In the Gulf they’re always black, although you’ll see all kinds of fancy embroidery and such (also in black, but visible up close) … there are a lot of nice abaya shops, my favorite mangled English name for one being Horse Women Frocks. You’ll see the abaya boutiques next to modern fashion places in garment districts and malls, reflecting the fact that the abaya is now for overtop the western wear. Many of them have become form-fitting themselves, pretty well rendering themselves useless in terms of their original intent of hiding the goods.
I’d suggest that in the socially, nationality-based stratified Gulf, in which the native populations lord it over the guest workers from around the region, the black abaya and white men’s dishdash serve to let other people who’s boss from a distance. It functions as a uniform of sorts. Keep in mind this is in a society in which a Qatari or Emirati gets a cab at the mall ahead of the rest of the line, visits the health clinic ahead of the rest of the line, isn’t pulled over for speeding etc etc over the majority guest workers (Indian, Pakistani, Iranian, poorer Arabs like Palestinians, etc). With wide phenotypes in the population of nationals (a Gulf Arab citizen can look sub-Saharan African to olive-skinned, blue-eyed caucasian), it “helps” to able able to tell who’s in charge on the street or at the mall from a block away.
A look at an ethnographic museum in the Gulf will show that before the recharged Wahhabist movement spread out of Saudi and before the oil wealth kicked in - just a few generations ago - both men’s and women’s garments were rather colorful and more practical for doing actual work. Y’know, back when those populations had to work.
At present it’s as if you were in an American border town filled with migrant Mexican workers, and all the American citizens were walking around in tuxes and evening gowns, emphasizing how traditional they were…
In small traditional towns in southern Tunisia they’re always black as well, but with small white or blue stripe patterns at about the waist which indicate what village a woman is from (color) and marital staus (width of stripe). I’m sure other parts of the Arab world - which is really quite diverse on these issues - have other variations.
Wow. I never see that in the US. Are they from northern ethnic groups that straddle the Afghan border?
FTR I wasn’t picking at you or trying to nitpick the topic. I honestly felt, and feel, that my post contained a valid counter-point to bring up given the topic.
There are Islamic swimsuits made, and that is what the link is about. Whether or not they are popular is beyond me, though. For example, it says under the details: “Jelbab.com doesn’t claim any Fatwa for using this suit; please use your own judgment.”
Here in Northern Virginia there’s a large Afghan immigrant population, and most of the Afghans I’ve met are from Kabul. The Kabul population is Dari (Persian/Tajik) speaking, not Pashtun. It’s kind of like Brussels, which is a French-speaking city on the edge of the Flemish-speaking area. Kabul is a Dari-speaking city on the edge of the Pashto-speaking area. The people of Kabul and the other Dari/Tajik areas are often more liberal than the Pashtuns, who have a different culture. That whole Taliban thing was very much a Pashtun affair and the non-Pashtuns hated it. Among the Afghans here in Virginia, the ones who wear hijab are very much in the minority.
The Arabic word for the kerchief is khimâr. The overcoat-like outer garment is sometimes called ‘abâyah, and sometimes jilbâb, depending on the region. In Saudi Arabia, they call it ‘abâyah, while in many other Arab countries that word is used for a man’s outer cloak. It’s a very loose garment which is like a small tent that you wear, helps to protect you from wind-driven sand in the desert. In Saudi Arabia, the word for men’s ‘abayah is mishlah. These are just more examples of the regional variation in words that Crandolph mentioned. But the word khimâr for ‘kerchief’ is pretty standard across the whole Arab world.
Actually, the original meaning of hijâb is not ‘women’s clothing’ at all! It originally meant ‘curtain, screen, partition’ dividing a larger space into smaller areas. It’s a reference to the segregation of women, like “purdah”, which is from Persian pardeh meaning ‘curtain’. The curtains are used to delimit the space where women are segregated. Since Brown vs. Kansas Board of Education (1954) ruled that “separate but equal is inherently unequal,” sexual segregation is a means of controlling women and relegating them to second-class status. The entire concept of “hijab” or “purdah”, used to keep women in their place, has got to be discarded if Muslim women are ever to be liberated.
Paul, you misread what I wrote. It isn’t dress that makes unequal status, it’s segregation. Remember Brown vs. Topeka, Kansas Board of Education. Also, I didn’t use the word “slavery.” Please don’t misattribute stuff to me. I used the phrase “second-class status,” which I think you can see is not synonymous with slavery.
I got onto the subject of segregation because this thread is about “hijab,” and I was looking at how the word got transferred from a curtain (used for segregating women’s space) to women’s clothing.
This was the snippet from which I was working. Are not enslaved people those who need to be liberated?
In any case, people around the world dress, act and think differently from each other. It is interesting at least and usually quite wonderful. Most Saudi women dress as the like to dress, and effort to interfere with that is some sort of cultural imperialism, I think.
Sonny, I’m old enough to remember the late 1960s when we had a movement in America called “Women’s Liberation.” My superannuated joints may creak with age now, but my mind still works. Slavery in the Simon Legree sense was not implied in the 1960s phrase “Women’s Liberation,” but the point was that there are other oppressive conditions, albeit not as bad as the plantation days down South, but nonetheless preventing classes of people from realizing their full potential. The idea that women’s place was in the home and not in the workplace meets that description. Besides, if you’re in the Muslim world, you must have heard about the many grass-roots indigenous feminist movements started and run by Muslim women in their own countries. It isn’t imperialist to give them a shout-out. Sisterhood is global.
Dear Johanna, thank you for your kind and well-written post. In the best tradition of the SDMB, we are not attacking each other in any way.
But … (There is always a ‘but,’ you know.)
No, sisterhood is not universal.
Although there are ‘women’s liberation’ movements in the Islamic world, they are small. remarkably most people here (including women-people) are seem generally as happy with their lifestyle here as Americans (or whatever) are there. Some are happy, some not, that is the human condition.
But I see no groundswell demanding change here. It is hard to wrap my head around it sometimes, but this is a traditional place that (largely) prides itself on being unique. They specifically reject anything that would make them more ‘Western.’
Of course not all people and not all things, but many and most. Any effort to force these folks to become more like ‘us’ would be just that, outside force.
It is a mistake to think people around the world are (or want to be) just like us.
Again, Johanna, I say this in no way to attack you personally.
In my experience the women I dealt with in the Gulf were far more traditional and aggressive in pushing Islam to me personally, on the whole, than the men. The first day of classes I’d ask people to write a short essay on why they were learning English to get to know people and assess their knowledge of English. Almost all of the women stated they wanted to learn to help spread Islam. Only one man ever replied that way, and he had a position at a mosque.
I know there are a lot of conservative Christian communities in the US in which women are a driving force behind conceptions of family life and social order that I find equally surprising; nonetheless it’s their choice and they look at it that way.
If anyone from here suggested to most Arab women that their traditional garb was oppressive they’d look at you as if you were from another planet. They might well reply that women here having to look a certain way for male approval was the actual oppression. Not saying I agree, but I do feel the need to respect that choice.
I’ve been to several conferences and seminars featuring Islamic feminists, and they are all agreed on one thing: the clothing issue that exercises so many Westerners is irrelevant to their concerns. What matters is basic human rights, political rights, legal equality, education and job opportunities, an end to domestic violence, an end to religion-based gender discrimination. They unanimously agree that style of clothing is a distraction from the real issues.
Gender segregation — physically segregated space — in the mosque, in the home, in the workplace, in public gathering areas — does produce inequality and second-class status for women, and the Islamic feminists are fighting that, all right. As far as religiously modest clothing goes, like wearing a kerchief or ‘abayah, if that helps to open up more mixed-gender space, then they’re fine with it. It does help the transition to desegregating space in Muslim societies, helping both women and men to feel more at ease in one another’s presence. Clothing in and of itself is not an issue for the indigenous Muslim feminists, and they wish the Americans would get off the subject already and focus on what really matters.
I was just noting that it was kind of weird how “hijab” originally referred to gender-segregated space, but over time the term was transferred to clothing. The word hijâb occurs only twice in the Qur’an, neither time having anything to do with clothes. In the first instance, it says that guests in the Prophet’s home should talk to his wives from the other side of a curtain (hijâb). That’s because there was a problem with guests who overstayed their welcome and hung around at all hours. The Qur’an says: The Prophet is very nice and he’s too shy to tell his guests to get out of his house, but Allah is not shy to tell you that! The Prophet cared very much about privacy in people’s homes. He felt strongly that people should be able to feel relaxed in their own homes without nosy people snooping on them. That’s why his wives were told to stay behind a partition, so they wouldn’t be bothered by guests hanging around at all hours and could get a little privacy. This was meant only for the Prophet’s wives, not for all women in general. (The Qur’an says: “O wives of the Prophet! Ye are not like other women.” There were several rules that applied only to them and to no one else.) This segregated space was never meant to be extrapolated into a total religious sexual apartheid all through the whole society, the way the Wahhabis and Taliban have done. THAT is what oppresses women and does not belong in Islam.
The only other mention of hijâb in the Qur’an refers to sunset: The sun went behind a “curtain” (hijâb), poetically meaning the curtain of night.
I kind of wish the word had never been applied to clothing, because it carries the connotation of segregated space. Au contraire, wearing kerchiefs and ‘abayahs can help to desegregate Muslim space.
As I pointed out earlier in this thread, the abaya and headcoverings are used to segregate native minority populations of Gulf citizens from the (overwhelmingly Muslim) majority ‘guestworker’ populations. The segregation between these groups is more severe and limiting (and certainly more economically serious) than the male/female segregation.
Of course in this case the abaya is an advantage to the women wearing it. When I hear Muslim feminists address this sort of social imbalance I’ll take their appeals to equality more seriously.
From an Islamic feminist point of view, wouldn’t one think that being able to wear a mini-skirt and tight fitting T-shirt in public would be somewhere well down on the list of priorities? First things first.
Well, this feminist thinks the irony in the above statement hardly needs to be pointed out.
Objectively, whether it’s ‘abayahs or miniskirts, if either look is imposed on women in order to get male approval, it amounts to the same thing: coercion of women’s choices by male power. The feminist response in either situation would be to free women’s choices from needing male approval.
I discussed the priorities of it in my previous post. To paraphrase James Carville, “It’s the equality of opportunity, stupid.” (Not calling anyone in GQ stupid, that’s just how the catchphrase runs, I didn’t make it up.) I’m trying to convey what I keep hearing the Muslim feminists themselves say: that unequal treatment before the law is the serious issue here, not styles of dress, and that Americans inexplicably stay obsessed with Muslims’ clothing over more substantial issues.
Wondering how long we can keep this up before the thread is sent to Great Debates.