Durham Modern Middle East and Islamic World: Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World : Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress download ebook TXT, FB2, DOC
9780415711388 041571138X In recent years bitter controversies have erupted across Europe and the Middle East about women s veiling, and especially their wearing of the face-veil or niqab. Yet the deeper issues contained within these controversies secularism versus religious belief, individual freedom versus social or family coercion, identity versus integration are not new but are strikingly prefigured by earlier conflicts. This book examines the state-sponsored anti-veiling campaigns which swept across wide swathes of the Muslim world in the interwar period, especially in Turkey and the Balkans, Iran, Afghanistan and the Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It shows how veiling was officially discouraged and ridiculed as backward and, although it was rarely banned, veiling was politicized and turned into a rallying-point for a wider opposition. Asking a number of questions about this earlier anti-veiling discourse and the policies flowing from it, and the reactions which it provoked, the book illuminates and contextualizes contemporary debates about gender, Islam and modernism., The controversy about the veiling of women, which has been particularly pronounced in recent times in France, Turkey and Syria, and the deeper issues represented by the controversy - secularism versus religious belief, identity versus integration - are not new. This book examines the state-sponsored anti-veiling campaigns which took place across wide swathes of the Muslim world in the interwar period, especially in Turkey and the Balkans, Iran, Afghanistan and the Soviet republics of Central Asia. It shows how veiling was officially discouraged, sometimes outlawed, and frequently ridiculed as backward, how the promoters of anti-veiling campaigns - modernising secular nationalist regimes, republican, monarchist and, in Central Asia, communist - identified with European values and saw veiling as modernist, but how such campaigns were flawed, in that they were mostly promoted by male dominated authoritarian regimes, which, in politicising the issue, empowered opponents for whom veiling was a symbol of resistance. Throughout, the book relates the significance of interwar unveiling campaigns to present day debates.
9780415711388 041571138X In recent years bitter controversies have erupted across Europe and the Middle East about women s veiling, and especially their wearing of the face-veil or niqab. Yet the deeper issues contained within these controversies secularism versus religious belief, individual freedom versus social or family coercion, identity versus integration are not new but are strikingly prefigured by earlier conflicts. This book examines the state-sponsored anti-veiling campaigns which swept across wide swathes of the Muslim world in the interwar period, especially in Turkey and the Balkans, Iran, Afghanistan and the Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It shows how veiling was officially discouraged and ridiculed as backward and, although it was rarely banned, veiling was politicized and turned into a rallying-point for a wider opposition. Asking a number of questions about this earlier anti-veiling discourse and the policies flowing from it, and the reactions which it provoked, the book illuminates and contextualizes contemporary debates about gender, Islam and modernism., The controversy about the veiling of women, which has been particularly pronounced in recent times in France, Turkey and Syria, and the deeper issues represented by the controversy - secularism versus religious belief, identity versus integration - are not new. This book examines the state-sponsored anti-veiling campaigns which took place across wide swathes of the Muslim world in the interwar period, especially in Turkey and the Balkans, Iran, Afghanistan and the Soviet republics of Central Asia. It shows how veiling was officially discouraged, sometimes outlawed, and frequently ridiculed as backward, how the promoters of anti-veiling campaigns - modernising secular nationalist regimes, republican, monarchist and, in Central Asia, communist - identified with European values and saw veiling as modernist, but how such campaigns were flawed, in that they were mostly promoted by male dominated authoritarian regimes, which, in politicising the issue, empowered opponents for whom veiling was a symbol of resistance. Throughout, the book relates the significance of interwar unveiling campaigns to present day debates.