Reflections on Arabic culture
There are a few more things about Dubai, or more
generally, Arabic culture, that I feel compelled to write about. One is hijab,
the practice of modest dress by Islamic women. The other is religious cartoons
(which I can safely discuss now that we're back in India).
I had to do a little Internet research on the
coverings worn by Islamic women. The practice of hijab, or dressing modestly, is
complicated since it practiced differently from country to country. In South
India, for example, Muslim women will usually wear Indian dress, like a sari or
salwar kameez, and then use a dupatta (a long, light scarf), to cover their
heads. But they don't cover their faces the way Muslim women in Arab states do,
or the way women in Afghanistan do with a burqa. From what I have read, the
burqa is worn in the Jammu and Kashmir parts of India, which border Pakistan,
where it is also worn. The burqa, of course, became familiar to Americans when,
after we invaded Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks on Washington and
New York, we discovered the way the Taliban forces Afghani women to dress
provided another reason for disliking Muslims (at that time--i.e., 2001--I think
most Americans still lumped all Muslims in with Islamic fundamentalists. I hope
we know better now).
Well, the burqa just refers to the head covering that reveals nothing but the eyes. Others use the term hijab for such a scarf, though as I have come to learn hijab refers more accurately to the practice of modest dress. Hijab is also Arabic for “barrier.” Another term you see used is jilbab (there is a line over the a, but I can’t figure out how to type it). According to Wikipedia, jilbab “refers to a long, flowing, baggy overgarment worn by some Muslim women.”
There is some controversy over how the Qur'an is translated. Some interpret the specific verses referring to women's dress to mean that the jilbab, along with head covering, is the only acceptable dress. This seems to be the dominant interpretation in the United Arab Emirates, as most of what you see women wearing is something like in the picture below, except with the face, minus the eyes, fully covered.
I borrowed the picture from the Wikipedia entry for jilbab since I did not take any pictures of women while in Dubai. Taking pictures is frowned upon, except with prior permission, and I was too intimidated, or maybe scared, to ask a woman if I could take her picture.
The specific verse from the Qur'an reads: "And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their khumur over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or the (female) slaves whom their right hands possess, or old male servants who lack vigour, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex; and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments."
I think what women in Dubai wore tended to be like Answer.com's description of the Saudi Arabian version of modest dress: "composed of abaya or loose robe, hijab or headcovering, and niqab or face veil. The Saudi niqab usually leaves a long open slot for the eyes; the slot is held together by a string or narrow strip of cloth."
My point in elaborating on all of this has to do with my curiosity. One night we were in a taxi and stopped at a light. I looked to the left and a women in the back seat of a taxi, wearing the head covering and veil that revealed only her eyes, made direct eye contact with me. It was an interaction I'd never had before. I'm still not sure what to make of it. On one hand, there's a complete absence of information about a person when all you see is her eyes. We use people's clothing, body language, and facial expressions, for example, to communicate both directly and indirectly with each other about who we are, where we stand, and what we think of each other. What's your basis for interacting when you meet a women who is reduced to her eyes? I'm just thinking out loud, so my views are subject to change, but my current position is that hajib discourages interaction between men and women (at least between western men and Islamic women). But if you go back and read the verses of the Qur'an that I included, it seems that the idea is for hajib to have precisely the sort of response in men that it invoked in me. Such a response keep women, and especially their sexuality, off limits.
Interestingly, as I was researching this subject on the Internet, I came across some blogs where people talked about male friends who told them they found women in hajib to be sexy--precisely the opposite reason for the existence of the practice. Equally interesting, in a number of blogs women who wear hajib spoke of the freedom that it allowed them--freedom from the gaze of the Muslim male (a response quite anathema to feminist critiques of hajib).
In Dubai, as I suppose is the case in any Islamic country that has one foot in the west, the practice of hajib seems to be in transition. There is some freedom, even for Islamic women, in terms of dress. Western women can be seen wearing mini skirts and tank tops. But I'm less fascinated by the co-existence of east and west in different groups of people, and more interested in how east and west coexist within a single person. The woman, for example, who in jilbab and headscarf, with nothing but her eyes showing, stands in the lingerie store in the mall, talking on her cell phone which she just retrieved from her $500 purse. Her jilbab, by the way, is adorned with expensive-looking beads and stones. I don't by any means intend to imply that this is hypocritical behavior. It's just the sociologist in me that is fascinated by the competing forces of culture, tradition, religion, and capitalism.
How these tensions get resolved is probably pretty significant in terms of global relations between the Islamic and non-Islamic world. The recent cartoon flare up is a case in point. We were Dubai when things really reached a peak in other parts of the Islamic world--protests resulting in riots, arson, and even death. While in Dubai we received the Gulf News, an English language paper, which provided a lot of insight into the conflagrations.Basically, the Islamic world seems to see the cartoons as illustrative of the profound misunderstanding, or absence of understanding, that the west has for Islamic beliefs and traditions. Furthermore, the reprinting of the cartoons, and the insistence on freedom of the press, further affirmed for Muslims what utter disregard the west has for its beliefs.
I've also read the arguments about the double standards, wherein Islamic papers, having printed offensive cartoons with Rabbis or priests or clerics from other religions, have no ground on which to criticize papers printing caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. Maybe I've been persuaded by reading the editorials in the Gulf News, and now in The Hindu as well, but I'm not so certain these arguments are convincing. If Catholics had as profound a belief as Muslims with respect to printing pictures of the pope, or Jesus, then I could agree that the Islamic world has a double standard.
So on one hand I agree with the response from the Islamic world. It was insulting and inappropriate for papers to run these cartoons. On the other hand, I completely disagree with the nature of the protests that followed. But the nature of the responses, I think, lay bare the state relations between the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds. The west values democratic processes, peaceful civil disobedience, and dialogue (ostensibly, one might argue). We take the absence of these things in the Islamic world as justification for not trying to understand their beliefs and customs, and as justification for abnegating our responsibility to live up to our values by engaging in dialogue. Such dialogue is not possible with Islamic fundamentalists, just as moderates in America find it impossible to have dialogue with Christian fundamentalists, but Islamic fundamentalists make up an extraordinarily small part of the larger (and very large it is) Islamic world. Without any dialogue, Muslims, when outraged, have few outlets. And as we saw in the fall out from the cartoons, not unlike with activists in Seattle in 1999 who were protesting the corporate-led process of globalization, when people have few outlets for strong emotions they boil over in destructive ways.
Well, the burqa just refers to the head covering that reveals nothing but the eyes. Others use the term hijab for such a scarf, though as I have come to learn hijab refers more accurately to the practice of modest dress. Hijab is also Arabic for “barrier.” Another term you see used is jilbab (there is a line over the a, but I can’t figure out how to type it). According to Wikipedia, jilbab “refers to a long, flowing, baggy overgarment worn by some Muslim women.”
There is some controversy over how the Qur'an is translated. Some interpret the specific verses referring to women's dress to mean that the jilbab, along with head covering, is the only acceptable dress. This seems to be the dominant interpretation in the United Arab Emirates, as most of what you see women wearing is something like in the picture below, except with the face, minus the eyes, fully covered.
I borrowed the picture from the Wikipedia entry for jilbab since I did not take any pictures of women while in Dubai. Taking pictures is frowned upon, except with prior permission, and I was too intimidated, or maybe scared, to ask a woman if I could take her picture.
The specific verse from the Qur'an reads: "And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what (must ordinarily) appear thereof; that they should draw their khumur over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands, their fathers, their husband's fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers or their brothers' sons, or their sisters' sons, or their women, or the (female) slaves whom their right hands possess, or old male servants who lack vigour, or small children who have no sense of the shame of sex; and that they should not strike their feet in order to draw attention to their hidden ornaments."
I think what women in Dubai wore tended to be like Answer.com's description of the Saudi Arabian version of modest dress: "composed of abaya or loose robe, hijab or headcovering, and niqab or face veil. The Saudi niqab usually leaves a long open slot for the eyes; the slot is held together by a string or narrow strip of cloth."
My point in elaborating on all of this has to do with my curiosity. One night we were in a taxi and stopped at a light. I looked to the left and a women in the back seat of a taxi, wearing the head covering and veil that revealed only her eyes, made direct eye contact with me. It was an interaction I'd never had before. I'm still not sure what to make of it. On one hand, there's a complete absence of information about a person when all you see is her eyes. We use people's clothing, body language, and facial expressions, for example, to communicate both directly and indirectly with each other about who we are, where we stand, and what we think of each other. What's your basis for interacting when you meet a women who is reduced to her eyes? I'm just thinking out loud, so my views are subject to change, but my current position is that hajib discourages interaction between men and women (at least between western men and Islamic women). But if you go back and read the verses of the Qur'an that I included, it seems that the idea is for hajib to have precisely the sort of response in men that it invoked in me. Such a response keep women, and especially their sexuality, off limits.
Interestingly, as I was researching this subject on the Internet, I came across some blogs where people talked about male friends who told them they found women in hajib to be sexy--precisely the opposite reason for the existence of the practice. Equally interesting, in a number of blogs women who wear hajib spoke of the freedom that it allowed them--freedom from the gaze of the Muslim male (a response quite anathema to feminist critiques of hajib).
In Dubai, as I suppose is the case in any Islamic country that has one foot in the west, the practice of hajib seems to be in transition. There is some freedom, even for Islamic women, in terms of dress. Western women can be seen wearing mini skirts and tank tops. But I'm less fascinated by the co-existence of east and west in different groups of people, and more interested in how east and west coexist within a single person. The woman, for example, who in jilbab and headscarf, with nothing but her eyes showing, stands in the lingerie store in the mall, talking on her cell phone which she just retrieved from her $500 purse. Her jilbab, by the way, is adorned with expensive-looking beads and stones. I don't by any means intend to imply that this is hypocritical behavior. It's just the sociologist in me that is fascinated by the competing forces of culture, tradition, religion, and capitalism.
How these tensions get resolved is probably pretty significant in terms of global relations between the Islamic and non-Islamic world. The recent cartoon flare up is a case in point. We were Dubai when things really reached a peak in other parts of the Islamic world--protests resulting in riots, arson, and even death. While in Dubai we received the Gulf News, an English language paper, which provided a lot of insight into the conflagrations.Basically, the Islamic world seems to see the cartoons as illustrative of the profound misunderstanding, or absence of understanding, that the west has for Islamic beliefs and traditions. Furthermore, the reprinting of the cartoons, and the insistence on freedom of the press, further affirmed for Muslims what utter disregard the west has for its beliefs.
I've also read the arguments about the double standards, wherein Islamic papers, having printed offensive cartoons with Rabbis or priests or clerics from other religions, have no ground on which to criticize papers printing caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. Maybe I've been persuaded by reading the editorials in the Gulf News, and now in The Hindu as well, but I'm not so certain these arguments are convincing. If Catholics had as profound a belief as Muslims with respect to printing pictures of the pope, or Jesus, then I could agree that the Islamic world has a double standard.
So on one hand I agree with the response from the Islamic world. It was insulting and inappropriate for papers to run these cartoons. On the other hand, I completely disagree with the nature of the protests that followed. But the nature of the responses, I think, lay bare the state relations between the Islamic and non-Islamic worlds. The west values democratic processes, peaceful civil disobedience, and dialogue (ostensibly, one might argue). We take the absence of these things in the Islamic world as justification for not trying to understand their beliefs and customs, and as justification for abnegating our responsibility to live up to our values by engaging in dialogue. Such dialogue is not possible with Islamic fundamentalists, just as moderates in America find it impossible to have dialogue with Christian fundamentalists, but Islamic fundamentalists make up an extraordinarily small part of the larger (and very large it is) Islamic world. Without any dialogue, Muslims, when outraged, have few outlets. And as we saw in the fall out from the cartoons, not unlike with activists in Seattle in 1999 who were protesting the corporate-led process of globalization, when people have few outlets for strong emotions they boil over in destructive ways.
Posted: Fri - February 10, 2006 at 02:54 AM
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Published On: Jul 15, 2006 12:54 AM
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Published On: Jul 15, 2006 12:54 AM