A Quiet Revolution (3 page)

veil’s resurgence, primarily in Egypt and Turkey, but there was no work that I knew of bringing such findings together and piecing together and filling out the story of the veil’s resurgence and onward spread in the Middle East and now in the West, and that also explored the subject’s complexity and its local and global implications.
9

Telling the story of the veil’s resurgence, along with that of Is- lamism, takes up Part
1
of this book. Specifically, I follow here the story of the emergence of the Islamist Resurgence and, along with it, of the veil, beginning in Egypt in the
1970
s. Egypt, home of the Muslim Broth- erhood, the model for and mother institution of Islamist organizations worldwide, was at the epicenter of the Resurgence. America, of course, where I pursue the story of the veil, is one of the most important West-

ern societies to which Islamism has spread. Although I study Egypt and America specifically, the patterns and processes of the rise and spread of Islamism and the veil constitute, I believe, patterns that could be traced and replicated in relation to other Islamic and Western societies.

There is today of course a vast literature on Islamism and, in par- ticular, on militant Islamism—a form of Islamism that, according to the experts, makes up no more than a “tiny minority” of the broad Islamist movement.
10
The narrative that I follow here in relation to Islamism dif- fers from others in that it is focused specifically on women and Islamism and on the veil’s return. If even among men it is only a “tiny minority” who are involved in militancy, overwhelmingly women’s involvement in Islamism is of the nonmilitant variety.

Chapter
1
takes the
1950
s as its starting point—the era when being un- veiled and bareheaded had become the norm in the cities of Egypt, as well as in those of other Muslim-majority societies. Looking back from that vantage point, I recapitulate the debates around veiling that arose in the late nineteenth century in the era of British imperialism, debates that would give rise to the unveiling movement of the early twentieth cen- tury. This movement would sweep across Muslim societies through the first decades of that century almost as spectacularly as the veiling move- ment would spread in the closing decades of the same century. It is in these contentious debates of the imperial era and the unveiling move- ment they gave rise to that the seeds were sown for the veil’s repeated

reemergence since, often as a quintessential sign (among other things) of irresolvable tension and confrontation between Islam and the West. Un- derstanding the dynamics and meanings with which these debates over the veil were charged is important to our understanding of why this gar- ment continues to be such a volatile, sensitive, and politically fraught symbol today.

Chapter
2
presents an overview of the major developments in Egypt

between the
1920
s and the end of the
1960
s, developments that would set the stage for the Islamic Resurgence. The following two chapters focus on the
1970
s: the decade in which Islamism and the veil first made their forceful appearance. Drawing on contemporary accounts, these chap- ters reconstruct the story of the veil’s reemergence as they recapitulate the explanations that women offered to interviewers as to why they had de- cided to veil. These chapters also describe the forces that came together in this decade—including the Muslim Brotherhood and forces sup- ported by Saudi Arabia—to galvanize and bring into being the Islamic Resurgence and the return of the veil. The following two chapters con- tinue to explore the veil’s spread from the
1970
s through the
1990
s. Chap- ter
6
closes with an account of Islamism’s and the veil’s acceptance across the majority of Egyptian society—for by the end of the
1990
s, Egypt had become a society in which the overwhelming majority of women were veiled.

Chapters
7
and
8
take up the story of the expansion and spread of

Islamism and the veil to America. I describe the history of the founding of Muslim American organizations and follow the steady rise of Islamist- influenced organizations and their emergence in the
1990
s to positions of dominance on the American Muslim landscape.

The
1960
s marked the beginning of an era of growth in the Mus-

lim population of America, the consequence of two key processes. One was the growing numbers of Muslim immigrants who began arriving in the United States following changes in immigration laws in
1965
, changes that opened the doors to non-European immigrants. The other process was a suddenly rising rate of conversion to Islam among Americans and particularly African Americans, beginning in the
1960
s. African Ameri- cans today make up it is thought about
40
percent of American Mus- lims, a population estimated at
4
million to
6
million. (Estimates suggest

that Asian and Arab American Muslims, the two other largest groups, make up about
30
percent and
15
percent, respectively.) Islamism, as I describe in Chapter
7
, began to take root in America through immigrant activism and also by way of international connections between Islamists and African American Muslims. I pursue the story of the development of Islamist organizations through the changing climate of the
1990
s, fol- lowing the
1993
bombing of the World Trade Center, and close Chapter
8
with the debates that began about Islam in America at the end of the
1990
s, thus bringing us to the eve of the twenty-first century—and of the attacks of
9
/
11
.

Over the course of the chapters making up Part I, I explore the objectives and motivations of Islamists, and the methods and strategies they de- ployed in their pursuit; Islamist notions about women and their proper roles; women’s importance to the Islamist movement; and women’s extensive and lively activism. Many of the questions that I posed ear- lier—how and why the veil has spread, why women had accepted it, why women were drawn to Islamism and came to serve among its foot- soldiers and activists—steadily come to be answered.

The history of the rise and spread of Islamism and the veil in Egypt that I follow out in Part
1
often evokes and foreshadows—even down to the Egyptian government’s attempt to ban the veil in schools as it sought

to halt the spread of Islamism—events and happenings that a decade or two later also would begin to occur in the West. Consequently, this his- tory of a state’s attempt to control the spread of veiling and Islamism, played out in a Muslim-majority country, is potentially instructive also with respect to developments around Islamism and veiling that are under way today in the West.

Most importantly though, understanding what happened in Egypt, the country at the epicenter of the Islamist movement, and how in less than three decades Egyptian society was transformed from a majority unveiled, non-Islamist society to a majority veiled Islamist society, are es- sential to our informed analysis of what is happening today with women, Islamism, and the veil in the West. To attempt to understand develop- ments under way today in the West in relation to women and the veil without knowledge of the legacies, commitments, and ideologies with

which Islamism arrived in the West—commitments and ideologies ham- mered out in other countries with quite different social and political his- tories—would be like setting out to understand the first fifty years of Puritan history in America with little knowledge of who the Puritans were and how they differed, say, from Catholics and other Christians, and without knowledge of the social and political conditions that shaped the broad package of beliefs, commitments, and ideologies with which the Puritans arrived in the New World.

These legacies of the Islamic Resurgence and the beliefs, practices, and commitments of Islamism are fully and vibrantly alive today in America and elsewhere in the West. Islamism, a special and powerful form of Islam, is today inextricably part of the DNA of the dominant form of Islam in America—and indeed in the West. Consequently too, Islamism has already begun to become part of the very fabric and DNA of the West itself.

How would Islamism adapt to its new democratic environment, and how would it evolve and develop in relation to women in particular? Or would it perhaps fail to adapt, or even actively resist adapting to its new environment? Were we embarked on a course that would inevitably lead to clash and collision? Those questions are at the heart of Part II of this book, which is based on my ongoing observations of the issue of women and Islam and Islamism, specifically in America through the first decade of the twenty-first century.
11

As it proved, this decade, inaugurated by the tragedy of
9
/
11
—an

act of violence committed in the name of Islam against America—would be one of the most eventful and volatile decades in modern history as regards relations between Islam and the West and specifically Islam and America. We plunged at once into wars with Afghanistan and Iraq, both Muslim-majority countries. In the United States,
9
/
11
set in motion a va- riety of responses, ranging from sporadic attacks on American Muslims

—including attacks on women in hijab—to government actions and regulations subjecting Muslims to new levels of scrutiny and resulting in, among other things, the arrest of many Muslims and the closure of a number of Muslim charities.

All of these events directly or indirectly affected the lives of Muslims

in America. In addition, in the aftermath of
9
/
11
the very subject of women in Islam would become a topic of intense public interest and even come to be regarded as a matter of national import. First Lady Laura Bush, for instance, broadcast a radio address presenting the issue of women in Afghanistan as one of integral importance to American secu- rity. “Civilized people throughout the world,” she said, “are speaking out in horror—not only because our hearts break for the women and chil- dren of Afghanistan, but also because in Afghanistan we see the world the terrorists would like to impose on the rest of us. . . . The fight against ter- rorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”
12
Two days later Cherie Blair, wife of the British prime minister Tony Blair, issued a similar statement, and these views were echoed and disseminated by the media, which were filled now with images of veils and particularly of the burkas of Afghanistan.
13
Taking their cue from the two first ladies, the media began to portray the war in Afghanistan as a righteous war by virtue of our concern to save the women. As the British journalist Polly Toynbee wrote, the burka became the “battle flag” and “shorthand moral justification” for the war in Afghanistan.
14

In the context of this sudden public interest in the subject of women and Islam, a flurry of books on the topic appeared in Europe and America, among them Azar Nafisi’s
Reading Lolita in Tehran
(
2003
), Ir- shad Manji’s
The Trouble with Islam
(
2004
), and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s
Caged

Virgin
(
2006
). These books captured a huge readership in Europe and America but they also triggered sharply critical analyses from academics.

It is still even today a rare week when some issue or other relating to women, Islam, and/or the hijab or burka does not make headlines in Western media. This broad public interest in the subject seems in turn to have energized religiously committed Muslim American women, pre- cipitating them into active engagement with the topic of Islam and women’s rights. In consequence, Islamic feminism in America is more lively today than at any other time in my own lifetime.

All of these conditions and developments collectively—be it the wave of anti-Muslim sentiments, the wars into which we plunged, and the emer- gence of the subject of women in Islam as a topic of national and public import—directly and indirectly affected the lives of Muslims in Amer-

ica and also critically shaped the trajectory of American Muslim feminist activism through this decade. Each of the three final chapters explores as- pects of this lively and evolving scene. Chapter
9
focuses primarily on the changes under way in the broader society, on the issue of the hijab, and on the public conversation on women and Islam. Chapter
10
de- scribes the developments I observed at ISNA, today the most prominent and influential organization on the Muslim American landscape, as I continued to attend its conventions. I present here too brief biographi- cal sketches of some of ISNA’s most prominent women.

In the final chapter I describe the lively activism that has been tak- ing place among American Muslims around issues of women and gen- der. I conclude by drawing together my findings about women, Islam, and Islamism, and the new and unexpected trajectory that Islamism ap- pears to be taking in the new democratic environment in which it is evolving.

The process of research and writing itself seems to quietly work almost always to dissolve one’s most settled assumptions and to challenge and unravel no less entrenched presuppositions. Once more I found this to be the case as I worked on this book, even more sharply, perhaps, in this instance than in the past. My search for answers to the particular ques- tions I set out with propelled me in the first place into investigating the history of the veil in Egypt, including through the decades when I had lived there myself. Setting out to revisit, as I assumed, a familiar history and one that was redolent with memories, I found myself instead ex- ploring this history through narratives that were quite different from and even oppositional to the narrative of Egypt’s history in which I had my- self been embedded and which had largely shaped my personal and in- tellectual trajectory. Similarly in Part Two of the book, as I followed out how Islamism was evolving in America in our times, and in particular the new directions in which Islamist-influenced women appear to be taking Islam, I would find myself gathering evidence—which I set forth in the following pages—that would lead me to conclusions which would fun- damentally challenge and even reverse my initial expectations.