Mullahs Fashion Institute of Technology, Qom
More countries restrict women’s ability to wear religious symbols or attire than require women to dress a certain way
In many countries around the world, women’s choices about their attire and appearance are restricted to some degree by government laws, policies or regulations. In recent years, most of these countries have had laws or policies that ban women from wearing religious attire in public places or limit their ability to do so in some circumstances. By comparison, far fewer countries require women to wear particular types of attire (such as headscarves or long dresses) for religious reasons.
As part of its annual study on government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion, Pew Research Center tracks the number of countries where some level of government – national, provincial or local – regulates “the wearing of religious symbols, such as head coverings for women and facial hair for men.”1 Looking at only those laws, policies or regulations that apply specifically to women, the Center finds that 50 of the 198 countries and territories included in the study had at least one law or policy regulating women’s religious attire in 2012 and 2013, the two most recent years for which data are available. About three-quarters of those countries (39 of the 50, or 78%) had a law or policy limiting women’s ability to wear religious attire, while about a quarter (12 of the 50, or 24%) had at least one law or policy requiring women to wear particular attire. Some of these laws or policies applied nationwide, while others were imposed at the provincial, state or local level. One country – Russia – had policies forbidding women from wearing religious attire (in the territory of Stavropol, where Muslim headscarves, or hijabs, were banned in public schools) as well as policies requiring women to wear religious attire (in Chechnya, where women were required to wear hijabs in all public buildings).
How do people in Muslim countries prefer women to dress in public? This question was raised by a recent, much-discussed survey from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, apparently as part of a comprehensive study on post-Arab Spring attitudes toward America and democratic values.
The survey was conducted in seven countries (Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey), which aren’t all Arab or Muslim. Lebanon is not a Muslim country, and Turkey and Pakistan are not Arab countries.
The results, as outlined on the Pew Research Center’s FactTank, find that most people in the countries studied prefer that a woman completely cover her hair, but not necessarily her face. Only in Turkey and Lebanon do more than one in four think it is appropriate for a woman to not cover her head at all in public.
The second key question was: Should women be able to choose their own clothing?
I’m a little leery of this type of dichotomy in research questions, where you are given only two options — yes or no — especially when the question concerns a complicated social value, such as Muslim women’s freedom to chose their own dress. The study surveyed both male and female, but didn’t break the answers down by gender.
In a nutshell, the study found that only 14 percent in Egypt think women should choose their own dress, as opposed to 47 percent in Saudi Arabia.
That means that 86 percent of respondents in Egypt, where women relatively have more latitude in their fashion selections, want someone else to influence their choices, while in Saudi Arabia, where women are forced to consult with only one fashion designer, the Islamic dress code, 47 percent think they could make a better choice themselves.
This kind of study doesn’t really measure Muslim attitudes toward women’s clothing so much as it reflects the Western attitude toward Muslim women and Muslim people.
Just imagine, for the sake of argument, someone asking the same two questions in America, where the fashion industry spends as much money trying to control women’s bodies as the military spent invading Iraq.
The fashion industry tells American women how to dress — not necessarily how much hair they should cover in public, but how much skin they should reveal.
And how would Minnesota women answer the question: “What style of dress is appropriate for women in public?” Never mind how men would answer. In the recent frigid weather, where some parts of the state reached 40 below, I’d bet lots of women wouldn’t mind style No. 1 that much.
Contributor: Ahmed Tharwat is a public speaker and hosts the Arab-American show “Belahdan” at 10:30 p.m. Mondays on Twin Cities Public Television. He blogs at http://www.ahmediatv.com
Mark Geoffrey Kirshner 