Reading the hijab

Western feminism’s contentious relationship with religion, Islam in particular, stems both from its opposition to the patriarchal practices, values, and mores of Islam, that it assumes is unanimously imposed upon Muslim women, thereby contributing to their subordination, and from “its assumption that there is something intrinsic to women that should predispose them to oppose the practices, values and injunctions that the Islamist movement embodies”(Mahmood 2). With secular-liberal, progressive thought as its premise, western feminism views liberalism, freedom and agency in absolutist terms, grounded within the polarised, binarised paradigm of subordination and resistance or rebellion.

Agency, in this form of analysis, is understood as the capacity to realize one’s interests against the weight of custom, tradition, transcendental will, or other obstacles (whether individual or collective). Thus the humanist desire for autonomy and self-expression constitutes the substrate, the slumbering ember that can spark to flame in the form of an act of resistance when conditions permit.(Mahmood 8)

Saba Mahmood in Politics of Piety draws our attention to how Western feminism clearly fails to recognise that such absolutist notions are but the products of cultural arrogance that refuse to entertain any possibility of alternative registers of agency or freedom. Emphasizing the need for scholars of the humanities to at least be open to and accepting of such possibilities of alternative notions of agency and freedom, Mahmood presents the example of the women of the Piety Movement of Egypt who profess their wearing of the veil (that western feminists invariably view as a token of patriarchal oppression) as an agential act of surrender to a higher authority.

Episode 4 of season II of Skam (English translation: Shame), a highly popular Norwegian television show, is yet another example that illustrates the controversial relationship between western feminism and Islam. Eva, Noora, Chris, Vilde and Sana are five high school friends who have come over to Chris’s grandmother’s cabin just outside of Hemsedal for their Easter break. Sana, a Muslim teen, blunt and outspoken, is seen wearing the hijab(the headscarf, that like the veil, is perceived by western feminism as an instrument of patriarchal oppression) all the time. While they are lounging around, conversing amongst themselves, Vilde suddenly asks Sana- “Do you actually have to wear your hijab all the time?” Sana responds by asking if it stresses Vilde out, seeing her in the hijab, to which Vilde replies- “No, but we’re just with girls here. You’re not forced to wear it” (Skam II.4) (emphasis added).

Vilde, despite her denial is clearly unnerved by  Sana’s sartorial appearance, her choice of words like “have to” and “forced” making it apparent that she views the hijab as a token of modesty imposed upon Sana by the oppressive patriarchy implicated within the belief system of Islam. She is unable to grasp the possibility that Sana’s wearing the hijab, even in the company of her female friends might be her own choice, the act of wearing the garment, an assertion of her agency as a feminine Muslim subject , as Sana makes clear in her next comment- “Vilde, no one is forcing me to wear it. I wear it because I want to” (Skam II.4) (emphasis added). Like western feminism, Vilde too assumes a position of cultural arrogance in dismissing any possibility of Sana’s sartorial choice as reflecting her subjective agency. She subscribes to the western absolutist notions of freedom and agency that are unable to move beyond the polarised model of subservience and dissent. In perceiving and presenting sartorial informality before friends as an expression of ultimate freedom, she clearly disregards the prospect of Sana finding greater comfort, being freer in her hijab than if she had donned the Western equivalent of casual attire.

Both western feminism’s and Vilde’s discomfort with acknowledging the act of donning of the hijab as a female subject’s assertion of agency stems from a dominant secular Protestant reading of religiosity, which “presupposes a distinction between a privatized interiority that is the proper locus of belief and a public exteriority that is an expression of this belief. In this view, while rituals and bodily practices might represent belief, they are not essential to its acquisition or expression” (Mahmood n.pag). Such an understanding of religion informs the discourse of modernity that applies to the religions of the world, such that the history of Protestant Christianity is set up as “the entelechy that all other religious traditions must emulate in order to become truly modern” (Mahmood n.pag). Not surprising then, that Vilde is quick to accept Sana’s wearing of the hijab as proof of her being a psychic. Vilde, in deeming the hijab as an external expression of Sana’s religious belief reduces Islam to a religion marked by mysticism and superstition, thereby underlining the unequal hierarchy between Western Christendom and its Oriental Others.

This dominant secular understanding of religiosity also instigates the debates surrounding the wearing of the veil by women of the Piety Movement in Egypt. The women of the movement oppose the dominant understanding of religion by positing “a very different relationship between outward bodily acts . . . and inward belief . . . . Not only are the two inseparable, but more importantly, belief is the product of outward practices, rituals, and acts of worship rather than simply an expression of them”. Embodied faith is not merely an utterance of their subjectivity, but also actively contributes to the formation of the same. They argue that “the veil is a necessary component of the virtue of modesty because the veil both expresses ‘true modesty’ and is the means through which modesty is acquired” (Mahmood 23). That Sana espouses this other understanding of religion as embodied faith becomes evident from her conversation with Noora in a later episode from the same season:

Noora:  Don’t you ever want to just drink until you are really drunk or hook up with people?

Sana: Sure.

Noora: What makes you not do it then?

Sana: My faith is stronger than lust. It feels much more important to me than hooking up or drinking.(Skam II.8)

Far from being an individual who has no agency of her own, Sana then emerges as a nuanced character who is well aware of and receptive to different and differing modes of agency, that go beyond the parameters of resistance and subordination. She is able to empathise with Noora’s fears about her relationship with William, but also reassures Noora that her changing of her opinions under William’s influence does not automatically translate into a loss of agency, a loss of independence or self-autonomy. That her opinions “change only when you think he’s right” proves that she is free to disagree with him if she so believes. “There is nothing wrong with him challenging the way you think. If you are not afraid to say what you mean, then you don’t have to be worried about him controlling you” iterates Sana. Far from subscribing to the blinkered vision of western feminism, Sana, much like the women of the Piety Movement, and Saba Mahmood herself, is able to recognise an assertion of female agency, even in the moment of submission or surrender.

(The article is based on readings of Skam, a Norwegian teen drama in conjunction with Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and The Feminist Subject)

Apala Kundu

24th March 2019

Works Cited

Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and The Feminist Subject. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 2005.

Skam. Dir. Julie Andem. NRK P3, March 2016.

Skam-online.tumblr.com. Web. ( Accessed on 12 February 2017).