Burqa questions

I saw a picture in the paper earlier this week of a group of Acehnese women wearing burqas. The eerie thing was, it was a color picture, and all their burqas were the exact same color. It looked like sort of a light blue.

Now, that was a nice color. But if I wore a burqa, I’d want different colored ones to wear because I’d get bored wearing the same thing every day. I’d probably even want a few tie-dyed or batik burqas, just to be different. It was really strange to see all these women wearing the exact same color- do burqas come in only one color? Is there something significant in Islam about that particular shade of blue, like the special shade of blue dye that was once used on Jewish tallitot?

Oh, and I don’t know the difference between a burqa, a chador, and an abaya, other than that chadors and abayas seem to be black instead of blue, and abayas seem to be worn in Saudi Arabia and chadors in Iran. Are they just names in different languages for the same thing, or are they different?

IIRC burkas in Afghanistan are always blue too. As I understand it part of the idea behind the burka is (no ofense meant to anyone here IANAMuslim) concealment. Wearing a burka assures that women do not draw attention to themselves in any way - having a different colour burka would defeat the purpose.

If you can get your hands on a copy there is a powerful chapter in The Bookseller of Kabul (an otherwise dull book IMHO) where the author describes a shopping trip …

A quick google search tells me that ‘chador’ is Persian in origin whereas ‘abaya’ is Arabic, certainly abaya is the term used in Arabic speaking Kuwait.

I hope this will keep you going until someone better informed comes along.

BTW you may be interested to know that a lot of the young Mulsim girls/women wearing the headscarf in France obviously pay careful attention to colour co-ordination - I get the impression that Iranian women have a range of colours at their disposal too.

I forgot - from observation (so I’m guessing essentially) a burka obscurs the face (behind a mesh), this isn’t necessarily the case with an abaya or chador.

In the UAE and Oman, a burqa‘ is a stiff black face mask which doesn’t actually conceal much of the face. This was probably the original meaning of the word. The alternative name for the Afghan-style burqa‘ is chadri or chadari, which comes from the Persian word châdar originally meaning a sheet or canopy. The conventional spelling “chador” used in English is a variant of this word. The Afghan chadri/burqa‘ is like a big circle of lightweight fabric with a cap sewn into the center plus the infamous face-mesh that goes under the cap on one side.

The chador used in Iran is simply a big semicircle of lightweight fabric, which isn’t always black; floral-patterned prints are popular there too. It’s wrapped around but you have to hold it in place with one hand or something or it comes off. Very inconvenient for shopping or doing anything. I don’t know how they can stand it. It’s hard enough for me to walk around and do stuff with a shawl draped over my shoulders without it slipping off. Imagine a whole-body shawl.

The Arabian ‘abâyah is a cloak, constructed like an overcoat with armholes and sleeves and everything, so it’s easier to wear and easier to keep on. Guys wear ‘abayahs in Arabia too, you know. It’s like a wearable one-person tent that protects you from windblown sand. Whether you’re man or woman, the Arabian environment is the same.

I have often wondered about the color uniformity also. Is the blue significant? What dye do they use? Is it a natural (native grown) dye? How can I get a contract to supply an entire nation with enough dye to keep those burqua’s blue? :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ve definitely seen pictures of women in brown burqas, and I think those of other (not-too-bright) colors also. A few years back, the endpaper article in the New York Times magazine by Margaret Atwood discribed her experiences of burqa-shopping many years ago on a visit to Afghanistan - she said that the salesmen and other men hanging around the bazaar told her that the lavender was the best color, which implies that there were others to choose from. (She said the experience of wearing one influenced her later in designing the outfits the women wear in The Handmaid’s Tale, with their view-restricting bonnets.)

The environment is the same but the garments are different.

Gulf abayas are always black, some have black embroidery on them. For a series of social and religious reasons I think they are more meant to preserve modesty and serve as a social marker in societies that have more guest workers (with fewer rights) than abaya-wearing female citizens (with more rights). Many abayas are becoming closer to form-fitting than tent-like, which I find ironic. It seemed to me from personal observation that the heavier a woman appeared to be, looser her abaya. Not scientific sampling really, but interesting. The abaya is worn over another layer of clothing and is lifted off when men aren’t around.
Men wear a garment known as a thaube or dishdash. It is the primary garment worn all day, only underwear underneath. I don’t think you’d find any many claiming to wear an abaya, much as men here wouldnt claim to be wearing a dress. It is a different garment. From the waist up it’s closely tailored as a dress shirt, including a breast pocket (for your prayer beads, fountain pen and teeth cleaning stick), sometimes side pockets, and even French cuffs. Some have collars of various types and others don’t. In general they end inches higher of the ground than an abaya. Most thaubes are linen, I’ve seen some variation in abaya cloth choices.

The big obvious difference is color; almost all the men in Qatar, UAE & so forth wear white or off-white. You see a few pastel variations in Saudi. The thaube is also a marker of citizenship and effectively confers visually-based rights on the wearer, which is why guest workers arent supposed to be wearing them.

My understaning is that in Sudanese Arabic the word dishdash also or exclusively (?) refers to women’s clothing, although not having been there I’m not sure if this is what is otherwise caled an abaya or something different.

Burqas are, as others have noted, a whole other kettle of fish.

Ah right, I was going somewhere with the social reasons thing…

If you look at the garments in the pre-oil revenue era, when people were doing their own manual labor in the Gulf, they were very different. People did wear loose-fitting clothing but it was more practical and harder to stain or tear. Modern abayas and thaubes are for people who have someone else to catch fish and feed the camels and pave the roads. When Gulf citizen males are going to be doing physical activity there now (which is more likely exercise than work) it seems they just wear jogging suits…