Research Papers

Hijab and American Muslim Women: Creating the Space for Autonomous Selves
by Rhys H. Williams, University of Cincinnati
& Gira Vashi, University of Illinois at Chicago
April, 2001

Presented to the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society, St. Louis, April, 2001

Part I

As Islam and Muslims adapt to life in the United States many things are being adopted, adapted to, and abandoned. It is simply different to be Muslim in a majority culture such as Pakistan, Egypt, or Jordan than it is to be a member of a minority faith as in the U.S. Some of these adaptations are in the direction of becoming more like the American majority in speech, dress, and cultural folkways. Other adaptations, however, call attention to differences and distinctions between Muslims and other Americans. One of these distinctions is the practice of wearing the “hijab,” the headscarf that covers a young woman’s head, hair, neck, and ears – leaving only the face showing. While hijab is theological mandated in many interpretations of Islam, many young women are choosing to wear hijab – often after they begin attending college – and there is some evidence that its use may in fact be increasing. Drawing on the extant sociological literature, interviews, and ethnographic observations, we want to address the decision to wear hijab by young American Muslim women. Why are they making this decision, and is it in fact a choice? If indeed it is a choice, why is it important for the women doing so, what statement does it make for the women who choose it, and what consequences does it have for them?

Women and Traditional Religion

In one way, this question resonates with a significant research stream in the sociology of religion. Researchers such as Davidman (1991), Griffith (1998), and others are asking, “why are upwardly-mobile, achievement-oriented, American-born women deciding voluntarily to join conservative religions, that protect a traditional gender order?” Are they suffering from false consciousness, are they duped by their religion? Are “cultural identities,” especially those rooted in traditionalist communities, too difficult to resist? Why do these women – particularly young, often well-educated women – join these putatively anti-feminist religious traditions?

At least one answer has come from the study of white and black evangelical Protestant women (e.g., Griffith 1998; Lawless 1983). These scholars argue, with some variation of course, that women find themselves in a “man’s world” in most of our societal institutions. One institution where they can exercise some control, some autonomy, and gain some recognition for their efforts is religion. Thus, religious organizations become relatively autonomous spaces for women. True, men may control the top leadership positions (and in some Christian traditions women are not allowed in the pulpit) but the actual running of the institution is woman-driven. We note that several Pentecostal traditions have long been more receptive to women than even some “liberal” religions – the Holy Spirit is not gendered (unlike many conceptions of the Father and Son) and thus many gifts of the spirit are available to women (Lawless 1983). Religion becomes a sphere of empowerment and solidarity (cf. Warner 1993). One finds some prima facie evidence for this argument by looking at the pews of many evangelical churches – conservative on gender roles or not, the pews are full of women.

However, this argument faces a greater challenge when the reference is Islam. Traditionally, public religious observance, here we think most notably of attendance at Jum’ah prayer, is seen as a mandate for men, while only permissible or suggested for women. This accords with many of our experiences during this research. Attendance at Jum’ah prayer in at least five different masjids in the Chicago area, composed of both Indo-Pakistani and Arab populations, had ratios of anywhere from 2-to-1 to 6-to-1 men. Further, the symbolic arrangement of the gender-segregated seating during prayer services reinforces this difference – men are always in front, near the khuteeb, women behind, usually behind a screen or curtain (sometimes in a balcony). We had only two experiences of Jum’ah prayer in which women outnumbered men. First, was in the Nation of Islam, which as is well known is African-American (not Muslim immigrants) and practices a version of Islam not yet considered completely orthodox. The second experience was in the Muslim Student Association of the University of Illinois, Chicago. This latter group, obviously, was college students – overwhelmingly the American-born sons and daughters of Muslim immigrants.

This returns us to our initial puzzle – young women, specifically college-educated and American born – are turning to Islam and some of its more orthodox practices. What to make of this? Certainly, the decision to wear hijab by many second-generation Muslim American women could be framed with the same questions about anti-feminism that have informed some of the literature on conservative Christian and Jewish women. However, our research with young Muslim women active in their religion, and choosing to wear hijab, suggests that these women themselves would answer these questions in the negative. Moreover, as researchers we have come to the conclusion that the questions themselves miss a crucial dimension. Remembering that these women are the daughters of immigrants, and practicing a minority religion in a country that does not understand it well, the decision to don hijab can be seen as allowing for some autonomous cultural space – it allows the women to negotiate their dual identities as Muslims and Americans and gives them the opportunity to be part of both worlds.

To address these questions, we draw upon data gathered among young adults in the Chicago area under the Youth and Religion Project, co-directed by Rhys Williams of Southern Illinois University and Stephen Warner of the University of Illinois, Chicago. The project has focused primarily on college-aged young people and has examined their orientations to and involvement with religious organizations. Thus, we have been in touch with young people most connected to their religion and their religious communities. As a result, we make no assumptions or generalizations about young people generally, or about women who have left their religion behind completely. We assume, in fact, that remaining connected in some way with their religious identities is important to the young people with whom we are concerned. Our data come from a variety of sources. Specifically, we use data from: individual depth interviews; focus group interviews; site visits to religious organizations for both worship services and religious lectures and classes (both masjids and autonomous, youth or young-adult run organizations); and analysis of literature and periodicals available at our investigative sites. We do note that our research interest has broadened from our initial concern with college students, and we have done field visits and observations to secondary schools and other youth religious groups and events – however, we have not done interviews with anyone under 18.

Before turning to the observations and voices of the research sites and the Muslim women themselves, we need to discuss the cultural context in which these people are trying to live. There are several crucial cultural values and ideas that American Muslims must negotiate. Particularly, for second-generation people trying to be both American and Muslim, this context is significant. In particular, of course, American society is in the process of negotiating the appropriate roles for men and women and the relations between them. This context places a premium on the idea of “equal rights” – and interprets that phrase in such a way that traditional religious practices such as hijab are easily seen as problematic. We might add that this context is also relevant for the analytic questions that inform much of the research we cited above.

The Cultural Context

The dominant American cultural interpretation of “equal rights” is the notion of treating people, as individuals, the same. A common response to that interpretation has been the legal challenge to barriers to women in public life, organizational memberships, etc. and some cultural androgyny – women wearing pants, playing sports, relaxation of sexual double standards, etc. In keeping with these trends, many Americans treat any outward manifestations of difference as inequality. This notion is most publicly institutionalized in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, which held that separate is inherently unequal. That framework shaped the public understanding, and often the movement ideology, of the civil rights movement and the second wave of the women’s movement. As a cultural “framing” of the solution to the problem of inequality, “gender neutrality” has moved well beyond its original application (to the apartheid system of racial segregation, and then to women’s exclusion from institutions) to a wide understanding about the culturally appropriate way to relate to individuals – both socially and politically (see, for example, Williams and Williams 1995).

Thus, there is a baseline assumption in American culture that hijab, in and of itself, is an aspect of inequality. In addition, the American media are full of stories about oppression such as the prohibition on women’s driving in Saudi Arabia and the Taliban’s vicious crackdown on women in Afghanistan. It is simply indisputable that women in many Islamic cultures are severely disadvantaged compared to men. Operating from this perspective, it is not surprising that many Americans do not understand why second generation Muslim American women wear hijab. It seems to many Americans to be an admission of second-class status (this is not only a U.S. problem, see Shakeri’s 1998 analysis of Canada).

The Religious Response

American Muslims, especially young people born in the U.S., are acutely aware of this assumption of women’s inequality in Islam, and in response are constantly attempting to dispute it. In almost every discussion of Islam, gender, or family that we have heard in the course of this research, Muslim speakers (both male and female) go out of their way to claim “in Islam, women have equal rights,” or “men and women are different, but that does not mean unequal.” Several of our respondents clarified to us that “equality,” as sameness, was not how Islam views women, but rather in terms of “equity.” Equity is then interpreted as something in terms of complementarity of needs, functions, and contributions. There is a degree of essentialism in this formulation, and it is often connected to biology, sexual drives, and the like. But for most Muslims, a “natural law” type explanation is not necessary – gender segregation and hijab are seen as Islamically prescribed and that is the most powerful argument.

Other respondents provided us with rationales for their understanding of “equity” that they claimed demonstrated women actually had an advantaged position, in some respects, as compared to men. For example, one respondent noted to us that in Islam, women are allowed to keep their own money, whereas the money men earn is the family’s money and must support the household. Another time, an elder from a masjid explained to me that women had never been considered “chattel” property in Islam (unlike in the west), and thus their issues were not the same as Western women’s. Whether that claim is true is less relevant to our case than the way it demonstrates that Muslims in America are acutely aware of the clash between their values and Western notions of equal rights. We also note that these are not necessarily “separate spheres” arguments, because nothing in them necessarily mandates that women should remain only in the private domain of home and family. They are often articulated to us by women who are themselves creating very public, achievement-oriented lives.

Finally, I listened to a long evening’s discussion of Islamic marriage practices, presented as a class for young people and held at the masjid. The lecturer discussed courtship and marriage practices within the language of “rights” and “choice,” repeatedly emphasizing that women as well as men are allowed to choose their partners. He questioned the wisdom of arranged marriages, claiming that without a chosen relationship, built on love, respect, and observance of Islam, a marriage could not be happy (note that happiness as a criterion for a good marriage was important). Arranged marriages, he claimed were part of Arab and Pakistani culture, not Islamically prescribed, a point to which we return. The entire evening’s lecture was within a language of choice and rights that resonates deeply with American culture.

Often the defense of Islam’s view on gender is combined with a discussion of the problems of modernity, the threat of carnality to moral purity, and a rehearsal of the social problems in the United States that are allegedly caused by moral breakdown. In this telling, the idea of equal rights as promoting individualism is seen as problematic for society. This sounds familiar to anyone in the U.S. who has paid attention to contemporary cultural politics, and the rhetoric of social conservatives.

We do note as well that Muslims have emphasized to us, and we have observed, that there are definite rules of modesty for men as well. In some discussions at the MSA we heard claims by young women that men should wear jilabab (a full length, long-sleeved robe) as well as women – thus rejecting the Western custom of pants. This was, in effect, a protest against a double standard, as well as against dominant American norms of appropriate attire. Even young men themselves often emphasize the importance of their own modesty. At one work-service day I attended, in which groups of young Muslims (males and females working in separate groups) were painting, collecting litter, planting grass, etc in a south Chicago neighborhood, the young men were admonished to make sure they kept their shirts tucked in; “we don’t need to see your backs” said one of the youth leaders. None of the young men were in shorts or sleeveless shirts.

All of these examples point to ways in which American Muslims deal with the tension between dominant constructions of “equal rights” and the status of women. An important symbol of the latter is the decision to wear hijab. However, we are finding another form of cultural claims-making used by many American Muslims, both male and female, to deal with this cultural and potential logical tensions they face. They use what Warner and Martel (1998) call Islam’s “Teflon construction.” That is, things that are objectionable, or that are seen as restraining, unfair, or unwise are deemed to be aspects of “culture” that can be jettisoned without damaging the purity of Islamic truth. Indeed, many maintain that Islam should be purged of cultural pollutions (for example, interviewees have told us that Islam in America is “liberated” from the problems of Middle Eastern and other traditional cultures). All bad things slide off of the “true Islam” as if it were coated with Teflon. Thus, the necessary reality of Islam in America – that it must adapt to a much different cultural environment from which it emerged – is turned into a virtue; a true Islam, universal, equitable, liberating, moral, and direct from Allah, is being separated from the human cultural constructions mistakenly put upon it.

This Teflon construction is being used as a “cultural resource” (Williams 1995) by second-generation Muslim American women to protect their dual identities as good Muslims, and as achievement-oriented, publicly-active women. They can obtain an education, work on developing a career, found and run their own organizations, and travel alone – and still be good Muslims. Alternatively, many young women are trying to achieve some distance from their assimilating, Westernized parents, or are from areas in which there are very few Muslims at all. They symbolize their move toward autonomous identities most publicly by donning hijab. It is so legitimate within the Islamic community – as is their involvement in Islamic organizations and their attention to their own religious education – that they are insulated (at least to some degree) from any reactionary backlash from Muslim men or other women (such as their mothers) protecting a traditional gender order, or from the assimilationist pressure of their families. Hijab carves out a cultural space for them to be American – to have lives that their mothers could barely even have imagined (see a similar theme in Cainkar 1996) – or to be publicly Muslim.

In effect, these women are using hijab as a cultural resource to give some substantive meaning to the idea that difference does not necessarily mean inequality. Whether middle class Euro-Americans would make such a choice, and whether we think the ideal gender relations promoted by hijab and Islamic gender segregation are actually healthy, these women are being able, to some degree, to create their own lives. And it has the advantage of keeping them anchored in a traditional identity – avoiding potential anomie.

Continue: Part II

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