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NYT: "What the Headscarf Means, When Everyone Wears One"
Mona El-Naggar, Aug 10, 2010, New York Times
CAIRO — As far as wardrobes go, the head scarf worn by a Muslim woman to cover her hair has become the most loaded political and religious symbol today. And while the West wrestles to accept it, Muslim societies where the majority of women now wear the veil are wrestling to understand what it means beyond its standard function.
With the veil becoming the norm here, worn by more than 89 percent of Egyptian women from the ages of 15 to 29, it ceases to be a testament of piety or an assertion of identity. Its meaning is convoluted with the numberless tones of color and styles available.
This has led an increasing number of women to take the extra stride toward covering their face as a more solid articulation of piousness or rejecting the veil as a superfluous piece of cloth and taking it off altogether.
Dozens of interviews with young Egyptian women on either end of the spectrum revealed the deeply personal and sometimes painful struggle they confront in trying to assert their individuality. And the head scarf in this context can be seen as a mosaic of experiences stitched into a single piece of fabric that, for the moment, gives cover to a society largely unsure of where it wants to go.
To take off the veil, as some women have done, is to ask the candid question of what it means to be a Muslim woman today.
Zeinab Magdy, 21, started wearing the veil when she was a senior in high school. “Up until today I really don’t know why I put it on,” she said. “But a lot of it was peer pressure. A lot of people were starting to wear it; it felt like fitting in or belonging.”
She cried profusely the first day she wore it because halfway through the day she wanted to take it off, but felt trapped.
Fearing the social stigma associated with taking off the veil, Ms. Magdy continued to cover her hair for two and a half years, until she summoned the courage to reverse her decision halfway through college. She had joined a creative writing class, and by beginning to discover what she loved to do, she felt more sure of who she wanted to be.
The veil was simply not a part of it, she admits. “I remember the sensation of the air in my hair,” she recalled with a twinkle in her eye.
Ms. Magdy, like others in her social stratum, was lucky to be able to choose relatively freely. Some young women who come from a less privileged or less educated background or live in more conservative neighborhoods and cities are a lot more bound by tradition. They do not have the luxury to be different.
Marwa Muhammad, 26, a manicurist in a hair salon who has worn the veil for nine years, recently started to take it off at work then put it back on as she made her way back home every night. She says she spends long days at work, sometimes forgetting to get up and pray, a religious duty that she notes is more basic and essential than veiling.
She casually allows her male colleagues to style her hair, and she removes the veil for a stretch of time when she goes to the beach in Alexandria every summer, where no one would be able to recognize — or judge — her. “I’m wearing it because I can’t walk in the street without it,” Ms. Muhammad said. “I’m wearing it, but it’s as if I’m not.”
Ms. Muhammad is very honest about her divided relationship with the veil. She believes it is a religious duty and aspires to one day “really” wear it, but only when it speaks to a more genuine piety.
Stories abound, and through it all, there is no real social consensus.
“There’s this desire to make everybody fit into something. But what is that thing?” asks Hanan Sabea, a professor of anthropology at the American University in Cairo. “It’s an incredible moment of unsettled universe; there is a great contestation over it. That’s why there is an investment in all these labels and categories. And it’s still very mushy and uncertain.”
The revival of orthodox religious discourse in the past three decades led many Muslim women, whether through conviction or convenience, to take on the veil. In this traditional and patriarchal society, where the image of the woman is connected to such concepts as family honor, national pride and social values, the spread of the veil became the most visible manifestation of a swelling religious identification.
But now that the vast majority of women in Egypt are in fact veiled, it is no longer a mark of distinction, or even piety. It is not unusual to see a young veiled woman in tight jeans and a catchy top strutting provocatively down the street holding her boyfriend’s hand. And the veil, which represented some measure of respectability, no longer protects or prevents harassment on the street.
This saturation of the veil has also given way for young women to mark their religiosity by putting on the niqab, a full face cover. According to a survey conducted by the Population Council in 2009, about 5 percent of Egyptian women from the ages of 15 to 29 now wear the niqab.
“When you reach a new normal, people begin to distinguish themselves differently,” said Hania Shalaani, an expert in gender studies at the Social Research Center at the American University in Cairo. “Because the veil is no longer a sign of religiosity or respectability, it is expected to see this polarization.”
Manal Mahmoud, 21, a graduate of English studies from Cairo University, wore the veil when she was 14 and upgraded to the niqab at the age of 17.
Ms. Mahmoud said she was against covering her face until five of her friends, who started wearing the niqab one after the other in the span of one month, were criticized and attacked by teachers at school for wearing it. She eventually became convinced that it was the better choice and found that covering her face was a more sincere attempt to obey God than to merely cover her hair.
Ms. Mahmoud recalls that she was shocked to realize that when she first wore the niqab, it didn’t transform her behavior or turn her into an “angel.” But it did bring her closer to women who thought and felt like she did.
With that, Ms. Mahmoud gradually gave up her passion for watching movies and stopped listening to music. “Through the niqab, I determined what I wanted to do,” she said. “You call it identity, I call it going on the right path.”