# Why don't Muslim women smile? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 16, 2004, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614 "2004-03-16T12:10:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/1 "2004-03-16T12:10:31Z")
I was at a mall the other day and I stopped to eyeball some things in a window display. There was a Muslim woman standing nearby (identified by her head scarf). We happened to make eye contact and I smiled and said hello. All I got in return was a blank, zombie-like stare. Perhaps she didn’t speak English? Maybe it’s just part of their culture to be cold to friendly greetings? Maybe she was just a crabby person and being a Muslim had nothing to do with it? I don’t know, but the look on her face was just lifeless and spooky. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Griffin)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/2 "2004-03-16T12:21:18Z")
Actually I have tended to notice this too. Perhaps they are just warey of strangers. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/3 "2004-03-16T12:21:22Z")
Bit of a broad brush there! I’ve met plenty of smiling Muslim women. ---
**Author:** ![sunfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/96bed5/32.png) [@sunfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunfish)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/4 "2004-03-16T12:27:05Z")
Any of the things you mentioned could be a possibility, but there’s also the chance that smiling for her is a flirtatious thing, and therefore not to be done with strangers. On a related note, I was told not to smile (I’m a female, btw) so much at male strangers in parts of northern India for two reasons: 1) men might think I was flirting with them, and 2) their wives, if present, might think I was making a play for their husbands. Needless to say, the smiling injunction didn’t apply to people that I became friends with. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/5 "2004-03-16T12:28:17Z")
They don’t have a tradition of chatting it up with strange men. Otherwise, they smile about as much as anybody else. ---
**Author:** ![green\_bladder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/73ab20/32.png) [@green\_bladder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/green_bladder)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/6 "2004-03-16T13:00:11Z")
Maybe she was just having a bad day. ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/7 "2004-03-16T13:42:59Z")
So there was one Muslima and she didn’t smile at you and now you’re asking why Muslim women don’t smile? So if I meet a redhead at the busstop today and he is wearing Doc Martens I can ask why all these redheads deem it necessary to wear Docs? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Profane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47774/32.png) [@Profane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Profane)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/8 "2004-03-16T14:07:54Z")
Many Muslim women will not talk to males they don’t know. At least, that’s what my friend who converted to Islam explained to me. The Muslim lady in my neighborhood always smiles at me. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![cactus\_waltz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@cactus\_waltz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cactus_waltz)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/9 "2004-03-16T14:19:10Z")
Even if I try to keep away from generalizing, especially when it comes to cultures I’m not very familiar with, I have noticed that I’ve never seen a muslim woman smile. I was thinking it was related to the burqa culture. But of course, they do smile, smiling is a natural response. It might be supressed though. The question is when and \*\*if \*\* muslim women decide to supress their emotions, not if they smile or not. ---
**Author:** ![dangergene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@dangergene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangergene)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/10 "2004-03-16T14:24:18Z")
Super huge broad brush there. i smile at and get smiles from MANY muslim women, each and every day! In fact, of the women I don’t actually know, but deal with a lot, the muslim women seem to be the friendliest. Actually, one thing you also need to realise (when painting with that broad brush) is that islam has as many facets as christianity. That includes regional as well as factional traditions and beliefs. There are also levels of devotion (one of my closest friends is incredibly devout, but also very open minded and discusses a lot of stuff without judgement or bias, for that I thank him because I’ve learnt a lot of which I would otherwise have been ignorant) another guy I hang out with actually said, ‘yeah, actually I am kinda muslim, but I don’t really think about it, y’know…’. So there’s lot of levels to this, just like any religion. I get smiles from one of the neighbour mums (late 50’s or thereabout and rather austere/devout) and her daughter (mid twenties, appears to be similarly devout) (my assumptions on devotion are based on what I can see of their house, very ornate caligraphy and such, and that both wear a serious variant of the tudung, which is what we call the headscarf in this neck of the woods). But the key point here is that I’ve never actually spoken to either of these women or the men in the house (the men are similarly very friendly). Whatsmore, I’ve only seen them maybe fifteen times in the two and a bit years they’ve lived there,and they’ve been smiling hellos from the first time they moved into the house. Lovely people, i must say! However, now that I think of it, our smiles may be along the lines of, ‘hey, another minority! cool!’ ---
**Author:** ![Jotun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/46a35a/32.png) [@Jotun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jotun)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/11 "2004-03-16T14:29:58Z")
I’ve noticed this too. I live in Ontario, Canada and there is quite a large Muslim community (even larger in Toronto which is about an hour drive away). I just figured it was part of the burqa culture too. I’m probably completely wrong though…I DO notice that the “liberated” Muslim women seem to smile alot. Yaknow, the teenagers that rebel, or simply don’t follow the religion. They are usually more open and friendly. Well…at least in my experience. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/12 "2004-03-16T14:36:58Z")
The ‘burqa culture’ is not a Muslim culture. It’s an Afghan one. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/13 "2004-03-16T15:02:19Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Bit of a broad brush there! > > I’ve met plenty of smiling Muslim women. I’ve met smiling Middle Eastern women (most of them were younger, Americanized women), but I cannot say I’ve ever met a smiling woman who was wearing traditional Muslim clothing. ---
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/14 "2004-03-16T15:22:00Z")
Kind of related … I remember when I was in London a group of Thai airline stewardesses came into the hotel lobby. They stood in a tight little circle talking with each other. I noticed when they laughed they put their hand over their mouth and kind of wiggled their fingers. This, in turn, made me laugh. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/15 "2004-03-16T15:27:29Z")
Well OK, just for you truth-seekers, I went out into the street for a cigarette and did a 2-minute survey of all the obviously Islamic women I could see. Here are the results: Muslim woman #1: not smiling - north African - Hijab - standing on her own at a bus stop (but then the 4 Irish and American women standing next to her weren’t smiling either). Muslim woman #2: smiling - north African - Hijab - grinning at her baby in a buggy. Muslim woman #3: laughing - south Asian - Shalwar Qameez, no head covering - she and her husband nearly got run over on a pedestrian crossing, and they both ran back to the sidewalk laughing at each other’s panic. Muslim woman #4: smiling - east Asian - Hijab - chatting with her friend, who is… Muslim woman #5: smiling - east Asian - Hijab - chatting with her friend above. So that’s an 80% smile-to-not smile ratio in this small data sample. (You don’t see many women with burqas over here, but then again you wouldn’t be able to tell if they were smiling or not.) ---
**Author:** ![Unregistered\_Bull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3da27b/32.png) [@Unregistered\_Bull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unregistered_Bull)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/16 "2004-03-16T15:58:50Z")
If this the US, smiling might not come easy when your in a place that so many hate you and probably give you dirty looks. ---
**Author:** ![jovan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/0ea827/32.png) [@jovan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jovan)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/17 "2004-03-16T16:33:21Z")
> [@ccwaterback](#): > > Kind of related … > > I remember when I was in London a group of Thai airline stewardesses came into the hotel lobby. They stood in a tight little circle talking with each other. I noticed when they laughed they put their hand over their mouth and kind of wiggled their fingers. This, in turn, made me laugh. 😃 I don’t see why this is related. In some East Asian cultures, showing your teeth is frowned upon, so people (often women) hide their mouths when they laugh. It’s no different from hiding your mouth when you yawn. I was in Malaysia last summer. There were lots of smiling muslim women. All that means though is that I saw many smiling Malaysian muslim women last summer. ---
**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/18 "2004-03-16T18:26:54Z")
> [@Machetero](#): > > If this the US, smiling might not come easy when your in a place that so many hate you and probably give you dirty looks. Oh I see, I’m sure the people in their homeland are so much more tolerant of foreigners. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Unregistered\_Bull](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3da27b/32.png) [@Unregistered\_Bull](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unregistered_Bull)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/19 "2004-03-16T18:55:56Z")
That broadbrush sucks doesn’t it. 😃 The only identifiable Muslim woman (head scarf and I know who she’s married to) that I’ve seen in the past was all smiles and signing in Boy Scouts at a summer camp that I took my nephew too. So I guess that I could wonder why they were so damned happy. Must have been happy about 9/11 or something. :rolleyes: BTW what homeland are you talking about? It’s a large religion spread throught many countries and more than one continent. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2004, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614/20 "2004-03-16T19:02:44Z")
All the (clearly) Muslim women I’ve run into here in town have been smiling and friendly. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-muslim-women-smile/234614.md?page=2)