In practice, a woman who takes up the veil may de-veil, unveil, and re-veil for myriad reasons in their life course. The lived reality in which the continuum of veilingunveiling occupies has implications for the politics of gender and Islam. Potentiality to re-veil disrupts the colonial and Islamophobic fantasy of rescuing Muslim women from the strictures of Islam through the act of unveiling.

Notes 1. The hijab here refers to the sewn headscarf that tightly covers the hair, ears, and neck. While there are other head coverings associated with Muslim women’s dress such as the chador, shawl, jilbab, and niqab, I use “hijab” as an all-encompassing term to describe women’s head covering that ascribes its wearer to modesty and piety. 2. “‘This is a sin’: why are Malaysia’s turban style hijabs so divisive?” South China Morning Post. 4 September 2019. https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/ fashion-beauty/article/3025500/sin-why-are-malaysias-turban-style-hijabssodivisive Accessed 3 Nov 2019.

References Bangstad, Sindre. 2011. Saba Mahmood and the Anthropological Feminism After Virtue. Theory, Culture, and Society 28 (3): 28–54. Berger, Anne-Emmanuelle. 1998. The Newly Veiled Woman: Irigaray, Specularity, and the Islamic Veil. Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism 28 (1): 93–119.

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Bucar, Elizabeth M. 2016. Secular Fashion, Religious Dress, and Modest Ambiguity: The Visual Ethics of Indonesian Fashion-Veiling. Journal of Religious Ethics 44 (1): 68–91. Cameron, Jane. 2013. Modest Motivations: Religious and Secular Contestations in the Fashion Field. In Modest Fashion: Styling Bodies, Mediating Faith, ed. Reina Lewis, 137–57. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Carter, Julian. 2014. Transition. Transgender Studies Quarterly 1 (1–2): 235– 237. Cronin, Stephanie. 2014. Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World: Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress. London and New York: Routledge. Certeau, De, and Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dentice, Dianne, and Michelle Dietert. 2015. Liminal Spaces and the Transgender Experience. Theory in Action 8 (2): 69–96. Douglas, Mary. 2002. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge. Gould, Rebecca Ruth. 2014. Hijab as Commodity Form: Veiling, Unveiling, and Misveiling in Contemporary Iran. Feminist Theory 15 (3): 221–240. Izharuddin, Alicia. 2018. ‘Free Hair’: Narratives of Unveiling and Reconstruction of Self. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44 (1): 155–176. Jones, Carla. 2007. Fashion and Faith in Urban Indonesia. Fashion Theory 11 (2–3): 211–231. ———. 2010a. Materializing Piety: Gendered Anxieties About Faithful Consumption in Contemporary Urban Indonesia. American Ethnologist 37 (4): 617–637. ———. 2010b. Images of Desire: Creating Virtue and Value in an Indonesian Islamic Lifestyle Magazine. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 6 (3): 91–117. Jouili, Jeanette. 2009. Negotiating Secular Boundaries: Pious Micro-practices of Muslim Women in French and German Public Spheres. Social Anthropology 17 (4): 455–470. ———. 2015. Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fadil, Nadia. 2011. Not-/unveiling as an Ethical Practice. Feminist Review 98 (1): 83–109. Lewis, Reina. 2013. Introduction: Mediating Modesty. In Modest Fashion: Styling Bodied, Mediating Faith, ed. Reina Lewis, 1–13. London, New York: I.B. Tauris.

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———. 2015. Uncovering Modesty: Dejabis and Dewigies Expanding the Parameters of the Modest Fashion Blogosphere. Fashion Theory 19 (2): 243–269. Najmabadi, Afsaseh. 2000. (Un)veiling Feminism. Social Text 18 (3): 29–45. Ong, Aihwa. 1990. State Versus Islam: Malay Families, Women’s Bodies, and the Body Politic in Malaysia. American Ethnologist 17 (2): 258–276. Schieke, Samuli. 2009. Being Good in Ramadan: Ambivalence, Fragmentation, and the Moral Self in the Lives of Young Muslims. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15: 24–40. Secor, Anna. 2002. The Veil and Urban Space in Istanbul: Women’s Dress, Mobility and Islamic Knowledge. Gender, Place and Culture 9 (1): 5–22. ———. 2005. Islamism, Democracy and the Political Production of the Headscarf Issue in Turkey. In Geographies of Muslim Women: Gender, Religion, and Space, ed. Ghazi–Walid Falah and Caroline Rose Nagel, 203–225. New York and London: Guildford Press. Stivens, Maila. 2006. ‘Family Values’ and Islamic Revival: Gender, Rights, and State Moral Projects in Malaysia. Women’s Studies International Forum 29: 354–367. Stryker, Susan, Paisley Currah, and Lisa Jean Moore. 2008. Introduction: Trans-, Trans, or Transgender? Women’s Studies Quarterly 36 (3–4): 11–22. Tong, Joy Kooi-Chin, and Bryan S. Turner. 2008. Women, Piety and Practice: A Study of Women and Religious Practice in Malaysia. Contemporary Islam 2 (1): 41–59. Turner, Victor. 1987. Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage. In Betwixt and Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation, ed. Louise Carus Mahdi, Steven Foster, and Meredith Little, 3–22. La Salle and IL: Open Court. ———. 2017. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure. London and New York: Routledge. Zahedi, Ashraf. 2007. Contested Meaning of the Veil and Political Ideologies of Iranian Regimes. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 3 (3): 75–98.

High Heels and Rainbow Hijab Nancy Pathak

Introduction Mary Douglas (1996) states in her essay “The Two Bodies” that the social body lays powerful constraints over the perceptions of the physical body and, in return, the physical experience of a body creates the particular view it holds of the society and shapes its own context. Both exert influence over each other. Hence, dressing as a choice of presentation for the body is not only a personal expression. It is a statement of the body showing its willingness and desire to be perceived as a certain individual within the constraints of its social context. Dressing is a very vital part of the phenomena of “performance of the sexuality,” as explained by Judith Butler (1993, 1988).1 Society assigns acceptance to genders of interest and allocates a performance of defined sexuality through gender-specific social roles and responsibilities to them. In Butler’s understanding, sexualities and identities are products of the repeated performances. Similarly, N. Pathak (B) Lady Sri Ram College for women, Delhi University, Delhi, India © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_10

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we perform sexual identity through dressing, and one can perform any sexual identity of one’s choice (even cultural) by repetitive countering of certain gender-identified dressing by imitating or parodying drag. Something apparently as innocent as fashion is a great means of political communication, cultural domination, and counter-cultural assertion. This chapter explores the identity assertion through performativity of the queer Muslim community of Hijras and newly organized young queer Muslims through a sociopolitical, biographical and ethnographic case study. With the help of extensive interviews with a Hijra community leader, a Pakistani Muslim transgender supermodel and young organized Muslim queer community members, I have tried to understand their expression of their gender and intersectional religious identities through fashion, style, and visible performances as a means of creating new spaces of acceptability and resistance. Historically, only the bodies which held power had the privilege of occupying public spaces, and the powerless bodies, with the exceptions of the bodies meant for public consumption, were restricted to the private, condemned, and hidden spaces (Waylen et al. 2013). These powerful bodies defined the gender norms and those for public acceptance of bodies. Butler argues that making the bodies invisible also took away their agency. According to Butler, to be prohibited explicitly, opens up the possibility of occupying a discursive site from which something like a reverse discourse can be articulated (Butler 1993). Thus, any attempt at using religion to make a gender invisible may allow an entire cultural and religious discourse to be interpreted against the invisible bodies in the absence of their agency to resist. Performances are nothing but the quest for visibility to create a scope of resistance. Sexuality, in the Foucauldian understanding, is something to do with desired and experienced bodily pleasures but is still not independent of its context. According to Foucault, the deployment of sexuality is governed by the deployment of alliance or the homeostasis of the social body (Foucault 2008).2 Deployment of alliance is a network of social ties which perpetuates a system of spoken and unspoken rules regarding the institutions of marriage, family, and other institutions that govern reproduction in a society. He believed that deployment of sexuality is a creation of the deployment of alliance, as sexuality in society is forged by

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the force of knowledge policed through various social agencies, such as family, church, and schools. Sexuality is limited by the control exercised by the deployment of alliance through the restrictions it imposes and the permission it grants for only certain kinds of relationships and only certain kinds of sensual pleasures. There seems to be a special direct relationship between the rigidities of these kinships and the control exercised by the deployments of alliance in any given culture (Foucault 2008). After the renaissance in Christianity, the body became secular, free from the clutches of the church (Synnott 1992) but there is no clear-cut demarcation of a renaissance or a period of reform in the other Abrahamic religion of Islam. Thus, in Islam, the body remained a part of the religious community or the Ummah 3 (Morten 1996). In Islam, the body never became secular with the right of protection against the religious community. Religion and society never disengaged from matters of sexuality. The deployment of alliance had also ensured the use of law in order to maintain homeostasis, such as the Shariya Law in Islamic Ummah, formally allowing or restricting kinds of sexual alliances (Ezzat 2015).4 This is exactly what Foucault had warned us against. As some relief, there is evidence from Islamic history which suggests that some genders beyond the binaries had visibility in Islamic societies as opposed to their invisibility in the two-gender model of the Christian modern values (Lugones 2007). I undertook a political and anthropological case study of the Muslim Hijra communities of India and Pakistan to explore their attempt at deployment of counter socioreligious alliances to reclaim their divine sexualities. They derive their identity and legitimacy using Islamic Sufi philosophy. They have successfully created an alter-narrative to not only protect themselves from the orthodox Islamists but have claimed divine status in heteronormative societies, managing to deploy their own alliances to practice freedom of their sexual, and divine agencies together. The Guru–Shishya Family system5 and the Hijra Panchayats6 are perfect examples of how performance and identity creation can culminate in sociopolitical institutionalization of a third gender’s way of life. Performativity paves the way for not only identity but also the creation of alter-narratives and alter-structures of sexual empowerment.

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Similarly, the creation of intersectional identities through the performance of fashion is paving the way for revolutionary reclamation of sociocultural and political spaces by the young queer Muslims. The organization of these young queer Muslims has institutionalized religious leadership and even dedicated mosques for them.

Genders and Islam Rarely will the theologians of Islam accept that their interpretation of Islam is only a version of it. Islam is not a very homogeneous religious category in itself. Sunnis and Shias are the major strands, along with Ahmaddiyas and Khawarijs (B.C. 2018; Sein 2016), whereas there are so many other schools of practice of Islam, such as the Sufi (Tasawwuf in Arabic)7 school of jurisprudence and school of theology. Islam derives its theology and directives from the verses and compositions in the Quran and Hadith (Oxford Islamic Studies Online 2020). Each one of these strands and schools has had different perspectives and has shown various acceptance toward the question of different genders. Several practices and beliefs in Islam have not even been picked from the Quran or Hadith but rather from the jurisprudence school of Islam. The Wahabi hardliners try to exclude many of these schools and sects from the fold of Islam altogether on the pretext of Bidah (Hassan 2016).8 Claims have been laid by the scholar Kecia Ali (2006) that the prohibition of same-sex marriage does not even come from the Quran but from the legal construction of marriage and sexual relationships which are both gendered and hierarchical (Hendricks 2010). Several Quranists go back to the Quran alone as the only authentic source of Islamic faith and doctrine, leaving little scope for hardline interpretations of gender position in Islam. According to the queer Ullemas actively involved in the interpretation of Islam, loose interpretations of the Hadith have largely posed challenges to progressive interpretations of Islam (Hendricks 2010), and Kugle (2009) claims that there is no such thing as a literal reading of the Quran, nor is there any evidence of the divine legal system outlined by Mohammad.

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We attempt to see that Islam at its core does not condemn nonheterosexual intimacy, rather anything under the divine plan has to be accepted as the creation of Allah. The principle of equality is very dear to Islam as put forward in the Quran (Hendricks 2010). We have indeed sent our messengers with the evidence and we sent down with them the book and the balance so that humankind can continue to exist in equity. (Quran 57:25)

The Sufi school of Islam propagates the path of love and union with the supreme almighty. All human beings share the qualities and characteristics of the divine names in Sufi Saint, Ibn Arabi’s cosmology. Ibn Arabi divides the divine names into two groups that set up several sets of corresponding relationships with one another and the ultimate divine or the ephemeral gender. These two names have been broadly classified as Jalal and Jamal in Sufism (Shaikh 2012). Jamal constitute the names with characteristics of, for example, the beauty, benevolence, love, mercy, and beneficence. While Jalal constitutes the name with the characteristics of, for example, majesty, bringer of death, inaccessibility, overwhelming power, and greatness. Any human being’s existential identity and self-knowledge depend on these divine names. The Jamali name is attributed with more feminine qualities and the Jalali name with more masculine qualities. The gender qualities are not assigned according to the physical attributes in the philosophy but are more based on the essence of their social and spiritual being. The standard for spiritual completion for Ibn Arabi’s Sufism is Al-Insan Al Kamil (the complete human) (David and Waghid 2019). There has to be a fine balance here in the attainment of the supreme. The Jalali qualities are believed to belong to the realm of the divine and incomparable. The sojourner, irrespective of their biological sex, will have to abandon their claims to their own Jalali qualities and appeal to the Jalali qualities of the supreme. In relation to God’s Jalali qualities, human beings should adopt a relationship of receptivity and dependency, more devotional, loving, and Jamali in character. The Sufi verses in many Sufi traditions in South Asia, especially in India and Pakistan, are often sung by the peers and Auliyas 9 projecting themselves as a gender different from their

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biological one, pursuing the ephemeral gendered almighty. The Nazms, Qawwalis,10 and Kafis 11 are expressions of yearnings of the lover for the ultimate love, the divine being. The goal of this divine love story is the union of the incomplete gender into the ephemeral gender (Mahomed and Shaikh 2018) there is an impersonation of a partnering gender to the ephemeral gender throughout the performance of divine pursuit. This whole act, as through Butler’s lens, can be called as the “performance of a sexuality,” irrespective of one’s biological characteristics. The Sufi thinker Ibn Arabi proposes that Islam is essentially a religion of love, though outwardly it may present itself as a religion of rituals and belief. His couplets in the collection of his poetry Tarjuman al-Ashwaq, beautifully translated by Michael Sells (1984), presents an Islamic manifesto of mystical love. There is a very strong tradition of Sufi devotion throughout the Indian subcontinent. The singer, who is usually male, sings like a female devotee to God as the lover in many of the Sufi Qawwalis. One of the very popular Kafi, as sung by Sufi Bulleh Shah, can be found below: Ranjha Ranjha Kardi Ni (Remembering Ranjha [male lover] day and night), Me’N Aapay Ranjha hoi (I’ve become Ranjha myself ),Sado ni Me’N no Dhido- Ranjha, (I am no longer myself ) Mano Heer Na Akho Koi (No more will I be addressed as Heer [the female lover]), Ranjha Me’N vhich Me’N Ranjhay vhich (I am in Ranjha and Ranjha is in me), Mayko’N Hor dhiyan na Ko I (I do not remember anything else), Wakho Loko Heer Slati, (I am not, he alone is) Kithay Aan Khaloi (there is no distinction left). (Shah, n.d.)

In the Kafi mentioned above, Bulleh Shah refers to himself as the female protagonist Heer, sings of the estranged love of Ranjha (the male protagonist), and performatively loses the identity of Heer to become Ranjha himself. The performance of the whole Kafi is an act of performance of feminine gender, yearning for a male lover, irrespective of the physical body of the performer. As Shammeem Burney Abbas (2010) puts down in her book, the male singers of Sufi lyrics recognize the significance of the female voice in such poetry and it is also the central theme of their performances. Although Abbas tried to look at the female

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voice only under the construction of male and female, Elizabeth Fernea (2002) in the foreword of the book clearly spelled out the need to look at the construct as the “third way,” an alternative conceptualization of the performance beyond the male and female constructs, beyond the existing heteronormative notions (Rouse 2004).12 The importance of the jurisprudence school is emphasized based on the core principles of the Quran and Hadith and strict adherence to the prescribed laws of Shariya. The jurisprudence school of Islam has overshadowed other schools of Islamic practices. As a result, Islam has acquired the image of a rigid religion. These tendencies were seen as a threat long ago by the Sufi seers. Sufi Jalal Ud din Muhammad Rumi had replied to such tendencies with a beautiful story written in Mathnawi, where he brings out the very unique and organic nature of the relationship between human and divine in Islam. In the story, a mortal shepherd calls out to God in the earthliest manner, the accounts of which are given below: Where are You? – so I can become Your servant, and mend Your sandals and comb Your head. (So)……, O Great (Lord)….. All my goats are a sacrifice for You. (And all) my (shouts of ) ‘Hey!’ and ‘Ho!’ are in remembrance of You. (Mahomed and Shaikh 2018)

In Mathnawi, Rumi narrates the story further: the shepherd’s devotion was not respectful in the eyes of Prophet Moses, who reacted to the shepherd by rejecting his ways. This pained Allah greatly. Furthermore, Allah chided Moses by saying that Moses was responsible for the divorce between the devotee and Allah and that was the most hateful of all the (lawful) things to Allah (Mahomed and Shaikh 2018). Rumi quotes the Hadith and brings out that the verses of divorce remain valid for the person of religious authority as much as they do for the people in a marriage. Rumi, through this story, attempts to create an awareness toward the plural ways of devotion and faith and being and becoming Muslim (Mahomed and Shaikh 2018). The narratives for acceptance, equity, and love have already existed in Islam, it is only through a matter of epistemological constructions and performative assertions that these spaces can be reclaimed.

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The Transgenders of South Asia: The Semi-sacred Hijras So far, it has been established that non-binary genders have been acknowledged in Islam since the times of Mohammad. The Quran clearly recognizes some people who are neither male nor female or are in between and/or could also be “non-procreative” (Surah 42 AshShuraa, verse 49–50). During the Islamic Rashiddun (632–661 CE) and Ummayad era (661–750 CE), they were mostly associated with womanly make-up and ornamentation, performances in music and dancing, and their artistic expertise appealed to aristocratic tastes (Rowson 1999). During the Mughal era (1526–1857) in India, they were called Khwajasarah (Irfan 2018), with distinct social roles of managing the Harems and carrying messages. They held all kinds of positions, from servile to administrative in the courts, relating to the Akbarnama (Roychowdhury 2018).13 They dressed like the nobles of the court, like dancers during performances and like soldiers while guarding the Harems. They were made invisible under the two-gender model that modernity imposed on South Asia (Jagadish 2013). The compulsion of capitalism and the profit motive brought the third gender out from behind the covers in modern times, similar to the way in which it freed the “bound” men and women during the Industrial Revolution (Das 2020). The livelihood opportunities remained limited for the transgenders though, because of the widespread discrimination they faced in the absence of any patronages in colonial times, however, performance, fashion, and creativity certainly remained their areas of talent (Das 2020). Despite the acknowledgment of the transgenders in the Hindu and Islamic traditions of South Asia, transgenders were driven to invisibility and declared criminals during the colonial rule. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a Muslim public intellectual and reformist had called Hijras “abhorrent” and asked the British colonizers to confine them to “certain localities” away from the general public (Hinchy 2019). Under the modern state, the binary understanding of genders was superimposed with the help of laws (Hijras were declared criminal tribes under the controversial 1871 CTA in pre-independence India). This is a classic example of Foucault’s

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deployment of alliance to make a gender minority completely invisible, intending to eventually drive them to extinction (Biswas 2019). During an interview that I conducted with a Pakistani transgender Supermodel Kami Chaudhury (2019), she said “the third gender was never recognised under the patriarchal [interpretation of ] Shariya laws, so that the non-binary successor couldn’t ask for property rights” (Chaudhury 2019). In most of the religions, the succession of the property was based on gender (Mehta 2019). The son was supposed to be the legal heir of the family property. She further said, “Females were acknowledged as another gender only because the reproductive management in a social setting would’ve been impossible without recognising the binary” (Chaudhury 2019). All the other non-heteronormative genders were forced into invisibility; the transgender community was pushed to the margins where they developed their own subcultures (Hijra GuruShishya family system) parallel to the heteronormative families (Tripathi 2016). Children born with non-binary or ambiguous sexes were taken away at birth from the heteronormative families by the Hijra Guru families. This also took away all the legal claims they could make regarding their family property. The Guru–Shishya families were constituted of the families of Hijra transgenders under the protection and guardianship of a mother Guru, usually the oldest and the most powerful Hijra. They are dressed in Hijra clothing and brought up with Hijra Tehzeeb (manners). Most of these Hijra communities took up performances such as badhais 14 with Ghunghrus (many small metallic bells strung together to form a musical anklet) bound to their feet as a means of livelihood (Roy 2016). They bless through their performances and also used their bodies to express their wrath and to curse. Hijras are known to lift their sarees and skirts to show their genitals if they are disrespected or their badhai fees are not paid. The Badhai performance is a Parampara or tradition that is a very important part of their Pehchan or identity (Guddan 2020). It is also an expression of their semi-divine powers to bless or curse as believed in the ancient traditions of South Asia. The orthodox Hijras still hold the Badhai ritual close to their hearts to keep it alive and the new Hijras are choosing performance art in other forms as their livelihood. The educated young Hijras are choosing

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fashion designing, make-up art, modeling, and styling as their new vocations. Fashion was providing Kami a means to be visible, to perform her Pehchan or identity, no longer to be hidden, be in the public eye, and announce the existence of her kind as a part of society. She said that fashion for her was not just a means of being a model but a role model for the marginalized to come out, speak out, and show themselves.

The Rainbow Spectrum in Islam and Their Expressions in Dressing The queer Islamic dressing for the Muslims of the third gender, who have time and again been disowned and sometimes even declared illegal in some Islamic states such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, comes as a means of embodying Muslimness and ephemeral mysticism without any conversation. Gina Ali, a queer Egyptian Muslim woman, intersectional feminist, and sexual educator says that they as a queer Muslim community are able to use style as a form of activism, while also celebrating their culture as Muslims. Gina Ali says that when she wears her ties, dark lipstick, and jewellery that says Allah in Arabic, she rejects patriarchy, sexism, homophobia, and all the forms of oppression that made her feel like her identities could not intersect (Ali 2016). It became an important tool of communication and visibility because they are denied spaces of dialogue in the first place. It is not a method grounded in Islamic legal language or definitive boundaries of religion, but it is certainly a means of reclaiming one’s religion. It is a political act of protest and defiance of the heteronormative traditional constructions, to make a statement, that they belong here. The case of singer Bulent Ersoy, changing her body to the gender of her choice in Turkey caught huge public attention. She used the spectacle to make religious statements such as singing the Adhaan (call for prayer) on stage, which is a privilege of men alone (Altinay 2008). She dressed like a modest woman if not in the most stereotypical Muslim way. She came to be called a Diva after her performance in a concert where she wore the caftans of the Ottoman sultans and headpieces that resembled an Ottoman turban (Altinay 2008). She was performing her identity as a powerful trans woman, a Turk, and a

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conservative Muslim, belonging to the upper echelon of society. This was all an act of power asserted by someone who had chosen her gender and fought for its legality under an autocratic military regime which denied it as a right. This statement becomes a necessity in spaces where genders are constrained and where dressing becomes a tool of oppression through strict disciplining. There were others who were less fortunate. Many of the Muslim queers who fled the countries where their sexuality was repressed, such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, had an opportunity to express their individuality through their dressing and organize in a society which was essentially White and western. The spaces of mass fashion exhibitions and gatherings became their stations to unite and politically assert themselves. Ana Masreya, a drag artist of Egyptian origin, hosts a drag cabaret called Neffertitties (Masreya 2020a) in New York City with an essentially Egyptian tone to drag art. When I asked Ana in an online interview, “Why do they [pronoun used by the interviewee] practice drag?” They said: “I do drag for every single person in Egypt who can’t or isn’t allowed. I do drag because I am free to be whoever I want to be and it took me a while to get here. I do drag to raise awareness about the injustices that exist […], because people deserve the freedom to be whoever they want to be” (see Masreya 2020b). They added: “I am terrified to be defying what is ‘normal’ and punishable by death in Egypt, but I say I have to. It’s my duty. I owe it to the world. I have to use my education and privilege to continue trying to make this world a better place. For me it happens through drag, art, dance and spreading my culture, which I find so beautiful” (Masreya 2020b). Many Muslims who identified as non-binary genders could come “out of the closet” in the safety provided by the liberal societies in the west to where their families had migrated. Most of these queer Muslims complained of losing their cultural roots. They narrated their plight of having been robbed of their culture and spiritual rights by the godlessness of the rainbow capitalism15 (Abad-Santos 2018; Tatchell 2019). This statement becomes important where the identification of minorities is brushed under the carpet through bans on the identity marker clothing in essentially heteronormative homogeneous societies. Leila, who identified as a black queer Arab in France, as stated by Mrie (2016), mentions

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that her Hijab became a symbol of more than just a faith in an Islamophobic society. It was a political symbol of resistance. She sported her tattoos with her Hijab, only to proclaim that she stood by her queerness and her faith together. She did not have to choose between the two (Mrie 2016) (Fig. 1). Even the London Pride festival was an all-White affair, hijacked by the corporations and their secularist agendas which excluded people of faith (Al-Kadhi 2019), until the young religious and gender intersectional minorities took things into their own hands. Many fashion statements were made during the pomp and show of the Imaan-fest, Muslim pride fest, in London (Young 2019). Rainbow flags were seen with the holy sign of the crescent moon and stars all over the parade. A Niqab 16 with a rainbow skirt was spotted in a pride parade. It not only expressed a Muslim queer identity but also kept the identity of the person wearing it safe. The new social media applications, such as Instagram, Tumbler, and Facebook, provided open and relatively much safer platforms of more personalized exhibitions of fashions and styles. They also became spaces to organize, discuss in forums, such as @queermuslimproject, and make visual statements (The Queer Muslim Project 2019). A spurt of innovative personalized dressing could be seen on these platforms. Fashion had largely been democratized on the digital platforms (Crewe 2013). These platforms on the Internet provided spaces for innovations in fashion and mass expression and did not remain in the hands of the fashion aristocracy (Mahindra 2017). Some of these innovative clothes that made waves throughout the Muslim Queer community on social media were, for example, a regular Qurta 17 worn like a long feminine gown (Jazeera 2019). Some of the style statements were as daring as the rainbow Hijabs and Islamic drag. These platforms democratized fashion to a major extent. Many queer Muslim influencers received a lot of both love and hate from the digital community, but they were out there, visible, vibrant, and speaking through their art and their dressing (Fig. 2).

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Fig. 1 A queer muslim adorned in Rainbow skirt with Niqab at a pride parade (Davidson 2017)

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Fig. 2 Kal Jazeera is dressed in a Muslim Qurta (Jazeera 2019)

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Fashion: Cultural Forms or Political Assertions? Social movement literature on collective action and performance studies emphasizes how drag fashion and the performance of gender and religious identity through visual communication of fashion has become such an important tool which challenges the heteronormative structures and creation of self-identity (Berkowitz and Manohar 2010). Judith Butler (1993) claims that drag performance constitutes the imitation of something which has no original. The Hijras of South Asia continue to preserve their pehchan (identity) through performance of their sringar (make-up and clothes) and Badhai ritual. They are very careful to guard their identity against western influence and mainstream homogenization. They pass it on from generation to generation as Tehzeeb (manners) and Parampara (traditions). The orthodox Hijra Gurus Shishya family system has ensured the self-isolation of their existence from heteronormative social structures over centuries. For them, their sacred identities are above the material and bodily pleasures of which the almighty deprived them. They have kept the Insaniyat (religion of humanity) and Sufi mysticism above the orthodox separatism of the jurisprudence school of Islam. Their co-existence with kinnars (transgender people) of the Hindu religion in the same Guru families has made their bodies both secular and Islamic.

Conclusion Performativity is a central tool of identity creation and enables processual conditions of public visibility. Such a position could enable the organization of the possibility of the queer community’s own perception of reality and perceptions that others hold of them. This further facilitates space for countering the deployment of heterosexual, traditional, or neoliberal alliances that control their sexualities, creating alternative alliances that help them to gain agency over their own sexualities.

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A case study of dressing as a means of Hijara Pehchan gives us a clear understanding of performativity as a precondition for political organization in their community. It has been so potent that it has given rise to organization and political structures such as the Hijra Panchayats that have come to govern their third gender way of life. Many Mosques which give sanctuary to religious queer Muslims have cropped up. Performativity is being employed as a means of organization to create an identity that has remained challenged by Islamic hardliners. Not only will performativity normalize the queer Islamic way of dressing but will also create political spaces where religious and state laws will become more inclusive.

Notes 1. Judith Butler challenges that genders are natural. According to her, strict gender roles are a result of the heteronormative performances that are imposed upon us by the society under the gender-binary constructs of male and female. According to her, these gender acts lead to the change in the material reality and bodies of the performers. 2. The Foucauldian “deployment of alliance” is a system of close kinship ties that exists in almost every culture. It consists of a number of spoken– unspoken rules regarding, for example, marriage, family, and ancestry. While the deployment of alliance works essentially to maintain the stable structure of society, the deployment of sexuality provides an ever-changing structure that allows us to interpret a range of phenomena in their relation to sex and pleasure. Foucault suggests that the deployment of sexuality evolved from the deployment of alliance, as the earlier emphasis on what sorts of relations were permitted was replaced by an emphasis on what sort of sensations were permitted. 3. As per the Quran, Ummah refers to people, community and something close to Nation. 4. See Raouf ’s description of Muslim families guided by Shariya in the secular state of Egypt. She goes on to compare the whole structure to Foucault’s deployment of alliance in pages 250–251 in the chapter Soft Force: Heba Raouf Ezzat’s politics of the Islamic family of the book, Soft Force: Women in Egypt’s Islamic Awakening by Ellen Anne McLarney. 5. Residential and economically independent families of 5–15 Hijras, headed by a Hijra guru.

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6. Local level democratic governing bodies of Hijra communities. 7. The word tasawwuf is Arabic in origin and comes from the words alshuffah, shufi, shuf and Sopho. It can additionally be defined as shifa, which means as pure as glass, and the word Shuffanah, which means kind of timber that grows in the desert of the Arabic land. It is a word from the old Greek Theosofie, means theology, later Arabized into tasawwuf . 8. Bidah is an Islamic term that forbids inventing religious practices unsanctioned by the religion—to label many practices, largely Sufi and Shia, as polytheistic. Wahhabi clerics’ fixation on bidah sometimes leads to the declaration of a fellow Muslim as an apostate. 9. Arabic word meaning a divinely inspiring leader. 10. Qawwali, is the genre of energetic musical performance of Sufi Muslim poetry practiced in the Indian subcontinent, aimed at leading listeners to a state of religious ecstasy and toward a spiritual union with Allah. 11. A style of Punjabi, Sindhi, and Siraiki poetry used by the Sufis of Sindh and Punjab. 12. Fernea wrote an elaborate foreword for Burney Abbas’s book The Female Voice in Sufi Ritual: Devotional Practices of Pakistan and India. 13. Akbarnama is a famous biographical book written by Emperor Akbar’s Nobel, Abu’l Fazl Ibn Mubarak.Roychowdhury has given accounts of transgenders in public life of Mughal courts as mention in Akbarnama. 14. Ritualistic celebratory musical dance performed by hijras on good occasions. 15. The support offered to the LGBTQ+ movement by big corporations and the market economy mostly out of profit motives rather than true concerns for the objective of the movement. 16. Piece of clothing worn to cover the face and head as an interpretation of the Hijab by some Muslim women. 17. A collarless robe-like Islamic shirt worn throughout south Asia.

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Materiality, Political Discourses, and Power

The Fabric of Diasporic Designs: Wearing Punjabi Suits Home and Away Among South Asian Women in Europe Sara Bonfanti

Daddy Ji deposits a soft parcel at the bottom of my bed: a bundle of okra, green and purple damasked cotton cloth unfolds into a brand new Punjabi suit. If I wish to accompany him to Fatepur Sahib, the holiest Gurdwara nearby, I need to rise at dawn and get dressed properly. I thank him doubting that the size of his granddaughter1 may fit me, but the morning after we take a detour at his widowed sister’s home. The old woman adjusts with a quick needle those baggy trousers and shirt: when she drapes the dupatta [scarf or stole] on my head, we’re ready to go. Fieldnotes, Garshankar IN 17 December 2013

From the first time I wore a salwar-kameez in Punjab, to the recent fieldwork I conducted with South Asians across Europe, I have felt a mix of fascination and bafflement about this everyday “three-piece” garment. Composed of loose trousers, a long shirt, and a versatile stole, today the S. Bonfanti (B) University of Trento, Trento, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_11

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Punjabi suit is a dress as common as under investigated. In spite of its well-established connection with a region of origin, a throbbing question arose: can the salwar-kameez be deemed a Muslim dress, like many Pakistani interlocutors stated, or else is it a suit fit for as many reasons as wearers, in times of globalized fashion and diaspora locations (Niessen et al. 2003)? While the salwar-kameez stood as a backcloth in much of my ethnography, though in different contexts and on different bodies, its contested usage in the lives of some informants called for in-depth study. Considering dress as a “situated bodily practice” (Lewis 2015), this chapter seeks to recover how gender is embodied and subjectivities enacted through clothing. Acknowledging that the Punjabi suit entertains complex relations with ethnicity and religion, the article retraces the routes of an ethnic piece gone modern, along with the burgeoning literature on religious fashion and cosmopolitan Islamic wear. Thereafter, the data presented result from a combination of qualitative methods implemented within a large ERC research project, focused on the home experiences of migrant people in European cities conducted between 2017 and 2019 (see below for details). First, following the trail set by Tarlo (2007), with the intent to shift away from easy dichotomies religious/secular, traditional/modern, Islam/West, I revisit three Muslim women’s sartorial biographies emergent from fieldwork. Then, my discussion will benefit from auxiliary survey data on Asian fashion habits which I delivered online in times of the 2020 pandemic. The responses collected aid in making sense of the odd positions diaspora women may hold with regard to the salwar-kameez, moving between colonial histories, family stories, and localized performances of being feminine, pious, and modern subjects all at once. In the face of a changing cultural attire, this original research unstitches the salwar-kameez as an ethnic garb that stands at the crossroad of South Asian identities and intercepts the discourse on Islamic wear but does not resolve there. Seeing how this dress is produced and consumed, worn and made meaningful in the life-stories of three diaspora women, as well as debated in a larger cohort of South Asian respondents, will provide new fabric for thought. On one hand, this versatile piece of clothing can appeal to men and women alike and get

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possibly mixed with Western fashion. On the other, it is often overinterpreted as an Islamic dress, sometimes leading to misconceptions in multicultural contexts. Being the literature on salwar-kameez rather scarce, apart from notable exceptions in diaspora studies (Bhachu 2004; Brah 1996), this ethnographic chapter breaks new ground in analyzing what kind of fashion culture is associated today with a resilient ethnic wear worldwide that eventually partakes in one’s lived religion. Last, the fashion habits and rumination of interlocutors also calls into question the mimetic praxis of the ethnographer herself in conducting fieldwork: what entitlement could I claim in wearing (or not) a Punjabi suit while hanging out with participants?

Literature Review: Ethnic Fashion Gone Modern This chapter takes as its starting point a definition of “fashion” as the cultural construction of the embodied identity (Entwistle 2015). By focusing on South Asian fashion in diaspora contexts, the author investigates what kind of discourses and interactions take place around a transnational garment that intersects stories and locations, questioning the relation between gender and clothing, but also the fractures among religion, class, race and ethnicity. By selecting a niche within that camp, i.e., the experience of Muslim Hindustani women, this work considers whether and how fashion interplays with social and religious performance (Parkins 2002; Tarlo 2010). The interest in the gendering of religious fashion (how subjects express their piety through means of apparels) has gained momentum, especially in relation to Islamic dress as it is worn in the West (Lewis 2015). Muslim women engaging in “modest fashion” emphasize the pious presentation of the self, eliciting respect, acceptance, and/or desire from others (Moors and Salih 2009). Yet, constraining the salwar-kameez within the limits of modest fashion would risk overstating the ethical concerns that Muslims face amid changing relations between religion and the market (Sandikci 2020), but also miss out that the Punjabi suit has become popular wear beyond its

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geographical tab (Ho 2013). In line with these precautions, this paragraph overviews the recent literature on Asian fashion recollecting the global diffusion of the salwar-kameez itself.

Salwar-Kameez: A Critical History Despite formal gaps in the literature, commonsense knowledge from my informants confirmed that the Punjabi suit has been worn in the homonymous area since the Middle Ages and has traveled globally with overseas migrations in colonial times. My survey respondents agreed it consists of three parts: kameez (shirt or long tunic), salwar (trousers, with cuffs at the ankles), and an optional chuni or dupatta (scarf or stole) worn by women on certain occasions and in worship places. The styles, lengths, and widths of these parts vary in times and space, although the classic suit is distinctive of Punjab regardless of caste, class, and religion. The salwar-kameez is also worn by men, especially Muslim, in both Pakistan and India, and the suit’s connotations of maleness have likely played a role in its adoption by million South Asian women who might once have worn saris (Banerjee and Miller 2003), as a result of their entry into the waged labor market (Hussein 2018).2 The main watershed in the history of salwar-kameez came with the business turn that the dress took in the country where the Hindustani diaspora had grown larger and steadier. Once seen as an emblem of timeless South Asian culture (of which mothers would be repositories and transmitters), the Punjabi suit heralded a new diaspora consciousness claimed by female entrepreneurs in Britain. Following Bhachu (2003, 19): Since the Nineties, the Punjabi suit emerged as a mainstream high-fashion garment, reimagined and re-contextualized as a global chic garment, from Britain to the rest of the world. In London diaspora communities, fashion entrepreneurs have been key agents in moving the suit beyond ethnic markets and into the mainstream.

For younger Asians, bhangra dance music (a reworking of Punjabi harvest music interpreted through hip-hop) was a strong influence in

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favor of adopting the salwar-kameez and also in introducing this generation to the Punjabi language scene (Begum et al. 2018). Exploring the design and sewing businesses, shops, and street fashions in which this revolution has taken place, in her pioneer monograph Bhachu (2004) shows how the salwar-kameez stands today at the heart of new micromarkets which represent complex means of cultural dialogue and racial politics. In this multifaceted suit economy, the older women who wore their classic suits despite negative stereotyping socialized their secondgeneration daughters to wear the suits on their own terms and according to innovative design codes (Franceschelli and O’Brien 2015). Secondgeneration British Asian are credited for crafting new aesthetics, which cross cultural boundaries, battle with racism and redefine Asian identities, also to the benefits of other more recent diasporas (included those in the US [see Dasgupta 1998] and in continental Europe, see Bonfanti, 2020; Mapril 2013). What is special then to Muslim South Asian fashion and its developments in the West? Mirza (2013) highlights that clothing choices (with special regard to veiling) allows an insight into the ways in which Muslim women draw on their subjecthood and negotiate their affective “postcolonial disjunctures” against racism and Islamophobia. Like Puwar (2002) preconized, new stirrings have risen on how South Asian women play with the allure of oriental images that are beyond the appropriation of white privilege, reconstructing their own memories and sensibilities. The remainders of this chapter zoom on the experiences of salwar-kameez wearing and trading for Muslim South Asian women in Europe. Seeing their embodied intersectionality throws light on the multiple discursive powers of gender, race and religion, draped onto the very Punjabi suits these women choose to purchase or retail, wear or give away. As Schielke (2010) pondered, how do Muslim women make sense of grand schemes in everyday life, in the folds and stitches of a glamorous dress that evades any easy religionized fashion? If Islamic dress is often perceived as being incompatible with western fashion, this is due, in part, to a long legacy of orientalist and colonialist thought (Tarlo 2010). The salwar-kameez contradicts this paradigm, as not only South Asian women, Muslim or not, are able to interpret its fashion in heterodox ways, but also the

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ethnographer is eventually offered to wear it as a mean for producing reciprocity.

Methods and Context This chapter is grounded in the multisite fieldwork carried out within the ERC HOMInG Project in 2017–2020, tiptoeing between ethnographic observation and narrative interviews with South Asian diasporas in private homes and community settings across European cities. Precisely, I approached Indian and Pakistani migrants (and their 2nd generations), most between their 20s and 60s, with a prevalence of middle-aged women. Many, but not all my female interlocutors wore a salwarkameez in my presence: were they being parochial or cosmopolitan, seemingly pious or nationalist in wearing this dress upon my gaze as I was trying to understand what it meant? While there was consistency in the ethnicity/culture of these women, religious belonging varied: Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh believers were equally represented in my sample, with intersections of migration origins and destinations. For the purpose of this chapter, I chose to reason in-depth over a smaller sample of Muslim women with a South Asian background living in Europe. How did these diaspora women (re-)claim their bodies through clothing, with specific reference to their iconic suit, as they engaged with multiple social networks in their day-to-day life? What space for piety did their fashion endorse or neglect? Instead of describing what my informants wore, I reasoned with them on what to wear instead of what is worn (Tarlo 1996). There is a double bond between home and fashion; there is an etymology thread in the word “habitus” which, in Latin idioms, is root to both dress and dwell (lit. abito and abitare). Home and dress interlace as far as they both are cultural sites of belonging and self-expression. The Punjabi suit, a homely attire that reminds diasporas of their imaginary homeland (Brah 1996; Khurshid and Shah 2019), can be temporally and spatially dislocated to other than domestic private settings, such as worship places or community events. Besides, depending on people’s status and class, wearing a certain style of salwar-kameez does make a

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statement in contexts. On one hand, I met elder women for whom the Punjabi suit was second nature “like shells for snails,” as an informant in London whisked. On another, I engaged with youths who questioned the dress of their ancestors and tried to fit in western society either discarding the Punjabi suit altogether or rearranging some parts of the three-piece set with mainstream fashion. Besides, I recorded a mediating approach to Muslimah wear (Lewis and Moors 2013): while no formal rules applied, women who intended to dress modestly went for Pakistani style suits, which assured a better coverage of one’s body, skin and hair (often replacing the dupatta with a hijab). Overall, for South Asians in Europe, ethnic wear (and purdah adjustment) sounds like a personal choice umpired socially, that takes into account family and network orientations. Moreover, in entering people’s homes and community spaces, I had to consider how my own casual western fashion was perceived by informants, oftentimes sitting next to women wearing salwar-kameez. Anthropologists have often changed their demeanor as a way to gain access to the field and establish a sense of trust with informants (Okely 1996). Following Bouchetoux (2014), ethnographers suffer from both a lack and an excess of integration with people in the field, and this sense of guilt between distance and proximity may help them generate knowledge. Last, while this contribution focuses on women’s stories and their lived relation with the salwar-kameez, as a result of my gendered positionality in the field which eased the ethnographic relation, I have also come across dozen South Asian diaspora men who wore the male version of salwarkameez. Most of them wore kurta pyjamas (loose trousers and collar tunic) at home, possibly with a coat on top when partaking in ethnic events. Irrespective of class, only very few Pakistanis bore their “traditional attire” in public venues, suggesting a connotation with Islam3 stronger than women wearing the analogous suit. Although I won’t discuss what kind of masculinity the salwar-kameez may convey, I have generally found a lack of information on the cultural dynamics of South Asian male fashion (Frembgen 2004), except for early insights on queer sexuality (Gopinath 2005). Albeit this chapter discusses heteronormative

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female experiences with Asian clothing, I envision the need to widen the debate to other subjectivities, dragging out new views from the margins.

Pulling the Drawstring: Diaspora Experiences and Gendered Fashion Habits Out of the multisite ethnography conducted in Europe, three feminine sartorial biographies pinpoint the lived experience of procuring and wearing a South Asian “staple garb.” Given its territorial nuance, the salwar-kameez is not an Islamic dress per se, but it is liable to become so in the eyes of the beholder (and the wearer). Among my informants, while the salwar-kameez is deemed Punjabi in the first instance (as a matter of ethnicity), it tended to be assimilated to Pakistani Islam, thus with a specific national and religious tag. What does this mean in real-life experiences where Muslim fashion and Asian subjectivities intertwine? How do women adapt the salwar-kameez to engender their bodies properly in diaspora contexts?

Simran (Brescia): Sewing Entrepreneurship Time and again, I walked into Evergreen Ethnic Wear4 : an unpretentious store located in Brescia’s Mini-Punjab (a north Italian district home to the country’s largest Hindustani minority). Simran’s shop sign merges Italian and English words, inviting all families to find their home wear within. The owner’s enthrallment with the salwar-kameez came clear when my informant disclosed her birthplace and career journey. Simran was born in Malerkotla, a town in Punjab known as an oasis of peace and religious tolerance. According to Bigelow (2010), the place enjoys such reputation since its foundation by a Saint Sufi and thanks to the haven offered to Muslims in times of civil unrest. After studying in a private Urdu-speaking university and gained a diploma in fashion marketing, Simran agreed to an arranged marriage with an elder cousin born in Pakistan but moved to Italy a decade earlier. Despite the blue expectations that a transnational marriage reserve to many Indian

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women, her consent was subordinated to an informal promise by her groom: she would not remain homebound in Italy, but start up her own business (Radhakrishnan 2009). Things did not happen overnight: Italian bureaucracy and economic stagnation hindered Simran’s plans. In 2012 she arranged a transnational dispatch of “Indian garments” from Malerkotla to Milan on a small scale. Initially only friends and acquaintances would buy pieces from me, then, little by little, my commerce took off. When I hired a cousin from Punjab5 to make cheap adjustments and fix dresses to customers’ needs, our business turned from rags to riches!

Simran remarked that the salwar-kameez and its sub-sets gave her a chance to be the independent woman she wished to become when leaving India. When she sells her collections, not only can she make a living out of her homely fashion, but she is providing people, other women especially, with the “stuff of their dreams” (Wilson 2003), such is the versatility of the Punjabi suits (Fig. 1). There is one garment which you can wear for every season, and that is a salwar-kameez. It is a very relaxed and easy to carry ensemble, and thus can be worn all the day. You can wear it to family occasions, to work or to any casual outings, even formal events.

Yet, differences in style allow for different “womanly needs,” she argued. The difference between Pakistani and Indian suits, my informant went on, lies in their embroidery and the way they are stitched, distinguishing the two in terms of bodily exposure. In a Pakistani suit, the embroidery patches and laces are usually separate from the fabric and are assembled together while stitching. The best thing about them is that they are so decent: unlike Indian outfits, where cholis and blouses tend to be short, there is no exposure and you still look fabulous!

While South Asian ladies of all ages and walks of life pop in Simran’s boutique, and she thrives on selling bridal dresses, she encouraged native

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Fig. 1 A three-piece Punjabi suit from Simran’s latest collection

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Italians to stop by, showing great expertise on Indian fashion and its recent Pakistani turn. According to her, the salwar-kameez became a Pakistani nationalist icon in the Eighties, when Benhazir Bhutto, then Prime Minister, wore it extensively. Since then, the introduction of Pakistani television shows to Indian audiences contributed to the explosion of Pakistani fashion in the Indian market and heavily influenced Bollywood industry. Being her Karachi-born husband her principal sponsor, Simran’s supply has steered toward the other side of the Punjabi border, with partnerships between manufacturers and wholesalers that secure a constant stream of Pakistani fashion retail for her to sell in Italy, included luxury Sherwani (coats) for Punjabi men to wear on top of their male salwar-kameez for events. With demand unsteady in her walk-in store, Simran has taken a chance with electronic retailing. We skim through her latest online catalogue: fair-skin female models set a repertoire that customers try to emulate (Thapan 2004, 2009). While Punjabi young women in Italy fear that traditional clothing may expose them to discrimination in public (Bonfanti 2017), Simran’s clients turn to their staple garb as an affirmative sign. Selling and wearing the salwar-kameez stitch together several ways of embodying one’s femininity, nonetheless being a Muslim Indian female entrepreneur in a country where few other immigrant women have dared the same venture.

Debi (Amsterdam): From Slaves to Starlets Born in Suriname from a family of Indian bonded laborers in the times of plantation, then taken to Holland at age six, Debi grew up as a second generation Dutch with a wealth of memories from her grandparents left behind in the Caribe. While recollecting the Patna-style suit that her ancestors wore in the heyday, she did not come into contact again with a salwar-kameez until her twenties, when a Brit-Pakistani man relocated to the Netherlands proposed to her. Debi’s husband was outsourcing cheap labor in the Gulf and reviving his father’s trade via burgeoning global markets. For twelve years the couple lived in Dubai as golden expats,

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until their two daughters were old enough for middle school and their mother pleaded to return to the Netherlands. I was sick of us three being cut off from free mingling with people, I grew up in Amsterdam as a Hindustani6 and had my share of prejudice too, but still […] Believe me, my daughters never wore a Punjabi [suit] until we returned: it was their choice to adopt this clothing, ‘cause it would pay them off in theatre studios.

Although Muslim, Debi’s daughters turned to the salwar-kameez with an exploitative aim in mind, purely mundane. “There’s something about Bollywood that opened the door to California for them… Not that they dress this way all the time, but it’s been a profitable trademark!” she commented pleased. Now in their twenties, both sisters have made a career in acting and moved to the US to their mother’s joy. Living in the Emirates and with her husband participating in the launch of Dubai Design District, Debi was exposed to the development of Islamic Fashion, with special reference to the galaxy of veiling. The production line of her husband’s enterprise invested into abaya dresses, sought after by middle eastern Muslim women. This is where abaya and salwar-kameez differ: the silhouette of the abaya style suit covers up length down to floor-sweeping; besides the hijab is not optional. My husband always predicted that the reserved pattern of abaya can give that extraordinary feminine charm. I did wear hijabs while in the UAE, like people expected. Yet, I was glad to let it go when back in Holland. […] I converted to Islam when I got married, but my idea of being modest is not about covering my head.

Debi goes on remarking how, with salwar-kameez, draping one’s headscarf is a different matter: the dupatta allows for some freedom, but it depends on identities in context. “Pious Muslim ladies always cover their hair [she emphasized, running a hand over her bare head], Hindu ones don’t have to […]. My grandma cut herself her Punjabi [suit], but the scarf was only to protect her from the scorching sun.” Debi’s approach to veiling is inconsistent with the Islam embodied by most Dutch Arab Muslims, for whom the hijab is a visual ambassador of piety (van Es

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2019), and it is best understood in light of her Hindu upbringing and secular attitude (Fig. 2). I never saw Debi dressed in salwar-kameez, though she sported bright kurtas over tight pants when going out for dinner together, her black hair waving behind her. Still, she had a collection of Punjabi suits in her spare bedroom’s wardrobe, arranged according to her husband’s production timeline. Once hosting me there, I slept on a futon next to her parentsin-law’s portrait: a stern-looking couple since passed away. The lady, a Pakistani-born moved to London, posed wearing an embroidered 1970s salwar-kameez next to her husband, dressed in a smoky grey western suit. Passed the hall with Ganesha’s figurines, Debi served me breakfast in the dining room where her Americanized daughters’ photos and newspaper cut-outs pictured them in the latest trend of Punjabi suits, placed right under a Mecca silk canvas. In this Hindustani woman’s biography were sewn apparently scattered rags of life; while Debi hardly wore it, the salwar-kameez was part and parcel of her personal memory and family history, the fabric of her serial diasporic designs.

Rachida (Birmingham): Fashion Heritage and the Body Proper A series of events took place across Birmingham in 2017 to mark the 70th anniversary of India’s and Pakistan’s independence (Yusin 2009), culminating in exhibitions that extended the Year of South Asian culture into 2018. Visiting an oral history project which featured memoirs of people who had experienced the Partition and moved to the city afterwards, I ended up interviewing the curator. Rachida was born in England in the Sixties; a grandmother by now, she had secured a professional role in heritage conservation, including the cultural legacy of British India. I interviewed Rachida twice: first collecting her own life story, then shopping along down Ladypool Road, the heart of Balti7 errands. Not by chance, the salwar-kameez took much actual and imaginative space in her narratives.

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Fig. 2 A diaspora family portrait: Tailoring memories. Painting by an unknown artist

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This witty woman had a wondrous family story to tell: her mother was kidnapped during the Partition, and apparently only the style of her salwar-kameez prevented her from being violated. My people lived in Gujrat, right where the border was enforced almost overnight… Many lost their relatives in partition-riots, and when news spread that a village was attacked honor killings were committed. My grandfather owned a looming company on the Pakistani side, and sold his produce in the Indian market: my mother was just 12, and they spared her asking ransom cause they could see by the way she was dressed that she must belong to a wealthy zat.8 […] So, I could say I was born thanks to the price of a salwar!

That the Punjabi suit is a dear investment for women’s self-fashioning, it was clear strolling along Sparkbrook, the shopping quarter where, in Victorian brick houses, family stores run by Pakistani vendors sell a variety of homeware, from halal meat to party wear. My informant toured me around the area, and finally entered into Khussa House to buy a nice pair of flat leather slippers with a curved tip. Returning home, Rachida invited me in for a chai (tea) and tried on her new handcrafted shoes. To my astonishment that right and left foot were identical, she replied: “So are women and men, you can adapt them to fit in life only wearing them day after day”. Bearing grey pants and a crimson blouse at work, my informant changed at home in a greenand-golden embroidered suit, throwing over her shoulders a matching dupatta that her sister had fetched for her on a trip to West London (Khurshid and Shah 2019). Within minutes, Anju, her daughter-inlaw, joined us, followed by her little girl asking for supper (as it often happens among British Asian families. Rachida’s elder son and his wife lived in with his parents). While the infant wore a pre-school pinafore, it surprised me seeing the young woman wrapped in a chador. Once mother and daughter went upstairs, grandma was quick at explaining that Pakistani women’s dress choices depended on one’s generation in the country more than age and on one’s class rather than piety. As her daughter-in-law had been taken to Britain in her teens, she did prefer to maintain a “traditional look,” which also was appropriate with her

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family lower status, though respectful of Muslim tenets. Rachida quoted the Qur’an in that particular situation as a way to legitimize a modest look that she did not observe: (Fig. 3). Islam says that the believing women should lower their gaze and guard their modesty that they should not display their beauty and ornaments; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands and fathers…

Despite raising the issue of modesty (Abu-Lughod 2004), Rachida regarded herself as a moderate Muslim and modern middle-class woman by the act of wearing interchangeably western and designer Punjabi suits and pinched her nose at Anju’s failure to prove equally so. As Werbner (2005) explained, honor and shame, defined as the need to guard female sexuality, have never been extreme in Punjab, and among overseas Muslim Punjabis veiling used not to be common. Recently though, young Muslims in Britain seem to contend with these conflicts by adopting voluntarily what seems an extreme Islamic ideology of purdah for women, moving away from a comprehensive South Asian community assertion. At the same time, upper-middle-class Pakistanis often refuse marriages for their sons with veiled girls, since wearing the hijab is still frequently associated with elite Punjabis with lowermiddle-class status (Dwyer 1999). Discontented with her son’s humble “love marriage,” my elder and yet modern informant fidgeted with her dupatta: was it indeed the guise of a salwar-kameez to display a woman’s worth?

From a Digital Survey to a Tentative Discussion In Spring 2020, due to Covid-19 travel restrictions, together with an Indian fashion stylist living in London, I developed an online survey on “Salwar-Kameez: Fashion and Culture” aimed at former research participants. The majority of respondents were female professionals aged between 31 and 45, with a Hindustani heritage, living in the UK, Italy,

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Fig. 3 Looking for purdah in the window: a Brit-Asian fashion district

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or the NL, thus representing a larger cohort where the biographies above described pertain. While I won’t discuss here the complex methodological issues which are imbued in digital ethnography (Pink et al. 2015), overall, the responses collected bear witness to how disputed the salwarkameez is. On one hand, groups bonded by nationality or religion tend to consider the Punjabi suit as their own “original craft.” On another, the residence location and diaspora experience of each respondent reshuffled the cards. On both transnational ends, different generation South Asian women spare the salwar-kameez for ritual as well as mundane events. Consistently, these suits circulate as gifts between kin relations, so to reestablish affective ties also across transnational distance. While online retail and lay seamstresses provide for everyday clothing errands, top-notch stores cater for ultimate shopping desires as a sign of distinction. How to compare the previous three sartorial biographies along such lines of interpretation? These women’s engagement with the Punjabi suits speaks back to their intersectional belonging besides being Hindustani Muslim: their country of residence, family background, and personal biography impinge on their dress choices vis-à-vis normative views of this homely garb. Albeit their devotion may differ, they all convened that the salwar-kameez makes a potential fit for Islamic wear in terms of body decency, but recognize that this dress allows for hybrid and alternative wearing that does not necessarily conform to modest fashion. Interestingly, a polarization has taken place insofar as the only possible modest salwar-kameez would be a national speciality of Pakistan. Zaina, the seamstress hired by Simran since she started her transnational fashion business in Italy, made clear the differences in style that Muslim or non-Muslim women go for when purchasing a Punjabi suit. Indian salwar suits are straight fit either short or medium length. Necklines can be audacious. Sleeveless and even backless Salwar dresses are a risk taken by Indian women to look sexy [she grinned] […] Pakistani salwar suit is embroidered in thread and resham [silk]. The length is long, with full or elbow sleeves. Neckline is collared or round. The dupatta in Pakistani salwar suit is heavier than in Indian ones. […] When you look at a woman in a salwar suit, you know at a glance what her style and pattern say about her, also if she is an observant Muslim or not!

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Said simply, salwar-kameez can expose or conceal women’s body, skin and hair. We could argue that the Indian style suit is often bolder than the Pakistani one, which complies instead with purdah requirements. Yet, Hindustani women are exceptionally strategic in choosing the appropriate outfit for different audiences, thus they may follow or transgress ethnicized ideas of femininity and pious gendered embodiment. According to Pereira-Ares (2018), for Asian diasporans, negotiating what to wear transcends the cultural–religious sphere, and choosing a particular style underscores aesthetic as well as political messages. Even more so in an age when identity and ethnicity are expressed through the lifestyle and consumer performance. Besides, the salwar-kameez industry demonstrates a simultaneous speeding up and slowing down of Asian clothing, nuancing the distance between fast and slow fashion, mass production and craftsmanship (Fletcher 2007; Kuldova 2017). Unrolling hanks of textiles, Zaina matches iridescent Asian fabrics with her clients’ skin-tone and the feminine idea she believes they may or should embody. There is a subtle negotiation between seamstress and wearer, with an anticipation that adjustments are always at hand. “No ready-made is fit for wearing straight from the box,” she grins. As she recommends which style and pattern of salwar-kameez may suit me best, she’s taking measures of the woman I might be, and I feel the burden of partaking in this bodily mediation.

Conclusion The borough is crowded with locals and tourists, ‘Eid celebrations are starting tonight. To fare Ramadan well, in London’s Chota Punjab the Sikh majority has given way to people from the other side of the Border. My Kashmiri friend Manjoot takes me to a premiere fashion store: the vendor is her husband’s cousin and she bargains the price of our Punjabi suits unashamedly. For a Sikh woman who works at Heathrow and sports only branded western clothes, there’s no better chance to spend money on a salwar-kameez she would then wear for Diwali. Fieldnotes: Southall, UK June 2018

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This chapter has surfed through multiple instances of wearing (or not) the Punjabi suit as navigated by South Asian diaspora women in Europe today. While the personal stories presented featured only Muslim women, with an intention to challenge the idea that the salwar-kameez is an emblem of Islamic fashion, it is worth reiterating that survey respondents fell into a broader sample especially with regard to religion. Once acknowledged that Hindustani diasporas do wear and trade their quintessence dress, one has to remark that not only Muslims do so and, even among them, many do not identify their dress as being modest but merely a sign of ethnicity which can be problematic in western contexts. On one side, informants showed emotional attachment to the Punjabi suit as an ethnic garment eventually morphed into global chic fashion. On another, they all came to terms with the riddle of wearing a dress that was seen as foreign in Western contexts, if not an expression of radical Islam in the eyes of onlookers. With reference to the opening and closing vignettes, those ethnographic moments reveal that Punjabi suits are equally common and advisable among Sikh communities (Kapur 2010), so that I chose a mimetic look under the approving gaze of research participants. Although those episodes occurred in different conditions (in India I was expected to conform to a dress code suitable for visiting gurdwaras, in Britain, I shopped along with an informant in search of a designer suit for a ritual festival), wearing salwar-kameez made me cognizant of the enormous and yet shifting symbolic values that this dress maintains among different cohorts of South Asians “home and away”, in private and public, in the homeland and the diaspora. From (multi)religious apparel to party wear, different generations of South Asian diaspora women engage with the salwar-kameez as a fashion item suitable to make their “body proper” upon specifications (Lock and Farquhar 2007). By addressing gender and its intersections, this clothing style reveals the many cultural codes interwoven in a Punjabi suit, but also the agency of its wearers. While this chapter could not cover the full range of experiences encountered in the field, the sartorial biographies reported illuminating how dear and yet contested this garment can be for South Asians in the West. Muslim women, in particular, have to juggle with their desire or need to maintain a modest appearance (i.e., caring for their

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body not to be overexposed). While following the latest trend in fashion, paying homage to the traditional Punjabi suit and managing their ethnic look in multicultural cities, these women are evading discriminatory behaviors and reclaiming their right to participate in modernity and religion at their own pace. Moreover, they are fashioning their gendered and racialized bodies to occupy visibily the space they inhabit (Puwar 2004). Whether retailers, actresses, grandmas, in Britain, Holland, Italy or elsewhere, wearing salwar-kameez means playing out with a three-piece set, and being able to dress up one’s femininity in different everyday milieus. Despite inevitable contradictions, no other attire could make Hindustani women’s lives more rooted in a hoary but thriving fashion culture, open to unprecedented diasporic designs.

Notes 1. I treasured that suit since, and went back home a month later carrying a suitcase packed with “three-pieces” for that girl relocated in Italy: a disparaged array put together by friends and relatives left behind in the homeland. 2. Shroff (2019) argues that the salwar-kameez is marketed as ‘pious capital’ in today’s Pakistan: the quintessence of feminine piety and modern productivity. 3. While as womenswear the salwar-kameez is adopted irrespective of religious belonging (though specific styles cater for Islamic modesty), as menswear the Punjabi suit is primarily a Pakistani national garb. 4. Names of places and informants have been altered and anonymized, in order to respect people’s privacy and comply with research ethics. 5. While this chapter focuses upon the consumers of a specific South Asian dress, we cannot underestimate the labour relations of workers in the Indian garment industry. Ready-to-wear salwar-kameez can also bear the mark of the exploitation of women’s bodies at production sites (Mezzadri 2016). 6. The majority of Indian descent people in the Netherlands are IndoSurinamese: their ancestors were northern Indian indentured workers transferred to the Dutch colony Suriname during the nineteenth and twentieth century. After independency (1975), thousands moved to the Netherlands where they are considered as Hindustanis.

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7. Since the ‘80s Birmingham has grown into a popular destination for Balti curry houses. 8. Zat (or jat ) loosely translates with caste, more appropriately with birth group.

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Moors, Annelies, and Ruba Salih. 2009. “Muslim women” in Europe: Secular Normativities, Embodied Performances, Multiple Publics. Social Anthropology 17 (4): 375–377. Niessen, Sandra, Ann Marie Leshkowich, and Carla Jones. 2003. Re-orienting Fashion: The Globalization of Asian Dress. Oxford: Berg. Okely, Judith. 1996. Own or Other Culture. London: Routledge. Parkins, Wendy. (Ed.). 2002. Fashioning the Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship. New York-Oxford: Berg. Pereira-Ares, Noemi. 2018. Fashion, Dress and Identity in the Narratives of the South Asian Diaspora: From the Eighteenth Century to Monica Ali. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Pink, Sarah, Heather Horst, John Postill, Larissa Hjorth, Tania Lewis, and Jo Tacchi, Jo. 2015. Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage. Puwar, Nirmal. 2002. Multicultural Fashion… Stirrings of Another Sense of Aesthetics and Memory. Feminist Review 71: 63–87. ———. 2004. Space Invaders. Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. London: Bloomsbury. Radhakrishnan, Smitha. 2009. Professional Women, Good Families: Respectable Femininity and the Cultural Politics of a ‘New’ India. Qualitative Sociology 32 (2): 195–212. Sandikci, Ozlem. 2020. Religion and Everyday Consumption Ethics: A Moral Economy Approach. Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10 551-019-04422-2. Schielke, Samuli. 2010. Second Thoughts About the Anthropology of Islam, or How to Make Sense of Grand Schemes in Everyday Life. ZMO Working Papers, 2. Berlin: Zentrum Moderner Orient. Shroff, Sara. 2019. Pious Capital: Fashionable Femininity and the Predicament of Financial Freedom. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 4 (4–5): 360– 376. Tarlo, Emma. 1996. Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2007. Islamic Cosmopolitanism: The Sartorial Biographies of Three Muslim Women in London. Fashion Theory 11 (2–3): 1–30. ———. 2010. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics and Faith. London: Bloomsbury. Thapan, Meenakshi. 2004. Embodiment and Identity in Contemporary Society: Femina and the ‘New’ Indian Woman”. Contributions to Indian Sociology 38 (3): 411–444.

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———. 2009. Living the Body: Embodiment, Womanhood and Identity in Contemporary India. London: SAGE Publications. van Es, Margaretha A. 2019. Muslim Women as ‘Ambassadors’ of Islam: Breaking Stereotypes in Everyday Life. Identities 26 (4): 375–392. Wilson, Elizabeth. 2003. Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. Rutgers University Press. Werbner, Pnina. 2005. Honor, Shame and the Politics of Sexual Embodiment Among South Asian Muslims in Britain and Beyond: An Analysis of Debates in the Public Sphere. International Social Science Review 6 (1): 25–47. Yusin, Jennifer. 2009. The Silence of Partition: Borders, Trauma, and Partition History. Social Semiotics 19 (4): 453–468.

Materiality, the Malah . fa (Mauritanian Veil), and Social Hierarchy Katherine Ann Wiley

In the early twenty-first century, women in the northwest African country of Mauritania continue to wear, indeed prefer wearing, the malah.fa, a type of veil that has been present for well over one hundred years (Ruf 1999).1 While the fabrics have changed dramatically, this garment has remained quite similar in style: it is composed of six yards of cloth that wrap around the body and cover the head. Women anchor one end of the malah.fa in place by knotting it around their shoulders, forming a kind of tunic. The remaining length is draped over the head and wrapped around the body to provide close to full coverage, while generally exposing the face and hands. Women begin wearing the malah.fa around puberty, draping it over modest western clothes. In a rapidly modernizing society in which men have been moving increasingly toward the wearing of western clothing, why do women value this K. A. Wiley (B) Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_12

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particular garment? What does the malah.fa do for women and why do they persist in wearing it? How does its meaning vary for different social groups? These are questions that I investigate in this piece. Dress and beauty are important preoccupations for many young women in Kankossa, a town of about ten thousand people in southeastern Mauritania where I conducted my ethnographic research.2 This is the case among all ethnic groups, including the H . ar¯at.¯ın who make up about 40 percent of the population (McDougall 2010, 259). H . ar¯at.¯ın are former slaves or slave descendants of the B¯ız.a¯n, people who claim Berber or Arab descent. Mauritania’s recent legal abolishment of slavery in 1981 means that H . ar¯at.¯ın continue to face discrimination in the social, economic, and political realms.3 Despite such challenges, H . ar¯at.¯ın women actively work to build meaningful lives for themselves in a variety of ways, including by nurturing relationships, pursuing entrepreneurial activities, and exhibiting generosity (Wiley 2018). In this chapter, I focus on this group because dress plays an important role in how they assert their social worth. Sartorial concerns are highlighted at family ceremonies, especially weddings when women don their finest malah.fas and display fashionable ensembles that include chic purses, sparkling jewelry, and stylish heels. At one H . ar¯at.¯ın wedding in a village not far from Kankossa, the morning after a celebration at the groom’s family’s home, the groom’s female relatives decided it was time for the bride, Meimouna, to “wear her clothes.”4 She appeared wearing the black malah.fa that brides traditionally don when appearing in public for the first time as married women. The women proceeded to strip her of this garment and began to yith.affel (dress up, decorate) her with clothing and accessories that were part of her bridewealth. The crucial part of her new outfit was the malah.fa. The women emphasized that it came from the capital, was a popular style, and was expensive, costing 6,000 MRO or approximately $21 USD.5 This veil consisted of white transparent material and was decorated with a pattern of abstract orange flowers. Since women wear other garments beneath their malah.fas, this veil’s transparency meant that the bride’s fashionable dress was also visible. The women’s dressing of the bride did not end with clothing. They proceeded to apply makeup and deck her in sparkling jewelry, attaching her earrings, slipping a bracelet

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onto her wrist, and positioning large, eye-catching rings on each hand. Throughout this process, they instructed Meimouna on how to manage her own sartorial choices as a married woman. They advised that she should dress beautifully when her husband was home (he worked in a nearby town), take care of her new jewelry, and wear the most exquisite pieces only on special occasions. The women’s attention to Meimouna’s dress and the advice they offered regarding clothing are linked to their understandings of how women’s dress can have a real impact on the wearer and others. After all, Meimouna’s dress would play a significant role in transforming her into the kind of sophisticated, refined, moral, and beautiful woman her husband expected. Her malah.fa is not simply passive but, along with the accompanying accessories, affects the kind of married woman she can become. In analyzing such conceptions of dress, I draw on the scholarship of materiality, which argues that people and objects coconstitute each other and should thus be analyzed together (Gell 1998; Miller 2005b). This focus is useful because of what it reveals about the garment itself, demonstrating how the malah.fa’s particular form and fabric provide the wearer with certain constraints and possibilities. The framework of materiality also illustrates how women embody these garments, exerting agency and creativity to attempt to control the meanings of their dress. This approach thus draws attention to agency, both of the clothing itself and of the wearer, in ways that more traditional approaches to understanding the veil in Muslim societies do not. In my analysis, I employ an intersectional lens, building on scholarship that has explored the rich meanings of Muslim women’s dress beyond the religious realm (Abu-Lughod 2002; Buggenhagen 2012; Mir 2014; Renne 2013; Tarlo 2010). Such work urges us to view Muslim women as three-dimensional and not only characterized by their religious identities. While malah.fas do have important religious meaning for women, here I argue that dress is an essential part of how H . ar¯at.¯ın women navigate social rank on a daily basis. Their malah.fas are integral to how they assert improved social standing since they use them to generate and display their piety, morality, wealth, and femininity, all attributes that historically have been valued in this setting. This study thus provides insight

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into social change, especially into how dress is an integral way through which women attempt to shape the broader social hierarchy.

Shifting Social Rank The B¯ız.a¯n and H . ar¯at.¯ın comprise the majority of Mauritania’s population, with sub-Saharan African groups making up the remaining portion. The B¯ız.a¯n have historically dominated the country politically and economically. In recent decades, some H . ar¯at.¯ın have made substantial gains—the runner-up in the last three presidential elections has been H . ar¯at.¯ın—but many H . ar¯at.¯ın remain disadvantaged, especially due to the lingering stigma of slavery. This stigma is amplified partly because H . ar¯at.¯ın’s status as former slaves is marked by their generally dark skin color since many are of black African descent, as well as their shared attributes with their former masters. B¯ız.a¯n and H . ar¯at.¯ın speak the same dialect of Arabic, Hassaniya, and share many cultural attributes including religion, diet, and dress.6 B¯ız.a¯n and H . ar¯at.¯ın society is composed of a hierarchical system in ¯ which H ar¯ a t ı n . . have long occupied an inferior position; however, the fluidity of social rank also means that people have long manipulated their positions within it, whether by shifting the political or ethnic group with which they identified (Cleaveland 2002; Villasante-de Beauvais 2000), gaining wealth and respectability to improve their social standing (McDougall 2005), or taking advantage of legal and environmental changes (Bonte 1990). High social rank was historically linked to genealogy, and also to achieve attributes such as wealth, respectability, religiosity, and generosity. Today H . ar¯at.¯ın and others attempt to display such attributes themselves and also negotiate the underpinnings of status. Some of the avenues for asserting social value include claiming a significant temporal distance from slavery, expanding social networks, accumulating wealth, and displaying piety (Wiley 2018). Fashioning oneself as a pious and beautiful woman has also long been an important means of asserting femininity and claiming social worth in Mauritania (Lesourd 2010, 99; Simard 1996; Tauzin 2001). Exhibiting religiosity is important in this Islamic Republic where the population is

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close to 100 percent Muslim. This can especially be the case for H . ar¯at.¯ın women since historically religious knowledge was associated with free people and higher social rank, although in practice many slaves were Muslim (Ruf 1999, 262). As is common elsewhere in the Muslim world, today Mauritanian women and men debate what it means to be a good Muslim and dress practices are part of these discussions. For example, during my fieldwork women questioned the appropriateness of wearing pants beneath the malah.fa, using skin whitening creams, and applying lotion immediately before praying. They also debated how much of the body the malah.fa should cover, with some women contending that it should be wrapped tightly around the face, while others asserted that looser wrapping was acceptable. Beyond being linked to Islam, dress and bodily comportment have signified social rank. For example, during the colonial period, both freeborn B¯ız.a¯n women and slaves would have worn versions of the malah.fa, but freeborn women would have often had access to larger and newer pieces of cloth. Similarly, slaves were not subject to the same dress conventions as freeborn women. While elites were expected to dress modestly, slaves tied their malah.fas around their waists when working in fields, exposing their arms and heads (Brhane 1997, 72).7 These associations of status and how clothing is worn continue today, with one woman telling me that B¯ız.a¯n fully cover their bodies, but that people with black skin “will just toss [their malah.fa] over their shoulders, not caring if their arms show.” Such examples illustrate how piety, femininity, and social rank are intertwined in Mauritania and how dress can be an important aspect of asserting them. Historically, social status was also literally embodied for women, with elite women cultivating the larger body types that they considered ideal (Tauzin 2001). Families who could afford it encouraged their daughters to gain weight, sometimes through force feeding. While fattening served as a way to control women’s sexuality by limiting their movement, it also readied girls for marriage, transformed young women into adults, and displayed families’ social status. The latter was because it was expensive to fatten a daughter and because it meant that she literally could not conduct manual labor, which was associated with low social rank. Slaves and other lower status women could not afford the time or

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resources needed to fatten and thus their thinner figures signified their lower social positions. While such conventions are shifting today (Tauzin 2007), many women in contemporary Kankossa continue to prefer larger figures. Today, both locally hand-dyed veils and imported malah.fas are available in a dizzying array of fabrics, patterns, and colors. Both H . ar¯at.¯ın and B¯ız.a¯n women wear, sell, produce, and consume these garments. Men are involved with some aspects of this sector, including selling malah.fas and bulk materials for the locally-produced veils; however, women prepare veils for dyeing and perform most of the dyeing itself, partly because such tasks are viewed as women’s work (Wiley 2018, 163–171). While in the past, the type of malah.fa and the way women wore it would have signified slaves’ lower status, today this garment plays an important role in displaying and producing H . ar¯at.¯ın women’s improved social standing. The particular form and fabric of the malah.fa provide women with certain possibilities that they try to capitalize on to present themselves as fashionable, respectable people. Not all women approach these projects in the same ways, which illustrates the range of meanings embedded in the malah.fa, and how women debate what it means to be a respectable, modern woman (Fig. 1).

The Materiality of Dress While malah.fas are not sentient, the impact they have on wearers is shaped by their material properties. Anthropologist Daniel Miller (2005b) has emphasized the importance of examining the materiality of objects as a way to better understand how things operate. This approach argues that objects and people co-constitute each other; clothing is not simply passively controlled by wearers, but it impacts their lives as well. He and others have explored such processes, whether through the free end of a sari tripping the wearer (Banerjee and Miller 2003), veils helping women to cultivate their religious virtues (Mahmood 2005), or new types of silk fabric making it difficult for headscarves to be styled as they formerly had been (Ünal and Moors 2012).

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Fig. 1 Malah . fas for sale in a shop in Kankossa. Many of the pictured veils are hand dyed locally

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Clothing—and by extension material culture more generally—thus affects how people experience the world and their possibilities for action. As Webb Keane argues, clothing does more than simply express identities; it makes particular behaviors and outcomes possible. He describes how pocketless Sumbanese clothing allows objects to be hidden in its folds in a precarious manner; thus wearers can discard items that would be dangerous to intentionally dispose of (a talisman) by letting them fall to the ground “accidentally” (2005b, 192). Likewise, a woman who commonly wears a sari “is not just a person wearing a sari, because the dynamism and demands of the sari may transform everything from the manner in which she encounters other people to her sense of what it is to be modern or rational” (Miller 2005b, 32; Banerjee and Miller 2003). Similarly, the various material properties of the malah.fa influence its potential effects on wearers, illustrating how “persons and things exist in mutual self-construction” (Miller 2005b, 38).8 While clothing engenders certain possibilities, the wearer embodies this clothing and must activate particular meanings. Clothes, after all, “are not worn passively but require people’s active collaboration” (Hansen 2000, 6). Such projects involve substantial labor, knowledge, and resources, and thus highlight women’s agency, challenging claims that Muslim women’s clothing is primarily oppressive and imposed by men. This conception of dress diverges from the ways in which scholars have previously analyzed Muslim women’s veiling. Scholars have critiqued analyses of veils that presents them as primarily religious or oppressive garments (Abu-Lughod 2002; Moors and Tarlo 2007; Rasmussen 2013). They argue that veiling practices are not monolithic, but rather are shaped by particular cultural, political, and religious contexts (Abu– Lughod 2002; Rasmussen 2013). Scholars have demonstrated how veils can be political tools that women employ for resistance (El Guindi 1999), signs of modernity (Bernal 1994), and fashionable garments (Moors and Tarlo 2007; Renne 2013; Tarlo 2010). This complexity of analysis resonates in Mauritania where the malah.fa has been shown to signify women’s religious and cosmopolitan identities (Tauzin 2007; Wiley 2013), their national identities (Simard 1996; Tauzin 2001), and their concern with global fashion (Tauzin 2007). Focusing on the materiality of the malah.fa, and thus its agency, helps us further complicate

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the meaning of veiling by demonstrating how garments can impact women’s actions. It thus pushes us to analyze people and their clothing together, considering both how clothing allows and constricts particular actions and how women work to activate, manipulate, and control their garments and their meanings. Approaching the malah.fa in this way illuminates women’s agency and their changing social circumstances.

The Duality of the Malah.fa: Religious Garment and Vehicle for Seduction As an unstitched garment, one of the most striking aspects of the malah.fa is its flexibility. Its free end, which women drape over their heads, arms, and less commonly their faces, is not firmly anchored in place and is thus subject to constant adjustments. Unlike some forms of Muslim dress such as the burqa that hide the body from view, the malah.fa’s flexibility means that it can reveal women’s bodies, along with their clothing and accessories. For example, a woman who allows the free end of the malah.fa to fall off her head when spending time with close female friends can display her arms, shoulders, and hair. The flexibility of this garment provides women with certain possibilities for action. This includes the ability to attract attention by exposing their accompanying accessories or to flirt by revealing a shoulder or arm. Most women have great control over their malah.fas’ movements, having worn them since their early teenage years, and so are not solely at the garment’s mercy; this was presumably the case when a young woman’s malah.fa repeatedly slid off her head in the market when she had a new hairstyle to show off. Conversely, the garment’s flexibility means that it also can be used to modestly cover the body. Some women contend that the malah.fa should always be tightly wrapped around the face in public and it is common to see women adjusting their malah.fas to ensure maximum coverage. The malah.fa’s form thus also means that it can be a way through which women emphasize and make visible their religiosity (Fig. 2). The malah.fa thus has a dual nature, since it can be used for seduction or to cultivate modesty. As Annelies Moors argues, “Things do not have

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Fig. 2 Woman feeding chickens in a malah . fa. Note how the malah . fa fully covers her arms

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either a religious or a secular, non-religious, status; rather, the ways in which forms become or cease to be religious may well shift in the course of their production, circulations, and consumption, and depends on the intentions of those engaging with them” (2012, 276). While the malah.fa itself provides the possibility of being used for seduction or to assert piety, women have to activate these meanings. A woman who allows a forearm to casually show in front of a suitor can send a message of her interest. Likewise, since a woman must choose to position the malah.fa in a way that ensures full coverage, doing so can be a way of performing her piety. Furthermore, the malah.fa’s flexibility means that it can rapidly fluctuate between these two realms. For example, when the bride’s relatives carefully arranged Meimouna’s malah.fa to cover her modestly, they were emphasizing this garment’s role in shaping and presenting her as a moral, pious woman. However, during a subsequent photo session with their friends, the groom readjusted Meimouna’s veil to show off her jewelry saying that making it visible was “very important.” This gesture thus highlighted her beauty and accessories. The malah.fa’s duality—as a garment that can seduce others or project modesty—is also reinforced by some types of fabric and how they fall. As an unfitted garment, the malah.fa conforms to Islamic notions of modesty by loosely enveloping the wearer and not clinging to the body. Some synthetic fabrics exaggerate these processes since when starched they stand out from the body, thus extending women’s presences spatially and helping to create their importance (Bastian 2013, 22; Hill 2018; Sylvanus 2016, 27). On the one hand, these silhouettes emphasize women’s piety by masking their figures, giving them egg-shaped silhouettes. On the other hand, they also adhere to Mauritanian beauty standards, drawing attention to, amplifying, and in some cases creating women’s fuller figures. Since many women continue to value large body sizes, their malah.fas emphasize their beauty. The malah.fa, then, may not just assert only a woman’s religiosity or her beauty; in some cases it does both. Of course, the dual nature of the garment can be problematic for women, as is clear in some women’s and men’s critiques of how they wear their veils. For example, it is common to hear a young woman’s mother and friends admonishing her if they feel her malah.fa is not properly in

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place. However, the very flexibility of the malah.fa provides women with a layer of protection from accusations of immodesty, since they can call a slip of the fabric an accident. After all, malah.fas’ movements cannot always be controlled; a gust of wind can easily blow them out of place. Women can also defend against accusations that they are devoting too much time to their looks by emphasizing the religious nature of their veils. Of course, such contentions are not always accepted, but this dual nature provides a level of freedom, and perhaps the enduring popularity of the malah.fa is influenced by its ability to navigate within and between secular and religious realms. While the malah.fa functions in this way for all wearers, slave descendants can capitalize on its dual nature to assert social rank. While slaves could marry, they had to seek permission from their masters, who could also dissolve such unions or separate partners (Ali 2010). The ability to use a garment to flirt with others is a way through which women today assert control over their relationships and sexuality. Emphasizing their plumpness by wearing a malah.fa that stands out from the body also signifies free status since, historically, slaves would not have had the time or resources to cultivate fuller figures. It also draws attention to H . ar¯at.¯ın’s improved socioeconomic positions as people who can cultivate particular kinds of beautiful bodies. This is further the case because malah.fas tend to stand out from the body best when they are new, thus signifying a woman’s ability to afford to purchase new clothing or the wealth of people in her social network since women are often gifted veils by others. Highlighting their religiosity is also important for slave descendants. While many slaves were Muslim, they were often not allowed to participate fully in religious life (Ruf 1999). By cultivating modest ensembles that emphasize their piety, H . ar¯at.¯ın assert their social value and free status. For example, when I asked a good H . ar¯at.¯ın friend what I could bring her from the capital city, she instructed me to return with a white malah.fa. She told me to choose an opaque fabric and a wide veil since then “in the market you don’t have to constantly be adjusting your malah.fa and it covers all of you.” These instructions signified my friend’s piety in a variety of ways. For one, white is associated with Islam and is the color that Muslims wear when on pilgrimage in Mecca. Furthermore,

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the veil’s width and opaqueness would ensure full, modest coverage, even when she was working in the market. The meaning of my friend’s choice also ventured beyond the religious realm. The expansive width of this malah.fa draws attention to the large figure that she had cultivated, which both signifies her beauty and her claim to the wealth necessary to do so. The light color also emphasizes her lack of participation in manual labor, since it is not a practical color to wear when engaging in activities where it might become soiled. H . ar¯at.¯ın women thus capitalize on the malah.fa’s flexible qualities to assert their social worth in a variety of ways. This white veil highlights my friend’s improved social rank by drawing attention to her piety, fullfigured beauty, socioeconomic standing, and avoidance of manual labor. As her example illustrates, the veil and the wearer work together to create a variety of meanings, including piety and attractiveness, and what a single veil signifies can shift back and forth between these two realms.

Malah.fas, Wealth, and Social Networks The flexibility of the malah.fa’s form thus provides women with the means to seduce and/or display modest personas. Beyond this property, the kind of fabric a malah.fa is made of also impacts how women can present themselves. Donning a veil in the new or high-quality fabric can draw attention to a woman’s fashionability and her socioeconomic status. Such processes are important ways through which H . ar¯at.¯ın women assert their wealth, social connections, and power and thus shape their social rank; however, women are not always successful in their attempts to do so. Women consider the relative newness of a malah.fa to be an important quality. This belief was illustrated by three H . ar¯at.¯ın teenage girls complaining to their parents about not having new clothes to wear on a holiday, as is common practice in Mauritania. Their parents were experiencing financial difficulties and had decided not to purchase them new outfits. To make matters worse, their mother did have several new veils, but she planned to sell them in the market. The daughters’ distress illustrates how, while a woman may be beautiful in an older garment, new items can make a grander impression. A veil can only be new on the first

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wearing, so at that moment its impact is magnified. This is especially the case in a small town like Kankossa where people can easily keep track of others’ dress since they see each other frequently. Wearing new clothing also signifies the wearer’s ability to access resources. Some women purchase new clothing with money they earn themselves. Their dress thus indexes their wealth as well as their industriousness. The former quality has long been associated with elite status in this region so claiming it is a way that H . ar¯at.¯ın highlight improved social rank. For example, when the women specified the high cost of the bride’s malah.fa, they were partly emphasizing the socioeconomic standing of the groom’s family who had bought it for her. Today, veils hail from all over the world, including from Saudi Arabia, India, and Japan, and many women are familiar with the varying quality and durability of these garments. The ability of a malah.fa to index women’s wealth is thus often heightened by people’s vast knowledge of veils’ economic value, which means that wearing an expensive malah.fa can make a woman’s wealth visible without her saying a word. In the case of industriousness, while hard work was formerly associated with lower status individuals, today H . ar¯at.¯ın women emphasize it as an important part of social worth in the neoliberal era (Wiley 2018). Being able to obtain new clothes themselves thus also demonstrates their participation in modern forms of labor. Similarly, the quantity of malah.fas that a woman owns can also be a signifier of a woman’s financial standing and her community. One middle-aged H . ar¯at.¯ın women explained to me that, in the past, a woman might only have one malah.fa that she washed and wore daily. Holding up her own malah.fa, she noted, “I wear this one now, but the chest can’t close because of malah.fas. There wasn’t wealth during early times, but now there is a lot.” Her overflowing chest of clothing indexes her wealth. Furthermore, while slaves could be separated from kin and community and could not easily build the networks that are important in claiming social value, H . ar¯at.¯ın dress today can make visible and reinforce women’s communities. For example, at weddings like Meimouna’s, the bridewealth includes many new malah.fas, which index women’s social networks in two ways. First, these gifts are often purchased with contributions from friends and family and thus their magnitude can indicate the breadth of the groom’s family’s social network (as can an overflowing

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chest of veils). Second, these malah.fas are typically distributed among the bride’s family’s networks so when women later wear them it reinforces their membership in this community. Such processes are important ways through which slave descendants make visible, expand, and reinforce their social networks. As seen above, veils do not act alone, so women must select their looks carefully and cannot assume that wearing a new or expensive veil will have the desired effect. Women emphasize that wearers must choose flattering malah.fas, and they discuss which colors best complement their skin tones, with H . ar¯at.¯ın, who are typically dark-complexioned, generally favoring bright colors. Wearing an expensive veil that is unflattering risks detracting from the wearer’s beauty. Likewise, sometimes an inexpensive veil in a new style may have a significant impact. One H . ar¯at.¯ın woman received many compliments when wearing a striking blue veil from Kaédi, a southern town in Mauritania known for its exquisite dyers. The malah.fa was relatively inexpensive, but attracted attention because she was one of the first people to wear this style in Kankossa. She emphasized that a good friend had given it to her in the capital, Nouakchott, which highlighted her social network and her ability to travel (and thus her economic means), both signifiers of social worth in this setting. Wearing an expensive veil does also not necessarily lead to the intended results. One young H . ar¯at.¯ın woman told me that if you wore something expensive from Nouakchott in Kankossa, people will not know how much it cost or be able to recognize its quality. To make one’s wealth visible, people need to be aware of the garments’ value. People also warn that donning an expensive veil may not actually signify a woman’s wealth since poor women may purchase clothing on credit. When I commented to a shopkeeper that only a rich person could afford an exquisite veil he had displayed, he sighed and complained that only poor people buy such clothes. His reply suggests a critique of women for caring too much about (and spending too much on) clothing, but also highlights how dress may not be a reliable indicator of socioeconomic standing. Women cannot thus passively rely on malah.fas to index their wealth; instead, they must select veils carefully, openly discuss their cost and quality, and make known how they obtained them (Wiley 2018). The very fact that H . ar¯at.¯ın must do so highlights the insecurity of their social positions.

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Transparent Fabrics and Creating Beautiful Personas While a malah.fa’s newness or cost affects what it can do in the world, its level of transparency plays an important part in how women highlight their beauty. Historically, women primarily wore opaque veils, but in recent decades, transparent veils have become popular, both in imported and locally dyed versions. When the young women examined the veils their mother eventually did give them to wear for the holiday, they held the fabric up to the sun to gauge its transparency. Upon discovering their opaqueness, I heard one of the girls complain that they were “for an old woman.” Her comment speaks to the convention that older women should dress more modestly (and thus favor opaque veils).9 Beyond being age-appropriate, part of the appeal of transparent veils is that they make women’s accompanying dress and accessories visible, thus helping to increase the impact of their full ensembles. This view of dress as encompassing more than garments echoes Mary Ellen Roach-Higgins and Joanne B. Eicher’s definition of dress, which expands beyond clothing to argue that dress is “an assemblage of modifications of the body and/or supplements to the body” (1992, 1). As the bride’s ensemble illustrates, this understanding of dress resonates in Mauritania where jewelry, makeup, perfume, and elaborate hairstyles are important parts of women’s looks. The way that other aspects of dress can enhance a malah.fa affirms Emma Tarlo’s contention that scholars of Muslim dress should look beyond the veil in their analyses (2010, 5). Just as particular veils are best at ensuring modesty, certain kinds of malah.fas draw attention to women’s full ensembles more than others; the type of cloth, then, affects a woman’s ability to craft a beautiful look. One of my research assistants explained that shab¯ıba, an adjective used to describe attractive women, refers to the “ensemble” of a woman— her clothes, shoes, jewelry, words, and the way she walks. He noted that while a woman can always be beautiful, “a woman can’t always be shab¯ıba”; this is a temporary state that women create by donning beautiful dress and accessories. A striking outfit may also extend beyond the visual to include scents such as spray-on deodorant and perfume, and can involve prominently displayed technology such as cell phones.

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For H . ar¯at.¯ın women, transparent veils can help highlight their beauty and femininity, qualities that have long been linked to social value. Such looks can be powerful. For example, women discuss how beautiful ensembles can literally draw men to them. Wives thus regulate the potential effects of their clothes by not dressing up when their husbands are away, a common occurrence since men often work elsewhere (Wiley 2019). As one man put it, if a woman dons beautiful garments when her husband is absent, you would know that she has “sh¯ı m¯a wad.d.a¯h.” (something unclear, incorrect); such actions could indicate she was having an affair. While women may dress up in other circumstances—unmarried women, for example, or women attending gatherings exclusively for women—many married women with absent husbands even avoided fully dressing up on holidays. Although prohibitions surrounding women’s dress center men and suggest underlying misogyny, they also highlight the power of clothing to control others, in this case, men. For H . ar¯at.¯ın women, such conventions also emphasize their marital status, an important sign of social worth. While women’s malah.fas cannot think for themselves, their materiality does make certain behaviors and interpretations possible. In this case, transparent fabrics make women’s ensembles highly visible to others, and thus more likely to act on them. However, this clothing does not act alone, and women work to assemble attractive looks that will have the impact they desire. Wearing a translucent malah.fa is no guarantee of achieving a look that is shab¯ıba, and women emphasize how they must carefully consider how the various elements of their outfits work together. For example, one young woman told me that she would not need sparkles in her hair if she had a nicer malah.fa. Accessories or embellishments can thus elevate a plain malah.fa and enhance its impact; conversely, an exquisite malah.fa needs little embellishment to stand out. The delicate nature of achieving a look that is shab¯ıba is difficult and women may fail if their ensembles do not coalesce in the ways that they had hoped.

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Conclusion Clothing is not just passive, but rather is an integral part of women’s personhood and how they navigate their social worlds. Indeed, the very makeup of the malah.fa contributes to its enduring appeal. Its materiality creates certain possibilities: the flexibility allows the wearer to shift the garment from an instrument of seduction to religiosity in an instant, the shape lets women craft fuller figures, the relative newness or cost allows women to make visible their socioeconomic standing, and the type of fabric can draw attention to a woman’s complete outfit. However, the malah.fa does not act alone; women make choices within these parameters, trying to achieve particular ends and to assert various forms of social value. Exploring the materiality of H . ar¯at.¯ın dress thus helps us move beyond the narrow focus on its religious significance and instead illuminates the range of the malah.fas’ meanings. This framework encourages us to not view bodies as separate from their clothing, but rather to consider the wearer-outfit as a single unit that works together. The type of clothing presents the wearer with certain possibilities, but malah.fas do not work alone. Women make decisions about what kind of malah.fas to wear and how to wear them. As they embody their social status through their malah.fas, women also decide which properties to emphasize and which to downplay, thus exerting some control over their outcomes. They are not always successful in creating the images they wish or sending particular impressions about themselves to others, but, when they are, the malah.fa can be a powerful tool for women in exercising their social agency. This analysis illustrates that when examining clothing’s materiality it is important to consider how it can work in different ways for different groups. Unlike slave descendants elsewhere who adopted new forms of dress to highlight their piety, free status, and authority (Fair 2001), the Mauritania example shows how women can use a single form of dress to assert meanings that matter to them; for H . ar¯at.¯ın women, this garment can thus display their piety, femininity, wealth, social networks, beauty, and fashionability. The multitude of things that H . ar¯at.¯ın women can do with the malah.fa make it especially valuable as a tool to highlight

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improved social rank. In considering the materiality of garments, then, it is thus important to analyze not only which garment, but also which wearer, since clothing works in different ways for different people. In the case of the H . ar¯at.¯ın, the malah.fa provides them with ways to not just alter their own social rank, but to alter hierarchy more generally, by claiming their own value and making it visible to others.

Notes 1. This chapter is adapted from a previously published piece: Katherine Ann Wiley, “The Materiality and Social Agency of the Malah.fa (Mauritanian Veil)”, African Studies Review, Volume 62, Number 2 (June 2019), pp. 149– 174, reproduced with permission. Thank you to Cambridge University Press for granting permission to adapt this piece and to Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué for her aid in shaping the earlier version. 2. This chapter is based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2008 and 2011. The majority of the work occurred between 2010 and 2011. 3. Slavery was diminishing well before its legal abolishment, partly due to environmental factors that made it difficult for slaveowners to care for their dependents. See the following section for more discussion of the complexity of this institution and the social category of H . ar¯at.¯ın. 4. For more on this wedding, particularly the bridewealth exchanges and their meaning for H . ar¯at.¯ın communities, see Wiley (2016). 5. This was a costly veil since the 2010 gross national per capital income in Mauritania was $1,500 USD. See World Bank. n.d. Mauritania Data. https://data.worldbank.org/country/mauritania. 6. Skin color and the meaning of social categories in this setting are complex. Scholars have noted that phenotype is not a reliable indicator of ethnicity in Mauritania since, due to centuries of intermarriage and slave owners’ sexual relations with their dependents, most people, including B¯ız.a¯n, are racially mixed (Ruf 1999). However, many Kankossa residents did refer to skin color when explaining the meanings of social categories to me. Similarly, while some B¯ız.a¯n owned slaves, others did not, and sub-Saharan groups and some H . ar¯at.¯ın were also slave owners (McDougall 1988). Not all H . ar¯at.¯ın claim slave descent; some, for example, contend that their ancestors were

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always free, but that they gradually adopted B¯ız.a¯n customs by living beside them. 7. It is important to note that such divisions were not neat and lower-status or poorer freeborn women also would have had shabbier dress and likely would have also shifted how they wore the malah.fa during manual labor. 8. See also Miller (2005a), Keane (2005a, b), and Amato (2011). 9. Note that the Qur’an (24:60) instructs that elderly women who are past childbearing age no longer have to dress as modestly as they did when they were younger. In Mauritania, older women do generally wear more opaque veils, though some elderly women may be less concerned about covering than they were in the past.

References Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others. American Anthropologist 104 (3): 783–790. Ali, Kecia. 2010. Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Amato, Sarah. 2011. Fit to a T: Spray-On Clothing, Craft, Commodity Fetishism, and the Agency of Objects. Utopian Studies 22 (2): 285–302. Banerjee, Mukulika, and Daniel Miller. 2003. The Sari. New Delhi: Roli Books. Bastian, Misty L. 2013. Dressing for Success: The Politically Performative Quality of an Igbo Woman’s Attire. In African Dress: Fashion, Agency, Performance, ed. Karen Tranberg Hansen and D. Soyini Madison, 15–29. New York: Bloomsbury. Bernal, Victoria. 1994. Gender, Culture, and Capitalism: Women and the Remaking of Islamic ‘Tradition’ in a Sudanese Village. Comparative Studies in Society and History 36 (1): 36–67. Bonte, Pierre. 1990. L’‘ordre’ de la tradition. Evolution des hiérarchies statutaires dans la société maure contemporaine. In Mauritanie: entre arabité et africanité, ed. Pierre Robert Baduel, 118–129. Aix-en Provence: Éditions ÉDISUD.

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Brhane, Meskerem. 1997. Narratives of the Past, Politics of the Present: Identity University of Chicago Subordination and the Haratines of Mauritania. PhD diss. Buggenhagen, Beth Anne. 2012. Muslim Families in Global Senegal: Money Takes Care of Shame. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cleaveland, Timothy. 2002. Becoming Wal¯ata: A History of Saharan Social Formation and Transformation. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. El Guindi, Fadwa. 1999. Veil: Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance. New York: Berg. Fair, Laura. 2001. Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890–1945. Athens: Ohio University Press. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hansen, Karen Tranberg. 2000. Salaula: The World of Secondhand Clothing and Zambia. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hill, Joseph. 2018. Wrapping Authority: Women Islamic Leaders in a Sufi Movement in Dakar, Senegal . Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Keane, Webb. 2005a. The Hazards of New Clothes: What Signs Make Possible. In The Art of Clothing: A Pacific Experience, ed. Susanne K¯uchler and Graeme Were, 1–16. London: UCL Press. Keane, Webb. 2005b. Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things. In Materiality, ed. Daniel Miller, 182–205. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Lesourd, Céline. 2010. Mille et un litres de thé: Enquête auprès des businesswomen de Mauritanie. Paris: Ginko éditeur. Lydon, Ghislaine. 2009. On Trans-Saharan Trails: Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Western Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: the Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McDougall, E. Ann. 2010. The Politics of Slavery in Mauritania: Rhetoric, Reality and Democratic Discourse. The Maghreb Review 35 (3): 260–286. McDougall, E. Ann. 2005. Living the Legacy of Slavery: Between Discourse and Reality. Cahiers D’études Africaines 45 (179–180): 957–986. McDougall, E. Ann. 1988. A Topsy-Turvy World: Slaves and Freed Slaves in the Mauritanian Adrar, 1910–1950. In The End of Slavery in Africa, ed. Suzanne Miers and Richard L. Roberts, 362–390. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Miller, Daniel. 2005a. Introduction. In Clothing as Material Culture, ed. Susanne Küchler and Daniel Miller, 1–19. New York: Berg.

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Miller, Daniel. 2005b. Materiality: An Introduction. In Materiality, ed. Daniel Miller, 1–50. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Mir, Shabana. 2014. Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Moors, Annelies. 2012. Popularizing Islam: Muslims and MaterialityIntroduction. Material Religion 8 (3): 272–279. Moors, Annelies, and Emma Tarlo. 2007. Introduction. Fashion Theory 11 (2– 3): 133–142. Rasmussen, Susan J. 2013. Re-casting the Veil: Situated Meanings of Covering”. Culture and Psychology 19 (2): 237–258. Renne, Elisha P. 2013. Introduction: Veiling/Counter-Veiling in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Veiling in Africa, ed. Elisha P. Renne, 1–12. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Roach-Higgins, Mary Ellen, and Joanne B. Eicher. 1992. Dress and Identity. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 10 (4): 1–8. Ruf, Urs Peter. 1999. Ending Slavery. Hierarchy, Dependency and Gender. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Simard, Gisèle. 1996. Petites commerçantes de Mauritanie: Voiles, perles et henné. Paris: Karthala. Sylvanus, Nina. 2016. Patterns in Circulation: Cloth, Gender, and Materiality in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tarlo, Emma. 2010. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith. New York: Berg. Tauzin, Aline. 2001. Figures du féminin dans la société maure (Mauritanie). Paris: Karthala. Tauzin, Aline. 2007. Women of Mauritania: Cathodic Images and Presentation of the Self. Visual Anthropology 20 (1): 3–18. Ünal, R. Arzu., and Annelies Moors. 2012. Formats, Fabrics, and Fashions: Muslim Headscarves Revisited. Material Religion 8 (3): 308–329. Villasante-de Beauvais, Mariella. 2000. La Question des hiérarchies sociales et des groupes serviles chez les bidân de mauritanie. In Groupes serviles au Sahara: Approche comparative à partir du cas des arabophones de Mauritanie, ed. Mariella Villasante-de Beauvais, 277–322. Paris: Éditions CNRS. Wiley, Katherine Ann. 2019. The Materiality and Social Agency of the Malah.fa (Mauritanian Veil). African Studies Review 62 (2): 149–174. Wiley, Katherine Ann. 2018. Work, Social Status, and Gender in Post-slavery Mauritania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Wiley, Katherine Ann. 2016. Making People Bigger: Wedding Exchange and the Creation of Social Value in Rural Mauritania. Africa Today 62 (3): 49– 70.

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Wiley, Katherine Ann. 2013. Fashioning People, Crafting Networks: Multiple Meanings in the Mauritanian Veil (Malah.fa). In Dress, Performance, and Social Action in Africa, ed. Karen Tranberg Hansen and D. Soyini Madison, 77–91. New York: Blooomsbury.

More Than a Garment: The haïk in Algeria as a Means of Embodied Artistic Expression Isabella Schwaderer

The haïk 1 is a traditional garment which women used to wear over their clothes in the whole Maghreb when they left the house. It measures around 2 × 6 meters, it is tucked in a belt, worn around the whole body and its usually made of cream-white silk (Engelhardt 1994, 167–172, 193–199). In this article, I will look at the work of Algerian performing and concept artist Souad Douibi where she uses the haïk as a key element for her performances. Starting from the presentation of two photographs in a recent exhibition in Vienna I will unfold the complex layers of the image of the haïk through Algerian history and analyze critically the postcolonial framing of Douibis work. Finally, I will add another interpretation using the idea of “fragmented memories” that are being used to create I. Schwaderer (B) University of Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_13

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new models for identities in times when the heroic past of the struggle for independence has served its time.

The Artist and a First Attempt of Framing the Haïk Souad Douibi holds a diploma from the École supérieure des beaux-arts d’Alger. She started in 2013 with a series of performances coinvolving several women promenading dressed in a draped haïk and a coordinated crocheted or embroidered face veil (a’djar ) in different locations, e.g., in Spain during a residency, but afterwards mostly in the streets of Algiers. She draws the inspiration for her performances from well-known works of art, e.g. Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (1495–1498) or the famous cover of The Beatles’ LP Abbey Road (1969) which are re-enacted by women dressed in haïk in a playful, tongue-in-cheek manner (Douibi 2019). Douibi also organizes street performances along with her fellow artists from the Belaredj —L’Art Du Haïk collective2 taking a carefully choreographed stroll through the most frequented and emblematic roads and places. Douibi is an independent artist, which makes creating in the circumstances of her country not easy. Notwithstanding the notorious visa issues for all young persons in Algeria she managed to obtain residencies in Tunisia, Spain or Cuba. However, her success in the social media has established her as an audible voice in the art landscape of Algeria. With almost 18,000 followers on Facebook, she has a considerable radius by Algerian standards.3 I have chosen her work because of its artistic qualities and innovative character, but also because it can serve as a window to engage contemporary social dynamics in Algeria. The former Museum of Ethnology in Vienna has reopened as World Museum in 2017. Aligning its historical and cultural orientation with the new requirements of decolonizing European museums, it now focuses, between other, on “contextualizing […] transformations and developments in today’s world by way of extensive collections” (Haag 2018, 9). In the temporary exhibition Veiled, unveiled! The Headscarf from 18 October 2018 to 26 February 2019 the museum, explains Sabine

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Haag, General Director of the KHM–Museumsverband, attempted at accomplishing just this: A mere piece of cloth, though charged with countless facets of meaning, is still capable of causing such controversy. The headscarf and its potential ban are topics of contention throughout Europe. Not only devout Muslim women cover their heads, faces and occasionally their whole bodies: the headscarf has been part of European culture for centuries. […] The Weltmuseum Wien presents seventeen distinct and related approaches to headscarves which seek to expand our views of this piece of cloth by way of introducing new and surprising aspects. (Haag 2018, 9)

The exhibition presented a series of historical highlights on headscarves from different traditions, including the instrumentalization of the peasant headscarf in the Alpine region, be it in National Socialist propaganda or in Austria’s tourism marketing in the period after the Second World War. Sadly, despite the efforts announced in the foreword, representations were not free from a late colonial bias, as I could observe when I visited the exhibition in December 2019. Artistic approaches supplemented the material, including a composition titled Miss Haïk commented by the curator Axel Steinmann himself. The composition as showcased in the museum connects three images: The central work is a tableau, a staging of the Last Supper by the Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci by the Belaredj collective under the direction of Souad Douibi, sided by a photograph of one of the open air performances with women in haïk flying an Algerian flag (both from 2014), and one historical photograph from 1960 by French photographer Marc Garanger (*1935) with the legend: “Algerian Woman Unveiled by Force in a French Regroupment Village.” The text of the catalogue proposes, accordingly, a reading of the photographs placing them in a postcolonial context, explaining the renaissance of the haïk in Souad Douibi’s artworks as directly connected to French oppression of Algeria, colonial brutality in form of forcefully unveiling women and, “more recently” as an “open resistance to the religiously motivated usurpation of the female body, either from foreign

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influences or local politicians” (Steinmann 2018, 145), alluding at the socalled Black Decade 4 in Algeria in the 1990ies. Although not completely wrong, this interpretation of the pictures presents several weak points, which shall be highlighted in the following.

“Forbidden Gaze, Muted Sound”5 : The Haïk, Orientalist Pictures and Colonialization The reading I will purpose departs from intensive conversations with Souad Douibi in April 2019 and aims at understanding them as works of art and less as an essentialist depiction of the self-image of Algerian women. I thus see them as a contribution to a broader social discourse about religion and gender, national identity, and memory. For this, I will need to touch very briefly the questions on (un-)veiling women in Orientalist painting and literary resistance against colonialism and patriarchy.6 Throughout the nineteenth century, the veil of Muslim women has been an object of fascination for European (male) travelers, triggering various fantasies of “unveiling” and possession. Both painting and the newly developed technique of photography produced a whole series of emotionally charged pictures, which in the imagination of the French were inextricably linked to the regions of North Africa, which they subjugated through extensive conquests. From its very beginnings, the French army assigned soldiers to produce maps and drawings of the occupied territories, anthropological institutions produced a plethora of pictures called scenes et types depicting local people classified according to European understandings of race and ethnicity, and sexualized pictures of women, which were popularized in the beginning of the twentieth century as postcards.7 Assia Djebar (1935–2015), Algerian-French historian, writer, and director, deals in her writings with the complex interrelation between autobiographical experience and national history. In one of her first books, Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement (1980) (Djebar 2012), a collection of short stories which borrows its title from paintings by

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Delacroix, she draws a direct line from the depictions of the otherwise forbidden interiors of private households in Western paintings to the oppression of women in Algerian women long time after independence. In her texts the veil that covers a woman’s body to avert the gaze of men outside close family relationships creates, conversely, a female gaze directed toward the world. This female gaze is perceived as a menace and results in further silencing of women (Djebar 2012, 151). Djebar explores the historical events and constellations that have made Algeria what it is today, rewriting them, however, from the perspective of the unprivileged, the powerless, the victims, especially women, who are always at the center of her writing. In this way, the private inevitably becomes political for her, as she gives a voice to those who have not had one before, in order to inscribe their stories in a history where they were marginalized and could leave no traces. Through the power of imagination, “filling the gaps of collective memory” (Djebar 1991, 5) Translation from french by the author), the “muted voices” of women reappear (Ruhe n.d., 21).

Frantz Fanon and the Veil—The Remote Colonized Subject For Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) the threat to women’s freedom did not come from religion nor patriarchy, but from the French (male) colonizer. In his essay Algeria unveiled (1959) (Fanon 2007, 35–57) he describes the attempt of the colonial authorities to mark the “veiling,” the custom to cover body and hair, as a symbol of the oppression of Algerian women. Fanon dismantles this rhetoric as a political “doctrine” intended to conquer and to destroy autochthonous “forms of existence” (Fanon 2007, 37). In Fanon’s text, the alleged “liberation” of women from the confinement of religion and family is contradicted by the ruthless intrusion of French soldiers into the private apartments of the Casbah, the historical Arab quarter of Algiers during violent street fights. Women taking their veil off transform themselves into a French appearance and infiltrate the European part of the city to plant bombs. This formerly “inert” garment

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becomes, thus, a warlike tactic and turns from a symbol of religious attribution finally into an emblem of the struggle for freedom (Fanon 2007, 63). Fanon describes the haïk “as an embodied and visual sign [that] increasingly plays a prominent role in a battle over perception. Covering the body and face become crucial to averting police detection and a fetishistic gaze” (Bhaumik 2017, 105). The debate over women’s covered or uncovered bodies becomes, thus, an imaginary battle-ground on which the desire to see and to assimilate the colonized subject is often met with a desire for opacity and unavailability. The colonized subject actively withdraws from control. As Fanon writes: “The woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer. There is no reciprocity” (Fanon 2007, 44). Wearing the veil is a strategy of cutting off the connections of relationality, “if not a complete dismantling or de-structuring of the colonial order” (Bhaumik 2017, 106). Translating the operation of veiling and unveiling from a mere physical to an epistemological level, the wearing of the haïk by Algerian women expresses a demand for intransparency, not to be exposed to the Western demand for perspicuity, transparency and, to the very last extent, homogenity. The Martiniquan Édouard Glissant (1928– 2011) has claimed “the right to opacity that is not enclosure within an impenetrable autarchy but subsistence within an irreducible singularity” (Glissant 1997, 190). In the context of a decolonial theory of culture opacity functions as a means of self-affirmation: “Opacities can coexist and converge, weaving fabrics. To understand these truly one must focus on the texture of the weave and not on the nature of its component” (Glissant 1997, 190). The following paragraphs will, thus, focus on the “texture of the weave” and how images of women are constructed departing from their dress.

After Independence: A New Identity in (Not Only) Women’s Dress While Algerian women had played a prominent role during the decisive part of the revolutionary process in mass-demonstrations, as well as ensuring supplies behind the lines during times of open resistance,

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this, finally, did not lead to a new position of women of Algerian post-independence society. The intricate process of constructing a new Algerian identity after independence, with the extraordinary degree of change that the country experienced on a social and an economical level, reversed the role of women role in society. Patterns of male domination, often referred to as “neo-patriarchy,”8 remained the main paradigm of the post-independence state. This resulted in a conservative marginalization of women on the level of laws of personal status, which went along with the reinforcement of the patrilinear principle where women were kept in the allegedly “natural” role of mothers and daughters closed in homes (Macmaster 2009, 369 ff.). The Algerian state recognized the enormous power of the religious practices that underpinned these family structures and was unable and unwilling to change anything in this regard, thus even stepping back before the status quo of the French reforms (Macmaster 2009, 364). This return of “traditional” values after the revolution is tightly connected to a gradual Arabization and the Islamic resurgence movement. The speedy increase of the population without a notable economical change and the migration from the provinces led to a proletarianization and a profound change in the population structure of the capital. These events marginalized, but not extinguished neither the French-oriented precolonial élite, nor the old urban popular culture of the Casbah where the haïk belongs to. With changing circumstances, also the visual image of fashion changed both for men and women. While in the 1950ies the haïk was worn by many women when leaving the house, it got gradually substituted by more practical, cheaper, and more modern forms of garments. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the hijab, a cloak-shaped robe combined with a large headscarf worn close to the head with pins and covering the neck and shoulders up to the chest has been introduced from the Middle East (Engelhardt 1994, 169). While men turned mostly to “Western” dress with suits or jeans, only the Islamist hardliners usually wear a qamis, the long “Arab” robe, sometimes combined with a prayer cap. During the conflictual times of the Black Decade the so-called mudjaheddin, former volunteers in the Afghan-Russian war, donned a combination generally called Afghani. It is a combination of baggy salwar pants, a long

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chemise called kurta and pakol , the typical Pashtu cap. This ensemble is taken from traditional, casual everyday wear in Pakistan and Afghanistan, imitating the appearance of the Taliban as a statement of their disapproval of politics of premier minister Chadli Benjedid (1979–1992) (Evans and Phillips 2008, 137). Women’s clothing became an even stronger marker of religious and political convictions in Algeria during the 1990s. The Saudi-Arabian black combination for women made of a black caftan, a headscarf and, eventually, a face-covering small veil with slits for the eyes (niqab) or a semi-translucent gaze without openings (gilbab) is commonly interpreted as a visible sign of commitment to a conservative form of Islam shaped by the Islamic Resurgence Movement with a strong Wahhabi imprint.9 On the other hand, today this particular look is worn by many middleclass women and is not only a religious, but also a social marker. Women might demonstrate with the complete veiling their agreement with a conservative view of the family because they consider it a privilege not to have to work (and thus not to leave the house). The haïk has almost disappeared from the streets of Algiers. Souad Douibi has re-discovered and re-appropriated the haïk through performances and social media as a means of belonging and self-empowerment.

Souad Douibi and the Haïk: Art and Representation Returning now to the exposition of Douibi’s work in Vienna a closer look should be taken at the exposed photographs, their framing, and the curator’s comments. One prominent point that should be examined critically is the way in which the pictures were presented, without any further explanation, as an expression of political or feminist agency, as the catalogue text states: “More recently, young women once again don the white haïk as a way of spontaneously demonstrating their open resistance to the religiously motivated usurpation of the female body, either from foreign influences or local politicians” (Steinmann 2018, 145).

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From the perspective of Axel Steinmann, the curator of the exhibition, the narrative of the picture unfolds on a background of postcolonial conflict and oppression of women: “Depending on the political climate, the woman’s body is subject to alternating clothing regimes. Women as malleable beings” (Steinmann 2018). In the context of this exhibition, unfortunately, a perpetuation of the common stereotype of an oriental/Muslim woman mutilated in her rights appears once again, whose attempts at (self-) liberation are documented by men and presented to a Western art public. Moreover, as can easily be seen from the catalogue, the authorship of the exhibited pictures is attributed to two men and not to the artist herself, which in the context of contemporary art cannot be seen as anything else than an infringement of copyrights. The attitude of reiterating the stereotype women that deprived of their rights of free movement reads like a masculinist challenge of a colonial condition and establishes a “homosocial discourse” creating an economy in which women are objects of exchange between men (Irigaray et al. 1983, 177). Combined with the photograph of a forcedly unveiled peasant woman in a French regroupment village (Steinmann 2018, 146) as a symbol of colonial violence, again on women, to submit (also) the men, limits the haïk in Douibi’s works to a “dress of liberation” (Steinmann 2018, 145)—but the question remains: liberation—from what? Additionally, the title of the composition, Miss Haïk, alludes to a beauty contest, as if the artists had exposed themselves with a certain kind of traditional dress, which is a complete misconception in an artistic context, where the goal was to create an image and an atmosphere using a framing, postures, and props. On the other hand, the title Miss points also at the marital status of a woman and for this reason it is often perceived as discriminating, belittling, and sexist. Sadly, this exposition is not an exception were predominantly white 10 men judge or appropriate artworks of young non-European women. Both photographs of women in haïk, the main picture titled La derniêre Qaâda (The Last Reunion) as well as a less obviously staged one, Women of Algiers in Haïk, are marked in the description as parts of artistic performances, but treated differently in the text of the presentation. The confusion here results from blurring the boundaries between picture and

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representation. The political dimension of art does not simply lie in giving a certain “political statement” but in adjusting the boundaries of what can be said and done. In the words of Rancière, Rockhill, and Žižek, art and politics share the sensible system (or, one could say, the realm of the bodies): “The distribution of the sensible reveals who can have a share in what is common to the community based on what they do and on the time and space in which this activity is performed” (Rancière et al. 2009, 12).11 Wearing a haïk and walking with it in public is thus an embodied artistic as well as a political act. In Douibi’s words: “The haïk for me is a medium of artistic expression. When I wear it, I feel like a walking sculpture that crosses time and social dimensions” (Douibi 2017, Translation from french by the author). The haïk becomes, thus, a multilayered screen for different projections. As Douibi states: “It’s true that historically speaking, the haïk is the symbol of the Algerian revolution for me, but as a visual artist my outlook is more innovative. Places, objects, living beings all have stories to tell and so does the haïk. It must evolve in time and space. The haïk today is my canvas, my textile sculpture with which I express myself in performance, as in painting” (Douibi 2018, Translation from french by the author). As Maurizio Lazzarato states, “images, signs and statements are possibilities, possible worlds, which affect souls (brains) and must be realized in bodies.” Images create thus transformations, they contribute to the metamorphoses of subjectivity, and “must invent time-space arrangements that watch over this re-evaluation of values” but do not represent it (Lazzarato 2003, 80; see Heidenreich 2014, 80). In its freedom to arrange, to construct and to correct reality according to its own norms and interests the moving image of the woman in haïk functions as a multidimensional laboratory in which theoretical premises are literally embodied and set in motion and the implications of ideas and values are tested. But which are the transformations that the pictures might make possible?

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The “Return of the Storks” or: Why to Wear the Haïk? Women in haïk evoke memories of times long past, of women who move elegantly and who have a particularly feminine charisma through an item of clothing that serves superficially to “veil” and thus to make them invisible. The wearer, however, if she masters the art of dealing with the drapery of the garment and moves skillfully and elegantly in the heavy and bulky material of the garment, which is quite heavy and unwieldy due to its texture, becomes an icon of romantic femininity: The haïk “symbolized respect, dignity, and above all modesty. This fabric […] sublimates the beauty of the woman. It made her look like a waddling stork” (Arab 2019)12 Similar to a sari, the haïk emphasizes the female body more than it covers it, leaving the right arm and lower legs free, which is also a means of communication: “If we would have met back then outside I would have recognized you from your shoes,” explains Souad Douibi.13 With her performances in the urban space and many photographs that were issued on social media platforms, Douibi has changed the public perception of this attire. Although the women in the haïk evoke bygone times, they also create an interesting contrast to the present day: pictures in social media of women donning a haïk in the new metro station of the Grande Poste or women in the haïk with a smartphone. This simultaneity of non-simultaneousness creates a dreamlike atmosphere. A Facebook user comments on such a picture in the mixture of French and Algerian dialect typical for the capital: “It’s my dream to see the haïk again in Algeria [smiley] it represents very well the elegant white woman and not in black, God forgive us, as you can see now.”14 The “white women” dressed in the haïk that reappear in the city like in a dream create a feeling that is very rare in a country where the collective memory is a national monopoly: nostalgia. Andrew G. Farrand, one of the many photographers that have documented Douibi’s performances narrates in his blogpost the atmosphere in the streets as follows: “From the surprise on their faces I could tell the men had forgotten themselves, and were carried by a raw up-swell of nostalgia. It happened too fast to be anything but genuine. (…) The

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older men in particular—who remember Algiers when every woman wore a haïk—provided me with the most magical moments of my day. One old sheikh [polite address for an older gentleman, I.S.] who had been tapping his way down the sidewalk with his cane, for example, stopped mid-stream as the women in haïks sped past. After a second, his wizened old lips cracked into the slightest of smiles that communicated the most profound of joys” (Farrand 2015). Remembering the colonial past as well as the glory of the revolution is a form of coerced commemoration imposed by the state; Douibi’s performances seem to open a slit of “alternative” memories that have been silenced for a long time.

Official Memories of War and Martyrdom Keeping memories alive is, according to Benedict Anderson (2006), a central element in creating an “imagined community” at the basis for national consciousness. For this, a simultaneity of organized forgetting and remembering is necessary to create a coherent image that pretends to be “natural,” something that has always been there and is not a product of specific historical circumstances. This presupposes, on the one hand, that the contingency of these circumstances tends to be forgotten, while at the same time a uniform picture covers all competing views (Anderson 2006).15 This means that national identities function through the construction of a common past and through the staging of something absent, of a history that is long gone, and maybe has never been there. Or, as Valentin Groebner puts it: “Historical identity can be nothing more than a hole, a gap. It is something that is missing; because otherwise you wouldn’t have to reclaim, repeat and perform it over and over again. The repetition subsequently creates the powerful historical event one has desired” (Groebner 2018, 112, Translation by the author). Uniform political staging of history in Algeria takes place in various monuments of the capital commemorating the fallen of the revolution, whose designation as martyrs gives them a religious aura that elevates them above the contingency of historical events. The Maqam al –Chahid

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(Monument to the Martyrs) in Algiers is a major site of official commemorations of the Algerian War of Independence. It is also part of the process of “globalization of memory,” in which former colonies are seeking an obsessive confrontation with the former colonial power (Alcaraz 2013, 21). This monument contributes to the fabrication of a national memory of the war of independence, which itself falls under multiple ideological registers: Arab-Muslim populism and the ideology of the memory of jihad —or holy war. The official beliefs staged in this complex allow Algerian leaders to pose as heirs of the “martyrs” of the War of Independence. In the Algerian national narration, however, Arab-Muslim ideology turns the war of independence against the French state into a jihad in which the Algerians died as “martyrs” (shuhada) both for the resurrection of the Algerian state and for God, at the confluence of Muslim tradition and uncompromising nationalism (Alcaraz 2013, 21). If the repeated performance of history is, thus, an essential moment of collective identities, this means that it reflects the discursive practices that happen inside the society and is also necessarily open for change. As can easily be noticed, the officially propagated collective memories of Algeria are centered mainly on male figures and a religious background, that exclude women from the public sphere. But if the production of images goes hand in hand with memories of the past, this opens the possibility of change in the re-staging of history. New elements are constantly being added and previously forgotten, suppressed or faded-out traditions, such as those of women, minorities, or immigrants, are included and honored in the collective memory while others are simultaneously obliterated. In his idea of “palimpsestic memory” Max Silverman stresses on the fact that the “relationship between present and past therefore takes the form of a superimposition and interaction of different temporal traces to constitute a sort of composite structure, like a palimpsest, so that one layer of traces can be seen through, and is transformed by, another” (Silverman 2015, 3). If the heroic struggle for independence and its religious dimension is at the core of the conception of a national identity formed by the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale), both now, in a period of system change, start vacillating and counter-images emerge from a “forgotten” past in form of a flood of images from colonial times.

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“The Drowning Eye”16 : Images of Women Between Memory and Dream Apart from the official grand narration of the heroic anticolonial struggle, on the “street-level” different images of self-representation offer an alternative to a monolithic past. Not far from the Memorial of the Martyrs the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers 17 hosts a large variety of European paintings by Italian, Dutch and German artists, the largest part of the collection contains artworks from various French schools, including a large number of Orientalist paintings. Especially the latter section enjoys a large popularity—cheap prints on canvas can be purchased in make-shift kiosks and decorate homes inside the country and abroad (Fig. 1). The picture presents a large quantity of printed copies of historical orientalist paintings showing luscious harem-like interiors with reclined women, picturesque oriental landscapes or city panoramas. What can be seen as a huge heap of eclectic kitsch, from an anthropological point of view reveals an Algerian Atlas of Mnemosyne,18 echoing colonial and postcolonial iconography.19 It seems to be randomly arranged, but the images allow numerous associations, covering nostalgia of bygone times as well as a tendency toward self-exoticization. Scholarship from Edward Said (2003) onwards, has pointed at the ability of images, paintings and postcards, to reinforce an asymmetrical relationship of power, fabricating exotic otherness and, thus, effacing their subjects by the colonial gaze. This point of view remarkably overlooks women’s own experiences of dressing, veiling and representation. It fails to recognize that “women might ironically perform, disarm or subtly resist the stereotypical images” (Eileraas 2003, 27) emerging from the pictures. The reenactment of the Last Supper takes place in the open entrance of the École des beaux-arts in Algiers, an institution of colonial origin, but today blended into the cultural life similarly as the Musée des beaux-arts mentioned above. In this setting the women in haïk can be imagined as moving, chatting, and arranging the table and later posing for the choreographed picture, as many making of pictures of the event in social media testify—they are also an important part of the artistic work.

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Fig. 1 A kiosk in Rue Didouche Murad, Algiers, © Isabella Schwaderer

We encounter this strategy already in the writings of Assia Djebar. She describes the trajectory of Algerian women who, after having been the object of gaze and writing in the Western literary and pictorial imaginary in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, they themselves turned the subjects of writing through the narrative of their lives. The male gaze which, in the past, had been the gaze of the Other, is reappropriated, necessarily, through the spatial setting of women’s bodies in the field of literary and artistic creation, especially when this same body had been for a long time frozen by a certain gaze eager for exotic, masculinist stereotypes. One could imagine in Djebar’s work an Odalisque descending out of her portrait, freeing herself from the boundaries that have kept her imprisoned (Ahnouch 2014, 107–108). While Djebar

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gave the Algerian woman a voice to express herself, Douibi stages the female body as a mediatic vehicle of collective memory. Taking the next step, Douibi encourages contemporary Algerian women to experience the feel, the weight, and the drapes of the cloth on their bodies, creating thus not only new images, but also embodied memories of another era. In times of economic and political instability, with demonstrations against the Algerian government happening since February 2019, the clashes of conflicting identities, be they Arab, Islamic, Berber, or Westernized, Douibi’s performances connect artists and spectators with the world of their grandparents, offering thus an all-encompassing Algerian identity beyond ethnic and religious divisions.

Conclusion Summarizing, the performances with the haïk have an impact on different levels. They claim (a) a public space for women that once were secluded and for citizens in general, (b) propose a different image of women, next to “Islamic” dress varieties or “Western” attires, and (c) they play with complex memories.

A Public Space for Artistic and Civil Expression Draping the haïk around her own body and those of her fellow collective members and walking through the city is an especially effective move in a surrounding, where the concept of a public space is very restricted not only for women, but also for men. The trauma experiences of the Black Decade marked by omnipresent terrorist attacks and violence at all levels are still very palpable in Algeria, and the only reason for staying outside the protective walls of one’s own home or that of family and friends, is mostly to carry out urgent errands such as shopping, going to work, school, or university, respectively. Taking a stroll on a beachfront promenade or through the town are rare and inadvisable after sunset; Algiers might be the only Mediterranean capital where the idea of a nightlife is very restricted. The conspicuous appearance of herself or women in haïk

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(or other costumes) pushes the boundaries of what is licit for women to do in public. The artist creates with her physical presence new images the actual and, afterwards in form of photographs, in the virtual space.

Different Images of Women Fashion, in Algeria as well as in the rest of the world, is a salient marker of religious, but even more of social belonging. As an artist, Douibi can play creatively with the different codes, and form an own persona using colorful robes combining local traditions with her own inventiveness. However, with her images of women in haïk Souad Douibi is not only met with enthusiasm. Notwithstanding her all-embracing, sometimes witty tongue-in-cheek attitude, she is also confronted with criticism. “Many feminists do not appreciate my work, because they have struggled to unveil women for a long time, and I do veil them again. On the other hand, also Islamists feel disturbed, because the haïk is not exactly a modest dress; on the contrary, it is super sexy, because it allows secret communication through the way it is worn. It also lets bare the right arm and the lower part of the legs.”20

Play with Complex Memories With the haïk performances Douibi challenges, finally, a static and monolithic construct of memories, be it colonialist or nationalist. Her approach opens up the “monumental” national history, still firmly based on the grand narration of the “Holy War of Independence,” where the place of women was fixed as brave supporters of a fight, that finally led to a distressing restriction of their right to self-determination and self-realization. On the other hand, having herself and her fellow artists moving freely through the most frequented and emblematic zones of the capital, she also challenges and disturbs the very common view of the Algerian Muslima confined to house and hearth that puts her interests behind those of her male family members. But the significance of her artistic expressions goes beyond altering women’s roles; she proposes a different view of the city and its society.

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When I visited Douibi in April 2019, demonstrations took place every week after the Friday prayer that ends in the early afternoon. Because of the many expected protesters, the city center was completely locked down for all vehicles, a surreal experience in an otherwise busy city. She took me for a stroll along the sites of “palimpsestic memories”: the Great Synagogue, sacked during the Franco-Algerian war and transformed into the Ibn Fares Mosque, in colloquially better known as Djamâa Lihoud (Mosque of the Jews), to the crumbling houses of the Casbah, the historical Arab quarters, since 2009 on the UNESCO’s World Heritage List 21 but lacking the much-needed renovations. On its feet is the mausoleum of the patron of the city, Sidi Abderrahmane, who is venerated mostly by elderly ladies. They have kept forms of religious practices that have elsewhere almost vanished from the public, especially after the Black Decade, when these vernacular forms of veneration were labeled as “medieval” and generally as an illicit introduction of pagan elements (shirk),22 as lighting candles, offering henna powder for personal wishes or large plates with food on certain feasts. Douibi is part of a generation of artists that, instead of chasing after Western models creates a new aesthetic space exploring the forgotten memories of their own traditions. The dreamlike figures of women in haïk correspond to other projects, e.g., combining care for the neglected buildings of colonial times in photographic projects and a taste for urban traditional music called Chaabi. All these experiences can be explored either in memories or through the body; creating nostalgic images that circulate in social media are a powerful means of proposing different imaginations about the future—not in emigration, but in Algeria itself.

Notes is derived from the stem h.-¯a-k (to weave) and means “woven,” 1. Arabic “piece of cloth.” The correct transliteration h.a¯ik will be replaced here with the more common writing haïk. 2. https://www.facebook.com/SouaDouibi/. Accessed 12 October 2020. 3. https://www.facebook.com/PerformerArtisteDZ/. Accessed 12 October 2020.

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4. The Algerian Civil War was a civil war in Algeria fought between the Algerian Government and various Islamic rebel groups from 26 December 1991, following a coup negating an Islamist electoral victory to 8 February 2002. The war has been referred to as ‘the dirty war’ (la sale guerre), and saw extreme violence and brutality used against civilians. Total fatalities have been estimated from 44,000 to between 100,000 and 200,000. 5. The quotation is the title of a text by Assia Djebar in the volume (Djebar 2012, 145–167). 6. For a classification of the phenomenon of Orientalism and new approaches, among many, see the volume (Boer 2003). 7. For the transformation of the social framing of the picture series cf. (Bancel 2007, 46–47). 8. The term ‘neo-patriarchy’ has been adopted by contemporary Algerian sociologists like Mahfoud Bennoune and Lahouri Addi, mainly from the work of (Sharabi 1988). 9. This form of political Islam has been shaped by the Muslim Brotherhood and its Algerian political wing, the Islamic Salvation Army (FIS). The party was officially banned in 1992 and remains thus until today. 10. I understand the concept of whiteness as a mark of power relationship and of a privilege that follows from this position of power. For the history of the term whiteness see (Stefancic and Delgado 1997). 11. I owe this quote to (Heidenreich 2014). 12. From the synopsis of the documentary film on the Douibi and the Belaredj group by Yazid Arab. 13. Field notes of the author, 26 April 2019. 14. «C mon rêve de voir lhayek encore en Algerie :-)sa représente bien la femme algerienne blanc chic et hatta pas le noir allah yestarna qu on voit mnt. (sic!) » User Sou Sza on 04. October 2013. Translation from French by the author. 15. On Memory and Forgetting see the chapter in this book: 187–206. 16. The title is borrowed from the first surrealistic theatrical piece by Frantz Fanon (see: Fanon et al. 2018). 17. http://www.musee-beauxarts.dz/. Accessed 12 October 2020 and (Bellisari 2017). 18. German-Jewish cultural scientist Aby M. Warburg (1866–1929) created the Mnemosyne Atlas as an attempt to map the pathways that give art history and cosmography their meanings. 19. See also the video by Katia Kameli, where the director immerges into Algeria’s history, and into the memory of people through a collection of

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images, see http://katiakameli.com/videos/le-roman-algerien-chapitre-un/. Accessed 12 October 2020 and Kameli (2016). 20. Personal communication with the author, field notes 26 April 2019. 21. https://whc.unesco.org/fr/list/565/. Accessed 12 October 2020. 22. Shirk is a term used in Islam for idolatry, polytheism or similar. The expression carries the basic meaning “to participate”, “to have a share”. Shirk thus means to let others or others participate in the uniqueness of God: ashraka ( ). The correlated term is tauh¯ıd ( tauh.¯ıd) – “monotheism.” Strict Wahhabi Islam does not tolerate “polytheism”, such as the worship of another god or a supplication (dua¯) to anyone besides god, which by representatives of the Islamic resurgence has been used against local varieties of Islam in Egypt and the Maghreb and has significantly changed the religious geography of North Africa.

References Ahnouch, Fatima. 2014. Littérature francophone du Maghreb: Imaginaire et représentations socioculturelles. Espaces littéraires. Paris: L’Harmattan. Alcaraz, Emmanuel. 2013. La mise en scène de la mémoire nationale De la guerre d’indépendance algérienne au maqam al-chahid d’Alger. In Autour des morts de guerre: Maghreb – Moyen-Orient, ed. Raphaëlle Branche, 21– 45. Publications de la Sorbonne Internationale 88. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. Anderson, Benedict R.O.’G. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Arab, Yazid. 2019. Avant-première du documentaire “Le Retour des Cigognes” de Yazid Arab: Ode au haïk sur grand écran à la Cinémathèque algérienne. https://yazidarab.com/2019/03/13/avant-premiere-du-documentaire-le-ret our-des-cigognes-de-yazid-arab-ode-au-haik-sur-grand-ecran-a-la-cinemathe que-algerienne/. Accessed 12 October 2020. Bancel, Nicolas. 2007. Sur l’usage social des photographies anthropologiques: l’exemple des rapports entre images et paratextes dans les cartes postales “scènes et types”. In Image, mémoire, histoire: Les preséntations iconographiques en Algérie et au Maghreb; actes du Colloque International Image, Mémoire, Histoire. Les Preséntations Iconographiques en Algérie et au Maghreb organisé

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par le CRASC les 28 et 19 février 2004, Oran, ed. Hassan Remaoun, 41–49. Oran: Centre de Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle. Bellisari, Andrew. 2017. The Art of Decolonization: The Battle for Algeria’s French Art, 1962–70. Journal of Contemporary History 52 (3): 625–645. Bhaumik, Mounia. 2017. Untranslatable Acts: “Veiling” and the Aporias of Transnational Feminism. In Islam and Postcolonial Discourse: Purity and Hybridity, ed. Esra Mirze Santesso and James McClung, 97–112. Florence: Taylor and Francis. Boer, Inge E. (ed.). 2003. After Orientalism: Critical Entanglements, Productive Looks. Thamyris, intersecting 10. Amsterdam and New York, NY: Rodopi. Djebar, Assia. 1991. Loin de Médine: Filles d’Ismaël: roman. Le livre de poche. ———. 2012. Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement: Nouvelles. 1. publication, éd. 08. Le livre de poche 30047. Paris: Albin Michel. Douibi, Souad. 2017. Le Haïk pour moi. https://www.facebook.com/Perfor merArtisteDZ/photos/a.1416448305266026/2030016273909223/?type= 3&theater. Accessed 12 October 2020. ———. 2018. Pourquoi le Haik dans le travail de Souad Douibi? https:// www.facebook.com/PerformerArtisteDZ/photos/-pourquoi-le-haik-dans-letravail-de-souad-douibi-lhistoire-du-haik-a-commenc%C3%A9-p/218426 9821817200/. Accessed 12 October 2020. ———. 2019. El Haïk Au Service De L’Art. https://www.facebook.com/pg/ SouaDouibi/about/?ref=page_internal. Accessed 12 October 2020. Eileraas, Karina. 2003. Disorienting Looks, Ecarts d’identité: Colonial Photography and Creative Misrecognition in Leila Sebbar’s Sherazade. In After Orientalism: Critical Entanglements, Productive Looks, ed. Inge E. Boer, 23–44. Amsterdam and New York, NY: Rodopi. Engelhardt, Olga. 1994. Frauenkultur in Algerien: Perspektiven der Arbeitsteilung; mit einer Untersuchung zur Frauenarbeit im informellen Sektor des Textilbereichs und Darstellung des traditionellen Frauenkleides. Berlin: Fischer. Evans, Martin, and John Phillips. 2008. Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Fanon, Frantz. 2007. A Dying Colonialism [Reprint]. New York, NY: Grove Press. Fanon, Frantz, Jean Khalfa, Robert J.C. Young, and Steven Corcoran. 2018. Alienation and Freedom. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. Farrand, Andrew G. 2015. The Haïk’s Enduring Allure. https://www.ibnibn battuta.com/2015/05/the-haiks-enduring-allure.html. Accessed 12 October 2020.

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Glissant, Édouard. 1997. Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Groebner, Valentin. 2018. Retroland: Geschichtstourismus und die Sehnsucht nach dem Authentischen. Frankfurt (Main): S. Fischer. Haag, Sabine. 2018. Preface. In Veiled, Unveiled! The Headscarf [exhibition, Weltmuseum Wien, Austria, 18.10.2018–26.02.2019], ed. Axel Steinmann, 8–9. Wien: KHM-Museumsverband. Heidenreich, Nanna. 2014. Sich nicht entscheiden wollen, aber dennoch eine Haltung haben. In Im Netz der Eindeutigkeiten: Unbestimmte Figuren und die Irritation von Identität, ed. Michael Andreas. Kultur- und Medientheorie. s.l. transcript Verlag. Irigaray, Luce, Catherine Porter, and Carolyn Burke. 1983. This Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kameli, Katia. 2016. Roman algérien – chapitre 1. Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2003. Struggle, Event, Media. https://transversal.at/transv ersal/1003/lazzarato/en. Accessed 12 October 2020. Macmaster, Neil. 2009. Burning the Veil. The Algerian War and the ‘Emancipation’ of Muslim women, 1954 –62. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rancière, Jacques, Gabriel Rockhill, and Slavoj Žižek. 2009. The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. London: Continuum. Ruhe, Ernstpeter (n.d.). Die Versetzung des Mythos in den Roman. Assia Djebar und die Musen des Jenseits, 21–36. https://opus.bibliothek.uni-wuerzburg. de/opus4-wuerzburg/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/5825/file/Ruhe_Versetz ung_Mythos_Lendemains2005.pdf. Accessed 12 October 2020. Said, Edward W. 2003. Orientalism. 25. Anniversary edited with a new preface by the author. New York: Vintage. Sharabi, Hisham. 1988. Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Silverman, Maxim. 2015. Palimpsestic Memory: The Holocaust and Colonialism in French and Francophone Fiction and Film. New York: Berghahn. Stefancic, Jean, and Richard Delgado (eds.). 1997. Critical White Studies: Looking Behind the Mirror. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Steinmann, Axel. 2018. Miss Haik. In Steinmann, Veiled, Unveiled! The Headscarf: [exhibition, Weltmuseum Wien, Austria, 18.10.2018–26.02.2019], ed. by Axel Steinmann, 144–149. Vienna: KHM-Museumsverband.

Toward a Self-Empowered Female Body: Body Language, Tactility, and Materiality in Contemporary Art Rhea Maria Dehn Tutosaus

It’s All About Freedom, Isn’t It? A commercial Freedom is basic for the Israeli streetwear brand Hoodies,1 released in 2018, shows the model Bar Rafaeli taking off a black niqab.2 The ad opens with the model’s image wearing a face veil while the words “Is Iran here?” appear in Hebrew on the screen (Hoodies 2018). Then she peels off the niqab, throws her blonde hair back, and dances in sportswear to a pop song featuring the lyrics, “it’s all about freedom.” Although the commercial may seem trivial, it works on numerous metanarratives. From an Israeli perspective, the foreign image of Iran is depicted by the veiled, “unfree” and oppressed woman in the black niqab. Her opposite is the modern Israeli woman, showing off her well-trained body. Her athletic figure and her energetic dancing display her freedom of movement, which is apparently no longer restricted by her clothing. The Western ideal of the modern woman, athletic, and self-confident, R. M. Dehn Tutosaus (B) Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8_14

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with her bright and colorful outfit stands in sharp contrast to the black niqab. In the commercial, it becomes clear how certain conclusions about the woman and her identity are reached, through her clothing and the way she moves her body: The female body and its clothing are understood as a genre to visualize a certain canon of values. Moreover, the question inserted at the beginning of the commercial hints at the discursivity and instrumentalization of the female body as a venue for political conflicts. The clothing of Muslim women is probably the most discussed type of clothing of our time. What led to this tremendous emotional and political charge? How can a textile unfold that much potential for discussion? It seems unlikely that the debates around it arise from its texture, manufacture, or pattern. The discourse largely focuses on the headscarf or, even more often, the clothing of Muslim women is simply reduced to the headscarf. As Isolde Charim (2018, 63) points out, the controversial power of the headscarf is not in its materiality, but rather, since it can be understood as a “full sign,” found in its symbolic content. Consequently, the source of these debates is to be found beyond the tangible qualities of the garment, in its semantization. The exhibition Contemporary Muslim Fashions (2019) was one of the most debated artistic interventions in Germany. Originally developed at the de Young Museum of San Francisco, initiated by Max Hollein and curated by Jill D’Alessandro, Laura L. Camerlengo and Reina Lewis as consulting curator, the Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt was the exhibition’s first station in Europe. The exhibition offered a new view of the “Orient,” “spotlighting places, garments, and styles from around the world, [considering] how Muslims define themselves—and are defined—by their dress, and how these choices can reflect the multifaceted nature of their identities,” as the Museum’s website announces. The focus on the self-definition of Muslim women reveals the aim of the exhibition to examine aspects of self-empowerment and individual freedom of choice for Muslim women through fashion and art. As the exhibition has shown, the veil is still a garment around which the fiercest controversies abstain. On the one hand, it is understood as a sign of the oppression of Muslim women and as a threat to European feminist achievements (Castro Varela 2017, 11; Lewis 1996, 42). On the

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other hand, especially in the context of fashion and art, a diverse use of the veil has become established, which reveals differentiated notions of femininity. Against this background, I will examine how the artists Lalla Essaydi, Majida Khattari and Yumna Al-Arashi conceptually and figuratively refer to the discourse on the so-called Orient. The following premises should be considered, which will constitute a general framework in this chapter: The “Orient” is understood as a Western stereotyping construction, which was, and still is, very pervasive in how Muslim women are seen; a change within the discourse can be discerned through the active positioning of Muslim women in postcolonial and feminist discourses; parallel to this, fashion research has focused on clothing as an embodied form and raised new ways of seeing. I will identify the impact of these changes on the artistic production and explore the possibilities of selfempowerment through the female body in the artistic context. Finally, I want to raise through the differentiated analysis of the artistic positions not only conclusions about a changing debate surrounding the “Orient,” but also about the changing aesthetics of the veil and the female body in contemporary art.

Orientalism: A Discourse of Power As Edward W. Said showed in his 1978 publication Orientalism, the West has constructed “The Orient” in discursive practices since the Middle Ages. The stereotyping of the “Oriental woman” was then adapted over time to the ever-changing demands of hegemonic powers. Consequently, there is no natural “otherness” behind the established image, which is always characterized by social norms and institutionalized regulatory relationships. Because Said describes Orientalism as “exclusively male” (Said 1979, 207), it is criticized by Reina Lewis for its “gender-blindness” (Lewis 1996, 42), as he pays almost no attention to women as the acting subject of society. Lewis and already Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2008), in contrast, attribute an active role to women in the discourses and address them as active subjects. Looking at the Western colonial representation of Islamic-Arabic femininity from a postcolonial perspective,

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it is quite evident that women have been limited to the passive role of object of male desire and victim, deprived of the ability to think and act rationally (Castro Varela 2017, 11; Pollock 1988, 30; Spivak 2008). For this discourse, visual representations of the “ancient Orient” have been central, so that the historical paintings are of particular importance. As Linda Nochlin (1989, 43) has discussed, Western supremacy was already defined in nineteenth century historicist paintings by portraying “Oriental” women as homogenous groups, considered overtly sexual and seductive, yet at the same time extremely submissive. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1997 [1717], 59) described a Turkish harem in The Turkish Embassy Letters dated April 17, 1717, as follows: “‘Although’ naked women were bathing together, there was no ‘immodest gesture among them.’” Montagu, who originated from London (United Kingdom), composed these letters during her accompaniment of her husband on his mission as ambassador to Turkey. Based on this description, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres produced his artwork Le bain turc in 1862. Ingres’ painting of women in sexually compromising poses reveals a pejoration of the female narrative through the male gaze. The resulting “supposed knowledge” of the nature of Oriental women was thus consolidated and normalized by the repetition of such depictions of “the Orient,” particularly with recurring images of either the harem as a place of available, sensual women or for the veiled woman to escape the Western gaze (Nochlin 1989, 33–56). Thus, among other things, it is the topos of Western depictions of the Orient that led to a clear association of both the Orient and sex, and the Orient and oppression (Oesterreich 2018, 172–199; Schmidt-Linsenhoff 2000, 25–38; Ye˘geno˘glu 1998, 25). In this way, a whole apparatus of discourses about the Orientalized Other was established surrounding women’s body, their clothing, and their identity. The adaptability of these stereotypes to the constantly changing discourses surrounding the hijab-wearing woman is perhaps most clearly evidence in contemporary mass media in “Western” countries. As Schmitz (2006, 39) has pointed out, since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. on September 11, 2001, signs clearly associated with the Orient, such as the turban, beard, and headscarf, have been linked with images of terrorism or hysterical crowds. The images that generally depict Muslims

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are still predominantly de-individualized representations, that seemingly confirm the cliché that Muslims act collectively irrationally and that they remain in the barbarity of a medieval theocracy (Göckede and Karentzos 2006, 11). Lewis (2014) states: Every time there is a moral panic in the West about Muslims as a civilizational Other, whether it is about the jihadization of young men or whatever, it is illustrated with a picture of women wearing the hijab or abaya, shrouded in black.

Lewis refers to the ongoing discursification and stereotyping of Muslim women in the West and illustrates how their representation is specifically used to illustrate concrete socio-political issues. The extent of Western stereotyping becomes obvious through the fact that Muslim women are still considered to be simultaneously sexualized and oppressed by the veil.

A One-Way Discourse? In recent years, more and more scholarly publications (e.g. Göle 2017; Lewis 2018) not only question and criticize the stereotyping of Muslim women and the reduction of their clothing to the veil, but also show the diversity of women and their clothing and the different functions of it. A critical-emancipatory potential is attributed to the veil, not least due to the active positioning of hijab-wearing women in public, like Ilhan Omar, the first US congresswoman, to wear a headscarf. She announced on Twitter: “No one puts a scarf on my head but me. It’s my choice” (@IlhanMN, November 17, 2018). By (re-)claiming her right to her own freedom of choice regarding her clothing, she publicly positioned herself as a religious and emancipated woman. In the same way the hijabistas3 and mipsterz4 of Generation M5 style themselves fashion-consciously and use social media channels such as YouTube and Instagram to determine their self-representation in public and reinterpret the veil as a religious sign, one not in opposition to fashion or modernity (Camerlengo 2018, 98; Gaugele and Karentzos 2019, 13–17). Fashion functions as a medium for negotiating social injustices and is, as Laura

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Camerlengo (2018, 99) points out, “a tool for positive social change.” Jill D’Alessandro (2019) sees fashion as “a tool to undermine social boundaries,” as she told me in a 2019 interview during the Contemporary Muslim Fashions exhibition. Mariam Bin Mahfouz, co-founder of the Saudi Arabian label Haal Inc. and one of the fashion designers exhibited, sees the abaya as “an empowering garment,” a “superwoman’s cape, and the women who wear it are super women” (Audio guide Contemporary Muslim Fashions, 2018). The relevance of fashion for an opening and reinterpretation of Orientalism as established by the West also became clear with the publication of Vogue Arabia across the MENA region, as well as in London, Paris, and Milan in 2017. The first cover showed the fashion model Gigi Hadid6 (@voguearabia, Instagram, March 1, 2017) with heavy make-up, her hair completely covered, with her face only half-covered with a richly embroidered veil. She looks lasciviously at the viewer and thus differentiates herself from the submissive portrayals of Muslim women. “The collage of countries across the Arab world are long-deserving of a place in fashion history,” declares the former editor-in-chief Deena Aljuhani Abdulaziz (2017).

Artistic Intervention Returning to the context of art, it only seems a logical development that bodies and fashion became important media venues for the discussion of specific topics and used to question established gender roles and to criticize stereotypes of femininity (Warr 2005, 20). The hijab,7 the chador,8 and the niqab in their material form as clothing, or in immaterial form as a code of behavior, have been employed by artists as the subject of theoretical, as well as artistic investigations (see Schwaderer, Chapter 13 in this volume). Just like the exhibition Contemporary Muslim Fashions, the artists Essaydi, Khattari and Al-Arashi offer a counter example to Western Orientalist discourse. Lalla Essaydi (*1956) and Majida Khattari (*1966) both come from Morocco, where they were born and grew up. Yumna Al-Arashi (*1988)

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was born in Washington, DC., daughter of a Yemeni father and an Egyptian mother. Because of their dates of birth, the artists represent two different generations; Essaydi and Khattari are part of the so-called first generation in “exile,” whereas Al-Arashi belongs to the second generation. Although the colonial and historical contexts of North Africa and Yemen are not identical, there are certain parallels to the overall stigmatization of Muslim women. I will focus on Essaydi’s photographic series Les Femmes du Maroc (2005–2008), exhibited for example at the Contemporary Muslim Fashions exhibition; Khattari’s performance Houris, Rêve de Martyrs (“Houris” in the following), which was part of the opening show for the exhibition Die Göttliche Komödie. Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer aus Sicht afrikanischer Gegenwartskünstler (The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists), Museum Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main (2014); and Al-Arashi’s film Rituals: The 99 Names of God (“Rituals” in the following) shown at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York (2018).9 The variation in the works’ creation dates and use of different media (photography, performance and video) allow a discussion of the veil in its various forms, but also a specific dynamic of reflection, based on the mutual reception of changing art and body discourse.

Self-Empowerment as Artistic Strategy So the body is at once… the actualizer of power relations – and that which resists power. (Feher 1987, 161)

Taking Feher’s quote into the context of fashion and art, the female body bears the potential to reinterpret established stereotypes. While it were initially the works of postcolonial theorists which disregarded the proclamation of independence from the Western system of representation and disrupted its hegemonic order, increasingly artists from the Arab world are preventing the “West” from continuing to describe the “Orient” without contradiction.

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Through their works, Essaydi and Khattari criticize the Western stereotyping of Muslim women. Essaydi said directly that she “invite[s] the viewer to resist stereotypes” (Essaydi 2014, 9). In a recent conversation with Khattari (email to the author, April 27, 2020), she stated “the passivity and idleness of the ‘Oriental’ women has been conveyed by the Western view of the Orient, unfortunately due to ignorance of the culture of the other.”10 Furthermore, they call into question the determining impact of gender perceptions of women in Muslim societies. While Essaydi investigates the function of the harem, to which women are chained by the historically male-dominated tradition of calligraphy, Khattari who uses masks refers to the wearing of the burqa.11 Although Al-Arashi intends to criticize the European male gaze, she is primarily interested in a reinterpretation of Muslim clothing beyond Western stereotypes. For Al-Arashi (2019), “coverings resemble a superhero’s uniform, shielding and empowering its wearer in its night-colored drapery.” In her perspective on the chador, I see a clear parallel to the hijabista and mipsterz movement. The M generation increasingly tends to take up traditions and customs of their parents’ home countries and classifies them as far more positive than the previous generation, according to Göle (2017, 156): “Unlike their parents, who preferred to keep their religious beliefs discreet, the new generation does not hesitate to publicly demonstrate their faith.” Finally, it is the artist’s self-presentation that distinguishes Rituals from Les Femmes du Maroc and Houris. It represents a change in the politics of representation from foreign representation to self-representation. Here, the transitive potential of self-representation is evident, which can be detected in the current discourse about the “Orient” too. Although several persons appear in Al-Arashi’s work, the narrative focuses on the practicing Muslim woman who self-determines her own representation. Neither use their own bodies in their work, but rather position and dress models, while instructing them in front of the camera and in the exhibition space.

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“It’s Time We See New Imagery”12 In their works, Essaydi and Khattari use traditional formal elements, but also adapt motifs and elements used by the West for representing orientalization. In Les Femmes du Maroc, for example, Essaydi not only adopts the composition of Western Oriental painting but also focuses on the harem and the veil as surfaces of Western projection, while eliminating the orientalizing details of the historical paintings. Khattari’s work Houris shows the 72 virgins promised to the martyr, in white dresses and masks, undressing rhythmically to music playing in the background. AlArashi’s video explores the rituals of the Muslim faith and questions the role of women in them. However, the artists ostensibly focus solely on the expectations of Western viewers concerning the “Orient” and appear to serve them by employing traditional formal elements and Islamic stereotypes. Taking a closer look, however, it becomes evident that they are undermined by contradictions. Although the artists play with the Western male gaze, they offer a female view on the “Orient.” But what distinguishes a female perspective? The change of perspective is probably most clear in their use of the “emblem” of the Orient and “sign of female oppression” the veil. The word veil usually refers to a piece of fine fabric. A veil can be transparent or opaque, monochrome or multi-colored, decorated and embroidered, square-shaped, semi-circular, short or long. Rather than the nature of the fabric, it is the context that defines a textile as a veil (Wolf 2017, 289). As an item of clothing, the veil is inseparably linked to the body by the fact that clothing is intended to be worn and thus serves as a central reference point for extrapolating the identity of the wearing subject. Thus, the clothing of Muslim women, which often includes a veil in the form of a headscarf, is also interpreted as a reference to, or even as a full sign of their identity, as Charim (2018, 64) points out. From a hegemonic Western and stereotypical perspective, the veil functions as a mark of distinction against the dominant society. For the wearers themselves, it can function as exactly the opposite, rather as a sign of self-empowerment and “not [as] a sign of unquestioned full belonging” (Charim 2018, 64).

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Until the 1980s, clothing was treated primarily as a text to be semiotically decoded or as an image to be aesthetically analyzed (Rocamora and Smelik 2015, 2). As such, clothing was regarded as a purely visual phenomenon, while the nature of its interaction with the body of the wearer was overlooked. Recently a change in fashion research can be observed in which clothing is no longer considered (only) as a visual phenomenon, but as a haptic and embodied form (Bruno 2014, 39; Negrin 2015, 115). This change toward the interpretation of clothing as a body-related medium can also be seen in the Western discourse on the interpretation of Muslim women. Muslim clothing has been—and in part still is— reduced to the veil and perceived as an apparently smooth projection surface imposed on the body. Approaches that allow for a differentiation of Muslim clothing, and recognize them as something related to the body and tactility only have an effect in recent years and correlate with the demands of Muslim women for individual choice and the right to express their opinions as Farahani (2002, 109) shows. These changes are also reflected in the works of the aforementioned artists. While in Essaydi’s photographs the undifferentiated viewing, decoding of the veil and the Muslim woman veiled in it, is a central component, in Khattari’s performance a change from a mere “looking at” to a “feeling of ” can already be discerned. Although the voyeuristic gaze is provoked by the play of veiling and unveiling, the haptic experience of the women is emphasized by their interaction with their clothes (Fig. 1). In Al-Arashi’s film, the interaction between the fabric and the female body evokes the experiencing of the clothes and the bodily sensations resulting from it, creating an affective moment that captures the viewer. Essaydi’s analysis of both the female Oriental body as a Western construct and the discourses surrounding the body defining it as a mere effect of social systems of meaning is complemented by Khattari’s recognition of the carnal nature of the body. Although the body is still constructed through cultural codes in her work, the relevance of the material nature of the body is emphasized via the interaction of the women, their corsets, and slightly transparent skirt which shifts the focus onto the body underneath the clothing. The Houris seem to follow certain sequences of movement, creating one single collective body,

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Fig. 1 Majida Khattari, Houris, Rêve de Martyrs, 2014, Performance

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interrupted by the single naked female body. The women in Rituals, contrarywise, move self-determined through the nature that surrounds them. By including colored fabrics as well as different dresses and head coverings—the chador, the hijab and the niqab—Al-Arashi also shows a differentiated picture of Muslim dresses and thus dissolves the Western notion that Muslim women form a homogeneous collective. Looking at these three works, a shifting emphasis from the analysis of cultural representation to the study of the experience of body and clothing can be discerned. This raises the question, which transformations are evoked by the medium used?

The Medium Matters All artists discussed in this contribution share an interest in different textures, surfaces, and cuts, which are put into relation with the wearer and the viewer through the different medias of photography, performance, and video. The contact between the clothing and the female body not only encompasses the feeling of the fabric on the wearer’s skin, but also offers an orientation of sensuality as such, which involves all senses. Negrin (2015, 123) sees the attraction in “the texture of the material and the cut of a garment, rather than simply its look.” Thus, it is especially the works including moving images that convey the affective moment of clothing through the movements of the wearers. The viewers’ attention is drawn to the moving transparent skirts in Khattari’s show, as well as to the movements with the different clothes in Al-Arashi’s video. In contrast to the apparently imposed and inflexible fabrics in Les Femmes du Maroc or the constricting corsets of the Houris, Al-Arashi’s flexible fabrics depict a fluid and organic relationship between fabric and body, as the fabrics constantly change their shape in response to the movements of the body. Rather than being constructed around an aesthetic of revealing and concealing, her garments evoke a sense of the moving body that takes her beyond the Western conception of art and fashion, which is still strongly emphasized as a primarily visual art form, as we might see in Essaydi’s photography. The veil is no longer conceived as a static, visual representation, but rather as a dynamic fabric that is constantly being

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reshaped by the female body. I observe a fundamental change in theory concerning body discourse in the different works. In an almost antagonistic way, the garments become a prosthetic extension of the female body. The veil is thus no longer (merely) an item of clothing that imposes certain characteristics on the wearer — the veil imposed by male dogmatism — but rather it is the wearer’s body that shapes the clothing with her personality. Essaydi evokes a decidedly different connotation in using the medium photography, which is generally regarded as a “representation of reality” (Graham-Brown 1988, 4). In this way, she questions the claim of truthful representation and scrutinizes the representation of the “Orient.” This focus is reinforced by the two-dimensionality of the medium and the resulting distance between the subjects and the viewer. The “looking at” and not “participating in” is also underlined by the linguistically evoked border through calligraphy all over the walls, clothes, and the bodies of the women (Fig. 2). The function of language to establish a dialogue is taken ad absurdum by the illegibility of calligraphy, rendering language to a medium of demarcation. The artist makes targeted use of writing, while depriving it of its actual function. Just as the hijab represents the boundary between inside and outside, virginity and sexuality, veiling and unveiling, so calligraphy forms a boundary in a possible dialogue between East and West, between Muslim woman and viewer. At the same time the use of calligraphy by the female artist is also an act of self-empowerment, as shown by Fatema Mernissi (Essaydi and Mernissi 2009), since calligraphy was a privilege reserved to man. Khattari’s performance shows a shift toward a perception of the haptic via the different surfaces and physical experience. The relevance of the female physical presence is underlined by the removal of the white clothes. It is here where the female body gains presence, first through the color contrast to the otherwise white surroundings, and then when the trance-like movements of the women turn into actual actions as the women undress each other. While the voyeuristic gaze remains very present in the interplay between clothing and nudity, it is further complemented by the immediate proximity to the viewer. This is achieved in the performance through the chosen background music, the scent of orange blossom and, most decisively, through the movements

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Fig. 2 Lalla Essaydi, Les Femmes du Maroc: Harem Women Writing, 2008, Chromatic print

of the performers with their clothes and by the evoking body of awareness. The distance between the spectators and the Houris is bridged by the immersive character, since the Houris performers walk through the crowd of spectators to reach the stage, which allows a “comprehension” and “feeling” of what they see (Fig. 3). The interplay of carefully composed individual images, linked by rhythmic background music, enables Al-Arashi to create a short film that shifts from a “male” view of the “Orient” into an immersive experience that reveals a “female” optic. Continuous sequences are created that document certain processes of movement and alternate ephemeral and seemingly randomly created garments with sculptural monumentality. In this way, self-determination and grace are conveyed equally through textiles and clothing. The emotionally charged expressiveness of the textile figuration is evoked by the energy and determined form

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Fig. 3 Majida Khattari, Houris, Rêve de Martyrs, 2014, Performance

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of the movement of the garment. Thus, the focus is not on the draped body, but on fabric that is animated with a life of its own.13 In the video, the handling of the fabric is condensed into an experience of tactile proximity by the moving image. As Giuliana Bruno (2014, 32) explains, “[a]s fabrications of visual fabric, fashion, architecture, and film are home to an archive of mental imaging’s and affective residues.” Consequently, the body sensation seems to be transferred to the viewer through the moving image. The movement patterns of the cloths converge in Rituals as they provoke a specific crisis of distance and especially of distanced seeing. The connection between viewer and artist culminates in a close-up. Widened into a sail stretched out by the wind, the fabric limits the frame of the picture and the viewer is placed in a seemingly intimate relationship with the wearer of the chador (Fig. 4). Clothing proves to be a haptic confrontation, as well as a subjective experience. In this tangible sense clothing becomes, I argue, a performative link and vehicle for the viewers to put themselves in the position of the wearer and thus immerse

Fig. 4 Yumna Al-Arashi, Rituals: The 99 Names of God, 2018, Video

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themselves into the affective moment. Although Al-Arashi uses the optically conditioned medium of film, capturing movement offers her the opportunity to convey physicality and emotions that function via the textile and haptics. This individual approach to Muslim clothing in relation to the female body locates the work in a new contemporary space in which touch and sense are emphasized.

An Extension of the Art Canon: Fashion Not only the preceding casting or the “ideal” bodies of the women in Houris are reminiscent of a fashion show, but also the room and lighting design as well as the dramaturgical structure are inspired by such a show. Required “model measurements” make it clear that women also have to subject their bodies to discursive constraints. The futuristic dresses of the Houris, which are evocative of haute couture, show that women are not only determined by the religiously motivated wearing of the headscarf, but that the fashion world and its aspiration to uniform bodies represents “the same kind of imprisonment as the burqa” as Khattari (2010) explains her interest in the relation between fashion and veiling. The undressing of the Houris and the following nudity functions on several levels: First, it is an act of liberation for the constrained body, which can be understood as an act of liberation from socially established constraints. On the other hand, the nudity is associated with sexuality, since the female body is stripped to give it to the martyr, thus making it available to the gaze of the viewer, which results to be renewed oppression. The artist shows the idealized female body at the interface between religious ideas and modern Western ideals of beauty and fashion. In this respect, the performance combines two stocks of knowledge in a common context — this new arrangement appears confusing and at the same time exposes the contractedness, the relativity and, within it, the fragility of these stocks of knowledge. Essaydi uses a certain fashion aesthetic in her photographs too. Les Femmes du Maroc reminds us of the advertising aesthetics of wellknown fashion labels and magazines through the careful positioning and arrangement of the models. Essaydi’s balancing act between historical

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recourse and contemporary location becomes apparent. The minimalist staging of the works paradoxically repositions the women in the focus of the picture, but without transforming them into exotic and half-naked objects for the pleasure of a male audience (Fig. 5). D’Alessandro (2019) specifies the role of women in Essaydis works as follows: “As you can see that she’s responding to this idea of the figure reclining for the male gaze, but she almost becomes one with the background and disappears into the space as well.” Not only is the reference to classical representations of the “Orient” identified by the viewer, but also the aesthetics used are familiar to him/her, thus facilitating access to the photographs. Al-Arashi as well as the other two artists quotes “fashion knowledge.” Like Gigi Hadid on the cover of Vogue Arabia, the artist poses with a saffron-colored veil. The faces of both women are partially covered by a transparent veil decorated with rhinestones (Fig. 6). The closeness of the

Fig. 5 Lalla Essaydi, Les Femmes du Maroc: La Grande Odalisque, 2008, Chromatic print

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Fig. 6 Yumna Al-Arashi, Rituals: The 99 Names of God, 2018, Video

female body and the fabric becomes obvious through the transparency of the fabric, which makes the underlying skin visible. The aesthetic positioning of the fabric also enhances the beauty and sensuality of the underlying body. Thus, I conclude: the fabric rather serves to make the body visible rather than to conceal it. Referring to a joint aesthetic shows the potential for a reinterpretation of the established politics of representation of Muslim women in art and fashion. Al-Arashi also makes use of what is probably the most used medium in the fashion world today: video. Numerous online shops use short videos to convey the effect of clothing on the moving body evoking different semantics. Fashion also plays a major role in Rituals, as it serves to symbolize the affective moment: The wearing sensation is thus conveyed via the textiles and the movements in the video. How contradictory the transmitted emotions can be, becomes evident in the comparison with the Hoodies commercial described at the beginning. It clearly refers to the Western dialectic of concealment and revelation, of oppression and liberation. Given this, I can interpret my introductory

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example in which the model Bar Rafaeli was used in the Israeli commercial as a symbol for Orientalist gaze in Israel, that she “must” first free herself from her niqab to be able to “live out” her freedom of movement and personality. The self-empowerment of women is reduced in the commercial to the removal of the niqab, adapting herself to the “modern” Western model, whereas in Al-Arashi’s video the self-empowerment of women is revealed through their diverse modes of movement in and within the chador. The reference to fashion and “advertising aesthetics” in art reveals itself as a strategy of appropriation and self-empowerment of women artists and at the same time points to an opening of the established canon of art and fashion toward a borderland oscillating between both. The inclusion of fashion enables a differentiation from established Orientalism, which, contrary to fashion, is characterized by fixed structures. Hence fashion appears to be an essential mechanism for a re-coding of Muslim clothing, specifically the headscarf, as Charim (2018, 64) states: “It reduces ethnic, cultural, religious or political signs to purely aesthetic differences.” I conclude that this creates a productive platform for artists — like Essaydi, Khattari and Al-Arashi — to respond to gender and socio-cultural developments in contemporary discourses between “modernity” and “traditional beliefs.”

Art as a Way Out “Today we recognize that those fantasies, which we describe as ‘Orientalist’, are problematic.” (Corso-Esquivel 2013, 4)

As shown, the determination of the female “Oriental” body is the product of a complex of power and knowledge. The “Orient” thus appears to be a construction (Said 1979) that was and still is designed from a Western point of view. The problematic field of power and representation, as it has been outlined, also seems to be raised by Femmes du

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Maroc and Houris: Through which discourses the image of the “Orient” and the female body was created and with what finality? Both artists deal with the concept of the power discourse and the construction of the “Other.” The female bodies thus become, in the sense of Paul Gilroy (1997, 23), the center of the representation of power, and at the same time an instrument of “subaltern” strategies of resistance. By repeating the composition of classical Oriental representations Essaydi not only refers explicitly to the power-discursive construction of the Muslim woman, but, as I argue, she as well criticizes its continued validity by detaching the representations from a temporal fix and at the same time she creates a place of retreat. Thus, in the repetition, which differs from the original through Essaydi’s intervention, lies the potential of displacement. In Khattari’s case, the resistance against the male oppression is made clear by the self-confident acting and sexual attraction of women and, not least, by their nudity. As the artist points out: “The passivity of the Oriental women is not indicated in the hadiths or in the Koran” (Khattari, email to the author, April 27, 2020).14 The artist places the female body at the spotlight of the performance, focusing on the actions of the women who become one single female body through their uniform dresses and bodies. Al-Arashi creates a counter-narrative through her self-presentation to the established mediatization of Muslim women. According to the artist, the Muslim woman would hardly speak for herself and only be heard in very few cases. As Al-Arashi (2017) emphasizes on her website: “Islam’s underlying inherent meditative, universal and spiritual value has been washed over by negative media representation and male-dominated dogmatic imposition.” To precisely interrupt this narrative, it is necessary “to be making more art about her, since that seems to be the most effective and honest way to represent her.” Essaydi, Khattari and Al-Arashi inscribe themselves as Arab-Western artists in the Orientalist discourse, through their works and actively participate in the production of knowledge about Muslim women. The potential of difference in these works should not be ignored. Especially since, in contrast to the overwhelming majority of contributions by European male artists, they are female artists who artistically address and reinterpret the “Oriental Other” and the fantasies and prejudices

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projected into it. The result is a self-empowering art through historical recourse and its new staging (re-)claiming the female body.

Conclusion The change in the Oriental discourse toward an individual and bodyrelated headscarf, as shown, has developed parallel to fashion research, in which the relation between the clothing and the wearing body are focused on through the medium of video. As elaborated, these changes are reflected by the different artistic positions, which at the same time contribute to a change in these fields of research. The artists represent the claim of a female perspective on the male-dominated discourses on the “Orient” and the creation of their own spaces of action within the hegemonic system of representation. The “truth” of the “Oriental Other” to be revealed is no longer hidden behind a veil but is revealed in Al-Arashi’s video in the self-production that is carried to the outside by the movements. By (re-)claiming her own female body, and in this way her self-representation, she goes into opposition against the Orientalist discourse, which is characterized through external attributions and representation. While Essaydi’s photographs still tie in with a historical discourse on the “Orient,” and if she appropriates and paraphrases famous arthistorical Orientalist representations, the more recent works by Khattari and Al-Arashi show a stronger focus on women’s bodies. Textile textures, the female body, and its sensual experience are in the foreground. The works thus reflect a trend that is evident in contemporary fashion debates too, that focus on the haptic experience of clothing. The body of the wearer, who designs the veil with personality, becomes central in the artistic works. Especially in the work Rituals by the youngest artist of the group the chador becomes a medium of self-empowerment and a spiritualistic experience, staged through movement with and in the chador, but also in the various modes of touch, enabling new perspectives on the “Orient.” According to my hypothesis raised at the beginning, the Western politics of representation focused on seeing are relegated to the background in favour of an emotional mediation through body

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language, tactility, and materiality. Developing new forms of seeing and perceiving the female body, and in combination with a differentiated view of the clothing of Muslim women, shows the potential of art in conducting research on femininity, physicality, and fashion, but as well to the production of knowledge and understanding. The (re-)claiming of the female body in art can have powerful consequences for understanding women’s experiences, for a gender-specific analysis of the discursivation of the female “Oriental” body. The entangelment of art and fashion creates a practice that not only demands, but also initiates and enacts a revision and rearticulation of dominant systems of knowledge of the “Orient” by challenging myths and stereotypes through the female body and by creating space for self-empowerment. A reflection of the current approaches to the discourses becomes particularly obvious in the comparison between the photographs of Essaydi and Khattari’s performance, in which the wide fabrics and the white corset evoke a constricting bodily sensation, and on the other hand Al-Arashi’s work, whose colorful and flowing fabrics blowing in the wind induce notions of grace and gracefulness. Aspects such as translucency and transparency, colorfulness and feel of the fabric are made evident by the women’s movements and translated into emotions. The play of movement of the textiles presupposes the personality of the wearers and is perceived as an interpretation of a body feeling. Precisely the tactile properties of the fabrics, as seen in the introduction of this contribution, are not decisive for the Western stereotyping discourse about the veil. Rather, they can be seen as decisive in these artistic works as being able to evoke and interpret different semantizations through the acting of the female body. The fixed characteristics of the submissive and passive Oriental woman, seen as a collective, are thus called into question by the different fashions of the veil and the lightness and flexibility of the fabrics, which dissolves the collective understanding. Works by artists such as Lalla Essaydi, Majida Khattari, and Yumna Al-Arashi contribute to break up the Western monological discourse and thus to undermine the West’s discourse of power over the “Orient.”

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Notes 1. For full commercial, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qIOGJj KFiU. Accessed February 12, 2019. 2. Niqab: In this research, a niqab is understood as a face veil. It can either be a half niqab, a small piece of fabric to cover the lower face with ties or elastic to secure it around the back of the head, or a full niqab, which covers the entire face with an opening for the eyes and ties at the back of the head. 3. Hijabistas: A composite of hijab—a way of tying the headscarf—and fashionista. 4. Mipsterz: The term was introduced in 2012 by Abbas Rattani and is composed of the terms ‘Muslim’ and ‘hipster’. It refers to young Muslims around the world who define themselves as both believers and modern. 5. Generation M is a term developed by Shelina Janmohamed to describe the growing number of young Muslim women and men for whom faith and modernity are inseparably linked. Generation M tries to change and shape the world around them in a positive way (see Janmohamed 2016). 6. Gigi Hadid is daughter of Mohamed Hadid, a Palestinian Muslim and refugee, and Yolanda Hadid, a Dutch American. As a “proud” Palestinian she associated herself in social media with Muslim causes (see Lewis 2018, 23). 7. Hijab: Often used to describe the act of covering by Muslim women; in the twenty-first century, popularly used to denote a headscarf or head covering. 8. Chador: A common outdoor outfit in Muslim communities. Formed by semicircular fabric, an outer garment that is worn by women. It is draped over the head like a shawl and held in place under the chin. 9. The film can be seen at: https://yumnaaa.com/The-99-Names-of-God. Accessed February 20, 2020. 10. “La passivité et l’oisiveté des femmes orientales ont été véhiculés par le regard de l’occident sur l’orient, malheureusement à cause de l’ignorance de la culture de l’autre.” Translated by the author. 11. Burqa: A loose garment for women that coverst he entire body from head to toe, worn in public. 12. Al–Arashi: https://yumnaaa.com/The-99-Names-of-God. Accessed February 20, 2020. 13. Schmidt-Linsenhoff also emphasizes this perspective on the body through the lens of a camera by referring to George Tisseron’s statement on

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Gaetan Gatian de Clérambaults photographs from 1917–19 (see SchmidtLinsenhoff 2000, 32). 14. “D’un autre coté la passivité des femmes orientales elle n’est pas indiqué dans les hadits ni dans le coran.” Quotes translated by the author.

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Essaydi, Lalla. 2014. Introduction. Interview by Sarah T. Brooks. The Photography of Lalla Essaydi: Critiquing and Contextualizing Orientalism, exhibition catalogue, March–April, 2014. Harrisonburg: James Madison University. Essaydi, Lalla and Fatema Mernissi. 2009. Les Femmes du Maroc. Brooklyn, NY: PowerHouse Cultural Entertainment, Inc. Farahani, Fataneh. 2002. Abwesend abwesend sein: Überlegungen zur diskursiven Praxis des Schleiers. In Körper und Repräsentation, ed. Insa Härtel and Sigrid Schade, 109–118. Opladen: Leske + Budrich. Feher, Michel. 1987. Of Bodies and Technologies. In Discussions in Contemporary Culture 1, ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: The New Press. Gaugele, Elke, and Alexandra Karentzos. 2019. Von den Style–Hijabistas zur queeren ‘Revolution’. Zur Modegeschichte der (Post-)Migration. In Contemporary Muslim Fashions, ed. Mahret Ifeona Kupka and Matthias Wagner K., 13–17. Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt am Main. Gilroy, Paul. 1997. Exer(or)cising Power: Black Bodies in the Black Public Sphere. In Dance in the City, ed. Helen Thomas, 21–34. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Göckede, Regina and Alexandra Karentzos. 2006. Der Orient, die Fremde. Positionen zeitgenössischer Kunst und Literatur, Bielefeld: Transcript. Göle, Nilüfer. 2017. The Daily Lives of Muslims. Islam and Public Confrontation in Contemporary Europe. London: Zed Books. Graham-Brown, Sarah. 1988. Images of Women: The Portrayal of Women in Photography of the Middle East 1860–1950. London: Columbia University Press. Hoodies. 2018. Freedom Is Basic. YouTube, 29 October 2018. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=_qIOGJjKFiU. Accessed September 18, 2020. Janmohamed, Shelina. 2016. Generation M: Young Muslims Changing the World . London: I.B. Tauris. Khattari, Majida. 2010. Franco–Moroccan Visual Artist Majida Khattari unveils her burqas. Interview by Daphné Segretain. France 24, April 12, 2010. http://www.france24.com/en/20100412-franco-moroccan-visualartist-majida-khattari-unveils-burqas. Accessed September 18, 2020. Khattari, Majida. 2020. Email to the author, April 27, 2020. Lewis, Reina. 1996. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation. London: Routledge. ———. 2014. Reading the Subtitles of Islam Fashion. Interview by Vanessa Friedman. New York Times, November 25, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2014/11/27/fashion/reading-between-the-seams-at-the-islamic-fashion-fes tival-in-malaysia.html. Accessed September 18, 2020.

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———. 2018. Muslims and Fashion Now, and Then. In Contemporary Muslim Fashions, ed. J.D.’Alessandro and Reina Lewis, 20–47. Munich, London, and New York: DelMonico Books, Prestel. Montagu, Mary Wortley. 1997. Turkish Embassy Letters. New York: Virago. Negrin, Llewellyn. 2015. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The Corporeal Experience of Fashion. In Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, ed. Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik, 116–131. London: I.B. Tauris. Nochlin, Linda. 1989. The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. New York: Harper & Row. Oesterreich, Miriam. 2018. Bilder konsumieren. Inszenierungen ‘exotischer’ Körper in früher Bildreklame. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink. Pollock, Griselda. 1988. Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and Histories of Arts. New York: Routledge. Rocamora, Agnès and Anneke Smelik. 2015. Thinking through Fashion. A Guide to Key Theorists, I.B.Tauris: United Kingdom. Said, Edward W. 1979. Orientalism. London: Vintage. Schmidt–Linsenhoff, Viktoria. 2000. Jenseits der Sichtbarkeit. Der Schleier als Fetisch. Bildbegriff und Weiblichkeit in der kolonialen und postkolonialen Fotografie. In Fotogeschichte. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Fotografie, no. 76, ed. Anton Holzer, 25–38. Wien: Jonas Verlag. Schmitz, Markus. 2006. Orientalismus, Gender und die binäre Matrix kultureller Repräsentation. In Der Orient, die Fremde. Positionen zeitgenössischer Kunst und Literatur, ed. Regina Göckede and Alexandra Karentzos, 39–66. Bielefeld: Transcript. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2008 [1988]. Can the Subaltern Speak? Postkolonialität und subalterne Artikulation. Mit einer Einleitung von Hito Steyerl. Wien: Turia & Kant. Warr, Tracey. 2005. Körper und Kunst. Berlin: Phaidon. Wolf, Gerhard. 2017. Veil. In Textile Terms: A Glossary, ed. Mateusz Kapustka and Anika Reineke, 289–294. Emsdetten and Berlin: Edition Imorde. Ye˘geno˘glu, Meyda. 1998. Colonial Fantasie: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Index

A

C

Abaya 1, 2, 6, 44–46, 61, 66, 111, 113, 114, 119–123, 226, 291, 292 Al-Arashi, Yumna 11, 292, 294, 302, 305, 307–309

Colonialism 268 D

De-veiling 8, 174–179, 181, 185, 186 Dress practice 66, 74, 245

B

Bandung 23, 152, 154 Beauty 13, 14, 21, 25, 26, 29–33, 35, 36, 44, 139, 140, 142, 156, 158, 168, 169, 195, 230, 242, 251, 253, 255–258, 273, 275, 303, 305 Bhachu, Parminder 217–219 Brenner, Suzanne 27, 136, 153, 154, 156, 168, 170

E

Essaydi, Lalla 11, 289, 292–296, 298–300, 303, 304, 306–309 Ethnographic discourse analysis 10 F

Fanon, Frantz 269, 270, 283 Fashion media 10, 90, 97

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 V. Thimm (ed.), (Re-)Claiming Bodies Through Fashion and Style, New Directions in Islam, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71941-8

315

316

Index

G

J

Germany 2, 3, 7, 10, 42–44, 49, 50, 53, 54, 58–61, 97, 101, 288

Jones, Carla 2, 3, 23, 27, 28, 30, 31, 130, 132, 153, 155, 165, 184, 185, 187

H

Halal 2, 23, 30, 36, 68, 129–131, 133, 134, 138, 142, 144, 145, 177, 229 ¯ H ar¯ a t ı . . n (former slaves and their descendants) 242–246, 252–255, 257–259 Hijab/veiling trend 3, 8, 24, 26–28, 33–36, 42–46, 48–61, 65, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 76, 77, 79, 84, 95, 98–104, 130, 132–134, 136, 143, 145, 151–169, 173–187, 202, 207, 219, 221, 226, 230, 248, 249, 268, 269, 271, 272, 278, 290–292, 296, 298, 299, 303, 310 Hijabistas 42, 43, 49, 56, 60, 183, 185, 291, 294, 310 Hijra community 7, 192, 193, 199, 207

I

Instagram 41, 49, 56, 58, 60, 67, 73–77, 81, 82, 94, 102, 152, 155, 157, 158, 168, 202, 291, 292 Integration 42, 71, 72, 221 Intersectionality 9, 10, 90–93, 97, 100, 110, 112, 219 Iranian women in Malaysia 8, 175, 176, 181

K

Kandora 6, 110, 111, 113–123 Khattari, Majida 11, 289, 292–299, 301, 303, 306–309 L

Liminality 175, 180, 184, 186 M

Malah.fa (Mauritanian veil) 5, 9, 241–243, 245, 246, 248–260 Malaysia 1, 3, 8, 66, 113, 134, 153, 173–178, 182, 185–187 Materiality 9, 180, 243, 246, 248, 257–259, 288, 309 Mauritania 3, 9, 241, 242, 244, 245, 248, 253, 255, 256, 258–260 Memory 72, 219, 225, 227, 228, 265, 268, 269, 275–277, 280–283 Modest fashion 8, 14, 44, 50, 56, 58, 66–69, 72, 73, 75–78, 80–82, 84, 89, 90, 96, 98, 100, 104, 130, 132, 143, 183, 185, 217, 232 Modesty 12, 44, 55, 67, 70, 72, 83, 130, 131, 136, 139–141, 145, 158, 161, 162, 174, 177, 178, 180, 184, 185, 187, 230, 249, 251, 256, 275 Muslim dress 67, 89, 97, 104, 156, 216, 249, 256, 298

Index

317

Nail polish 12, 13, 31, 129–131, 133–145

Resistance 7, 28, 44, 52, 53, 59, 60, 68, 98, 161, 162, 192, 202, 248, 267, 268, 270, 272, 307

O

S

Orientalism 11, 283, 289, 292, 306

Salwar-kameez 13, 215–223, 225–227, 229, 230, 232–235 Sartorial biographies 216, 222, 232, 234 Sholeha (good) 27, 31–33 Social hierarchy 8, 9, 244 Social media 3, 25, 41, 42, 56–58, 67, 68, 72, 74, 76, 77, 81, 82, 90, 94–97, 100, 143, 155, 157, 158, 202, 266, 272, 275, 278, 282, 291, 310

N

P

Pelangi, Dian 34, 153, 156–159 Pemuda Hijrah 154, 155 Performativity 175, 192, 193, 205, 206 Piety 9, 23, 33, 130, 136, 139, 144, 145, 158–160, 162, 165, 167, 175, 177, 178, 180, 184, 187, 217, 220, 226, 229, 235, 243–245, 251–253, 258 Postcolonial theory 11, 12, 174, 219, 265, 267, 273, 289 Public space 6, 110, 115, 117, 121, 168, 175, 192, 280 Punjabi diaspora 216–218, 220, 222, 227, 232, 234

Q

Queer fashion 6, 7, 123, 192, 194, 200–202, 205, 206, 221 Quran 41, 46–48, 135, 139, 143, 194, 195, 197, 198, 206

T

Tarlo, Emma 3, 67, 70, 72, 132, 216, 217, 219, 243, 248, 256 Third gender 193, 198–200, 206

U

Unveiling 28, 42, 152, 153, 160– 167, 174–176, 178–182, 184–187, 267, 268, 296, 299

W

Wolf, Naomi 21, 22, 26, 30, 35, 295 Wusar 114

R

Religious authority 57, 143, 144, 197

Y

Youth culture 22, 70, 83, 154, 221