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HIJAB IN LONDON
Metamorphosis, Resonance and Effects

◆ E M M A TA R L O

Goldsmiths College London, UK

Abstract
This article is about the significance of dress as a visible indicator of differ-
ence in multicultural London. It focuses in particular on the hijab (Muslim
woman’s headscarf), suggesting that its adoption by middle-class Muslim
women is often a product, not so much of their cultural backgrounds as
of the trans-cultural encounters they experience in a cosmopolitan urban
environment. The article explores the transformative potential of hijab,
demonstrating how its adoption not only acts as a moment of metamorphosis
in the lives of wearers, but also has significant effects on the perceptions
and actions of others. These themes of metamorphosis, visibility and agency
are explored in relation to the complex conflicting resonance of hijab in the
West, and how that resonance is constantly being reshaped both through
contemporary political events and their media coverage as well as through
the actions and campaigns of hijab wearers.

Key Words ◆ hijab ◆ Islam ◆ London ◆ multiculturalism ◆ women

This article sets out to explore the popularity and resonance of the hijab1
in London through a focus on trans-cultural encounters, which, whether
directly or indirectly, form an important part of everyday life in the capital
city. Building on earlier work concerning the social and cultural signifi-
cance of the ‘problem of what to wear’ (see Tarlo, 1996; Bannerjee and
Miller, 2003), it focuses on the decision made by some educated middle-
class Muslim women2 to adopt hijab. The aim is to move away from a
cultural determinist approach to the garment (the idea that its wearing
is simply a product of the ethnic or religious background of the wearer)
without explaining away its adoption in terms of the alternative models

Journal of Material Culture Vol. 12(2): 131–156

Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore)
[DOI: 10.1177/1359183507078121]www.sagepublications.com 131
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available: theories of post-colonial resistance, gender performance, patri-

archy, and the rise of global religious movements – all of which are
relevant to some degree but which tend to undermine, if not ignore, the
complexities of biographical experience and the processes by which
people make meaning of their own lives. The emphasis given here is on
the significance of the trans-cultural city as a space which exposes people
to alternative ways of being and in so doing, offers them the possibility
of personal metamorphosis. Whilst the term ‘metamorphosis’ may seem
exaggerated in the context of the tying of a simple piece of cloth, it is
argued that for many women the adoption of hijab transforms not only
their sense of self but also their relationship to others and the wider
environment. To this extent it becomes possible to speak of the agency
of hijab in people’s lives.
Closely linked to the agency of hijab is its visibility and the signifi-
cance of that visibility. This aspect of hijab has been insufficiently
explored in the western context,3 perhaps because to many westerners,
the hijab is associated more with notions of invisibility than visibility. It
is linked in popular perceptions to the idea of hiding, concealment and
the effacement of women’s presence in the public sphere. But whilst it
is true that forms of Islamic dress for women are about withdrawing
certain parts of the body from public view (whether the head, hair, neck,
bosom, all of these or more, depending on particular interpretations of
Qur’anic prescriptions), they are also about increasing a woman’s visi-
bility in the public sphere – making her visible as Muslim. This aspect
of being seen to be Muslim has considerable importance for many hijab-
wearers who draw attention to the verse in the Qur’an which reads: ‘Oh
Prophet, tell your wives and daughters, and believing women, to draw
their cloaks around them so that they may be recognized [or noticed] and
not harmed’ (33:57). A focus on this issue of seeing and being seen, and
on the significance of inter-ocular experience can, it is argued, offer new
insights into the meaning and significance of hijab in contemporary
London, and in Britain more generally.

LONDON, MULTICULTURALISM AND HIJAB

In July 2004, London’s City Hall, a spectacular state-of-the-art glass

building on the banks of the River Thames opened its doors to a confer-
ence entitled ‘Hijab: A Woman’s Right to Choose’. The conference was
organized by the Assembly for the Protection of Hijab (Figure 1) (other-
wise known as Pro-hijab), a newly established London-based inter-
national network and lobbying group formed in response to the French
proposal to ban the wearing of religious symbols in state schools – a ban
which took effect in September 2004. The conference brought together
on one platform an unusual mix of hijab-wearing Muslim women activists

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from Britain, Belgium,

Holland, France, Turkey
and Tunisia as well as
Muslim academics, legal
specialists, human rights
activists, left wing politi-
cians, a Catholic priest, a
Sikh dignitary, a German
feminist (conspicuous for
her ‘F*uck racism’ T shirt)
and the guest of honour,
F I G U R E 1 Pro-hijab Conference, London City Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi –
Hall 2004. a robed Muslim cleric
from Quatta whose pre-
sence in Britain caused outrage in some sections of the popular press
which, perhaps for the first time, found themselves siding with and
supporting gay rights activists who were opposed to the cleric for his
alleged homophobic views (Figure 2).
Whilst the key aim of the conference was to launch a global
campaign for the reversal of the various bans on hijab in Europe (France,
Germany, Holland, Belgium) on the basis that these were infringements
of human rights, a recurrent theme that emerged throughout the confer-
ence was the status of London as a shining example of successful multi-
culturalism. ‘London’ stated
Ruby Mahera, representa- F I G U R E 2 Gay rights protesters objecting to
tive of the London Muslim the presence of Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi at the
Centre, ‘is like a beacon for Pro-hijab Conference, City Hall, London 2004.
other world cities to follow’
– a theme developed most
eloquently by London’s
Mayor, Ken Livingstone,
who was both hosting the
conference and speaking in
it. ‘London’, he proclaimed,
‘is a city with an underlying
creed – that we live by the
laws of tolerance, that we
accept the differences of the
people around us. And that is
why every religion exists in
this city. Every community
from every nation has its
outpost in this city. And the
city works well. The city

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works, not just because people tolerate each other; people enjoy the
diversity of the city’.
In this sunny, if somewhat idealized portrait of multicultural London,
clothing diversity plays a very significant part, acting as visual proof of
British tolerance and acceptance of ethnic and religious differences
whilst, at the same time, naturalizing and reifying these differences in
the process. Such differences are visually inscribed in the streets where
various forms of ethnic and religiously inspired dress from around the
world mingle with a huge variety of street styles and hybrid fashions
with apparent ease. Such differences have also become formally institu-
tionalized in Britain through a complex mixture of experimentation,
political struggle, protest, laissez-faire and formal legislation,4 with the
result that most schools, many hospitals and even the London Metro-
politan police force have a turban or top knot option for Sikhs and a hijab
option for Muslim women as part of their official uniforms. If the right
to express visual difference is a good measure of the success of multi-
culturalism, then the claim that London is its beacon would appear to
attain a degree of truth and it is no coincidence that hijab activists chose
it as the location of their conference. Certainly, for those women who
wish to wear hijab, wearing it in London is probably easier than wearing
it in any other European capital city (Figure 3). Though it should also be

FIGURE 3 Oxford Street, 2005.

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added that for those who do not wish to wear hijab, choosing not to wear
it is more difficult in London than elsewhere in Europe.
If London is characterized by its wide repertoire of differences (its
‘outpost for every community and nation’) visibly expressed, it is also,
as a result of this, characterized by the high degree of exposure to visual
difference that it offers, and the intended and unintended consequences
this may have. The aim is to explore these consequences in three stages.
First, to locate the adoption of hijab by middle-class Muslims within the
complex web of social relationships made possible by London’s multi-
ethnic multi-religious composition and ethos. Second, to give a taste of
the multiple ‘resonances’5 of hijab in London, illustrating that whilst the
trans-national character and multicultural ethos of the city might appear
to make the adoption of hijab unproblematic, this is rarely ever the case.
For the hijab, more than any other religious symbol, is semiotically over-
charged. Not only is it subject to a diversity of interpretations by differ-
ent individuals and groups (both Muslim and non Muslim, locally and
globally) who try to shape and control its meaning, but it is also subject
to a constant re-framing by contemporary political events and the exces-
sive media coverage of these. Having to contend with and negotiate the
multiple resonances of hijab is an important element of hijab wearing.
Finally, the aim is to explore the hijab-effect. That is, its capacity to effect
and delimit the circulation and actions of its wearers as well as its
indirect effects on those who do not wear it.

THICK DESCRIPTION AT THE HAIRDRESSERS

This ethnographic foray into the significance of hijab begins in a hair-

dressing salon in a quiet residential neighbourhood of north-west London.
In many ways it seems an unlikely place to begin, for it is a pocket of
London more noticeable for the whiteness of its inhabitants (of various
Judeo-Christian and/or secular backgrounds) than for its multicultural-
ism. But hairdressing salons are interesting places – not least for the easy
flow of interactions and conversations that take place there, and it is
precisely these aspects that make this salon an interesting starting point
for considering the indirect presence and impact of hijab in spaces where
it could appear to be irrelevant.
Briefly, there are three people of interest in this example: Jane,6 the
owner of the salon, a 40-year-old woman from an Irish Catholic back-
ground; Nicole, a young Spanish woman employed in the salon and
Loraine, a British girl with Anglo-American parentage, who, along with
her mother, is a long time client of the salon. Each of these women has
a connection with and interest in hijab, not through their backgrounds
but through people they have met in London.
To begin with Nicole, she is a highly fashionable and generally rather
skimpily dressed Spanish employee in her late 20s who moved to London

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some eight years back. Like many young migrants arriving in London in
search of fun and financial remuneration, she found herself mixing with
people from a variety of backgrounds and when she split up with her
Afghan boyfriend, she fell in love with Pierre, a young Muslim man of
French Algerian extraction whom she met and eventually married. The
Muslim aspect of Pierre’s identity was not particularly relevant either to
him or to Nicole and might never have become so had he not been diag-
nosed somewhat tragically with a rare and severe form of leukaemia. In
distress, he turned to his local mosque for support, which he found at
the hands of a group of devout young Muslim men who convinced him
that if he devoted his life to Allah, he might be saved. When Pierre
survived a series of life-threatening operations, he felt he had been given
a new life. This young man for whom Islam once occupied a minor place
has, over the past two to three years, redefined his life according to strict
Islamic principles. He has changed his name to Mohammed, now dresses
in long loose robes, prays five times a day, keeps strict dietary rules,
spends large amounts of time in the company of other devout worship-
pers and has virtually withdrawn from anything he considers ‘un-Islamic’,
including his wife’s friends and to some extent, his wife.
Nicole’s attitude to this was one of stoic acceptance and determined
resistance. She performed her wifely duties by supporting him through-
out the illness but refused to transform her lifestyle in harmony with his,
resisting his attempts to convince her to dress modestly and cover her
head. Her initial line of defence was that Pierre’s own sisters did not even
wear hijab and they were Muslim, so why should she? In response to this,
Pierre succeeded in persuading two of his sisters to adopt hijab in order
to set a good example to his Spanish wife. But Nicole remained resistant,
refusing to attend Muslim social events where she feared that people
would ‘suck her in’. Her only sartorial concession was to wear a cardigan
over her overtly skimpy flesh and pierced-navel revealing tops when in
the house so as not to offend her pious husband. Meanwhile Pierre
(now Mohammed) learned to withdraw into the sanctity and safety of
what soon became his private room (protected by Islamic prescriptions)
whenever Nicole’s non-covered female friends came to the house.
Various popular interpretations of this circulated in the salon, ranging
from ‘Pierre has been brainwashed by extremists when he was near to
death’ to ‘he has reverted back to his original roots’ and so forth. But the
fact is that Pierre was not religiously active before and neither were his
parents. It is not that he has returned to his roots but that he has chosen
a particular route from the wide cultural repertoire of possible ways of
being Muslim in London – in this case precipitated by personal trauma
and exposure to a more religious way of life. But in contemporary multi-
cultural London, such a repertoire is open, not just to people from
Muslim backgrounds, but also to others. Whilst Nicole was not attracted

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to the possibilities for personal transformation opened up through trans-

religious encounter and exposure to an Islamic life style, there are others
who find such transformative possibilities appealing.
Loraine is a 21-year-old blonde-haired girl with a pale complexion
who, until recently, could be seen wearing the jeans and track-suit tops
so ubiquitous amongst her generation. She was raised just around the
corner from the salon by her British mother and American father (and
later step-father). At the age of 17, Loraine met and fell in love with a
Muslim boy, a student of Gujarati Kenyan background who had come to
England to attend sixth-form college, which is where he met Loraine.
Until this point, to her knowledge, she had not had any direct contact
with Muslims, having attended a rather sheltered private school. ‘When
I was at school I didn’t know anything about Islam’, she says, ‘I mean
nothing at all. If you’d asked me what a Muslim looked like I wouldn’t
have been able to tell you’.
Like Nicole’s boyfriend before his religious rebirth, Loraine’s boy-
friend was not particularly religious. He was the sort of person who
made an effort to attend the odd Friday prayers and participated in Eid
feasts but not much more than that. But through him, Loraine met other
members of his family and was particularly impressed by the women
who seemed to take their religion more seriously. In particular, she was
attracted to the ‘rules and regulations’ by which they lived and the sense
of order, hierarchy and solidarity in their home. This encounter spurned
an interest in Islam, which Loraine fed initially through reading and
surfing on the internet, and later through interaction with religiously
active Muslims she met during her first year at university in west
London. Loraine soon found herself welcomed by enthusiastic members
of the Islamic society who encouraged her towards Islam. What appealed
to her was the level of their dedication and ‘the complete way of life’
that Islam seemed to offer and which she said, ‘made sense to her’,
offering ‘a whole logic to believe in’. In February 2004 she said the
Shahada and took on the hijab the following day. It was, she said, ‘part of
the package of becoming Muslim’. Like many other converts, she is keen
not to miss anything out and, if in doubt, she consults one of the many
online imams. For the past two years, she has been sharing a house with
other young Muslim women from various backgrounds (two Jordanians,
one British-Asian and one other British convert). All wear the hijab and
long robes (abayas or jilbabs) when out of the home (though Loraine
modifies her outer garments when she comes back to visit her mother7)
and all consider the covering of arms, feet and hair a non-negotiable
Islamic requirement. In addition her housemate of British-Asian origin
who teaches in a Muslim school, adds a niqab (face veil) when out of
doors. For Loraine, what began as a trans-religious encounter has become
a means through which to transform her life.

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I mention these two cases in the context of the hairdressing salon

because the salon provides a micro-environment in which different
attitudes and experiences intersect with interlocking and accumulative
effects as we shall see more clearly by examining the actions and responses
of Jane, the third person in this trio. Jane, who is, as mentioned earlier,
the owner of the salon, is of Irish Catholic extraction. Her relationship
to hijab is far more tenuous and remote and it is precisely for this reason
that it is in some ways the most interesting. She began as a mere witness
to the experiences of the others: of Nicole’s resistance to hijab-pressure
from her husband and Loraine’s decision to embrace hijab – something
she learned about from Loraine’s mother who deeply resents her
daughter’s conversion to Islam and has devoted a number of hairdress-
ing sessions to expressing her horror and disgust. In the summer of 2004,
just a few months after Loraine’s conversion, Jane almost encountered
Loraine in her hijab when her mother booked her a hair appointment at
the salon. But Loraine had rung up to cancel at the last minute – an act
which every one in the salon attributed to the hijab. And in a sense, they
were right. Asked why she had not kept the appointment Loraine
explained that it was not that ‘Islam wouldn’t let her have her hair cut’
as her mother supposed or that ‘she mustn’t be touched by a non-
Muslim’ as others suspected, but, rather that she did not want to run the
risk of a man walking into the salon and seeing her hair uncovered.
What is very clear talking to Jane is that although her encounters
with hijab have been indirect, they have had a profound impact on the
way she feels about her environment and her projected future. Loraine’s
hijab (though she has only ever seen it at a distance) has affected her in
significant ways. To her it not only signifies that Loraine has been led
astray or ‘brainwashed’ as she put it, but it also acts as a warning.
Hearing Loraine’s mother’s accounts and seeing ‘what has happened to
Loraine’ made her anxious about her own child (then aged 4) who was
attending the nursery attached to her local state school in the multi-
cultural multi-religious neighbourhood of Finsbury Park, north London.
In the past, whenever we discussed schools, Jane had always said she
wanted her son to be exposed to as many different cultures and religions
as possible. She thought it was ‘healthy’ in contrast to her own strict
Catholic upbringing. ‘I hated all the Catholic stuff I grew up with in
Ireland’ she confessed, ‘but this business with Loraine has got me
thinking. I mean maybe children need to grow up with a religion in order
to have something to rebel against’, she laughs, aware of the irony of
what she is suggesting, ‘and perhaps if you don’t give them anything,
they’ll go off searching for something, like Loraine.’
Loraine’s hijab had, in effect, become proof to Jane of the potential
perils of multiculturalism (although she would never have phrased it like
that). It not only got her thinking, but also, acting. Despite declaring

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quite openly that she is ‘a complete atheist’, she started attending her
local Catholic church with the explicit intention of securing her son a
place in the safely closeted environment of the local Catholic school and
– more to the point – pulling him out of the multi-ethnic multi-religious
local school to which he was attached. Her efforts were successful. What
is interesting is that Jane, far from being some right-wing conservative
with entrenched racist views, is, on the contrary a classic example of the
sort of liberal Londoner of Ken Livingstone’s description – the one who
enjoys ethnic diversity in food, clothes and friends, who mixes freely
with people from different cultural backgrounds, employs an Indian
nanny to look after her child and people of different cultural back-
grounds in her salon (including a British-Bengali Muslim girl who does
not wear hijab).
To say that Loraine’s adoption of hijab has caused Jane to withdraw
her son from the state education system would perhaps be to overstate
the case. Yet Jane undoubtedly did succumb to fears and anxieties
triggered by Loraine’s hijab, the sight of which made her nervous about
the number of visibly Muslim mothers standing outside the school gates
at her son’s nursery. She explicitly links her decision to attend the
Catholic church to Loraine’s conversion and visual transformation. And
it is worth noting that had Loraine simply converted without trans-
forming her appearance, it is unlikely that Jane would have been affected
in the same way. It is the presence of hijab, and the way it makes differ-
ence visible, that made Loraine’s conversion unpalatable, both to her
mother (to whom it signifies distance and rejection) and to Jane (to whom
it signifies both warning and threat). Jane did not wish to expose her son
to a hijabi environment for fear of what such exposure might unleash.
Here we have not the forging of new hybrid identities, about which we
read so much in post-colonial theory, but rather the reinforcement of
difference through fear. It is likely that much of the ethnic and religious
segregation so visible in London’s schools and neighbourhoods is explic-
able in terms of this type of fear – a fear, not so much of encounter or
interaction but of the transformation that such interaction might
engender. It is, of course, a fear that works in several directions, as the
proliferation of religious schools testifies.
For example, both orthodox Jewish and orthodox Muslim parents in
the Stamford Hill area of north-east London recently expressed their
desire to keep community services in the area separate even for children
of pre-school age. Foremost amongst their anxieties about mixing was the
fear that their dress codes might become compromised or diluted through
interaction with others (personal communication). In this locality, the
majority of Muslim women (most of whom are of Indian origin) wear full
length jilbabs (long-sleeved outer coats), hijabs and in many cases, niqabs
(face veils) – mostly in black. Where visual difference is so densely

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inscribed in the local environment, it can exert a powerful normative

pressure that is difficult to resist. A young, religiously practising Muslim
couple who moved into the area three years ago from Delhi, find them-
selves frequently questioned by their neighbours about why they do not
visually display their religious identity. The woman, who had never
seriously contemplated wearing hijab when she lived in Old Delhi, now
finds herself constantly having to justify her decision not to wear it, not
only to other women in the area, but also to her six-year-old son, Ahmed.
He sees his mother dressed differently from the other Muslim mothers
he encounters in the area and wishes that she would conform to type.
What these examples seem to illustrate is: first, how individual
decisions to wear hijab may come about through exposure to a hijab-
wearing lifestyle which is just one of a large repertoire of ways of being
open to both Muslims and non-Muslims in London who may or may not
take it up for their own personal reasons. Second, they show how the
adoption of hijab may come to guide or delimit a person’s modes of
action; for instance, Loraine can no longer go to the salon, a trivial
example, but others will follow. And third, they show how the visual
presence of one person’s hijab may have effects on the actions of others.
For example, Jane, an atheist and advocate of multiculturalism has with-
drawn her child from the local school to protect him from hijab, whilst
Ahmed, a 6-year-old Muslim boy surrounded by Muslim women in hijab,
is doing his best to try to persuade his mother to dress similarly.

THE RESONANCE OF HIJAB

Whilst at one level Loraine’s adoption of hijab can be explained in terms

of the micro-encounters of her immediate environment and her particu-
lar emotional and spiritual quest, at another level it cannot be divorced
from a much wider set of discourses and practices relating to hijab and
its public resonance. Loraine was drawn to the positive resonance of
hijab as built and exemplified by the religiously dedicated practising
hijab-wearing Muslim women with whom she mixed at university. What
attracted her was not the heavily politicized ideology of radical Islamic
groups (which also exist in British universities and whom Loraine clas-
sifies as ‘nutters’) but rather the idealized notions of modesty, privacy,
protection from the male gaze, rejection of consumerist values and,
above all, religious duty that Islam promotes and the hijab enables and
embodies (Figure 4).
These are ideas that Pro-hijab activists are keen to promote through
their explicit comparison of the ideal Muslim woman with the Christian
ideal of the Virgin Mary and with nuns. The primary association is with
modesty, goodness and virtue. Why, such women ask, when nuns are
respected as a good example and positive moral presence in western

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society is the woman in hijab regarded as suspicious and oppressed?

Abeer Pharaon, head of the Pro-hijab campaign even goes so far as to
argue that the hijab would be the ‘natural attire’ of all women of every
religion were they free to choose – something she tried to prove in a
lecture delivered at the first ever women’s only FOSIS (Federation of
Islamic students) conference held in Leicester in the summer of 2004. In
an unusual PowerPoint presentation she juxtaposed images of scarf-
wearing women from different historical periods, religions and cultures
as proof of the ‘natural’ affinity all women have with hijab.
The positive resonance of hijab is something felt very strongly by
many of the hijab-wearing women I have interviewed, most of whom are
from Muslim backgrounds where their mothers did not wear hijab. They
too have often come to the hijab through encounters with people they
have met in a multicultural urban environment. One such example is
Jasmine, a woman of south Indian origin, who had a somewhat itinerant
international childhood before settling in London in her student years.
As a child and adolescent she wore what she describes as ‘western dress’
and used to shock relatives back in India with her short haircut and jeans.
Now she shocks them even more by
wearing the hijab. The person who F I G U R E 4 Positive resonances of
convinced her of the Islamic necessity modesty and freedom promoted by
hijab activists, London 2004. The
of adopting the hijab in daily life was
protester wears a mid-blue hijab
a woman she describes as a Spanish which matches her placard and
feminist whom she met on an Arabic resonates with painterly images of
course in London. the Virgin Mary.
Another example is Humera Khan,
a dynamic and highly articulate
woman of Pakistani origin who works
as a social activist and councillor on
Muslim issues in the multicultural
borough of Brent and plays a promi-
nent high profile role as a consultant
on Muslim affairs in Britain. She
initially began covering her head in
order to facilitate interaction with the
migrant Muslim women from various
ethnic backgrounds with whom she
worked. She felt they would be able
to relate to her more easily and trust
her more readily if she wore hijab.
At first she would wear a head scarf
only in the contexts of work and
prayer. But over the years she has
found herself ‘growing into’ her hijab

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and now does not feel right without it (a sensation described by many
women). She ties her scarf, not flat on the head but in a large and exuber-
ant turban – a style she copied from an English Muslim she saw wearing
it – though she thinks it is probably inspired from west African traditions.
‘When I saw it [this style] I really liked it. It was the late 1980s and early
1990s. Women were looking for ways we could dress Islamically which
were also fashionable and which we could control ourselves, rather than
being controlled by the fashion industry’. Whilst Humera’s hijab style is
a product of trans-cultural encounter, the fabrics she uses to tie her head
covering also express her expansive global outlook. She chooses patterns
and materials drawn from what she considers ‘Muslim traditions’ around
the world or which have an Islamic resonance.8
What many hijab wearing women speak of are the feelings of
community they feel when they see other women in hijab. Jamila, a 36-
year-old woman from north-east London, who adopted hijab a few years
back, following the example set by her daughters (who in turn had been
encouraged by school friends), now regrets not having worn it earlier.
She speaks passionately of the extraordinary sense of respect she felt
when she first went into the streets in hijab, and of how suddenly other
scarf-wearing women greeted her with ‘salaam’ making her feel that
she really did belong to one big community. Others tell of how, through
their hijabs, they are able to greet complete strangers when they travel
abroad, marking their collective recognition of belonging to a global
Islamic community or umma, and contributing towards the creation of
such a community in the process.
The hijab acts as an orienting device, not just in the physical world
and through acts of looking, but also in the virtual world where the
sisters’ forums of Islamic websites are literally overflowing with hijab
stories and discussions in which Muslim women from around the world
share their trials and tribulations relating to dress. Meanwhile online
Islamic clothing stores are an expanding commercial domain (Figure 5),
contributing to the creation of a new global vocabulary of Islamic dress
in which styles drawn from diverse cultural traditions around the world
are redefined as ‘Islamic’.9 These form part of a growing body of consumer
goods, from Islamic chocolate to wallpaper and Barbie doll lookalikes
(Figure 6), through which new normative models of an ideal Islamic life
style are created.
Closely linked to the positive feelings of community engendered
through hijab is the sense that the hijab plays an essential role in main-
taining the social and moral order for, as Suzanne Brenner pointed out
in her perceptive analysis of the Islamic movement in Indonesia, the
adoption of Islamic dress is concerned not only with a reconstruction of
the self but also of society as a whole (Brenner, 1996). Some women
informed me that the hijab actually prevents marital breakdown, stopping

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men from being led astray,

preventing women from
leading them astray and
saving taxpayers’ money
in social services bills as
a result! These ‘benefits’
of hijab are propagated
in a variety of forms –
whether through inspira-
tional teachings, casual
conversations, dolls, child-
ren’s books, popular songs,
private blogs and online
hijab chat. For example, in
a multimedia screen saver
F I G U R E 5 Online commerce, The Hijab Shop, entitled, Hijab, download-
2005. able from the Canadian
website, Islamicoccasions.
com,10 (but in global circulation in a number of sisters’ online discussion
forums), verses celebrating the virtues of a hijab wearer are intermingled
with messages concerning the power of hijab to protect women from
exploitation, bring psychological peace to men and women, improve the
moral character of society, guard women from the lustful looks of men,
prevent people from being distracted from constructive social work,
prevent social corruption and immorality, bring confidence in social
participation as a human being rather than as a sexual commodity
and save time and money by preventing people from flaunting them-
selves and worrying about
clothes. These messages F I G U R E 6 Razanne doll, as advertised on the
are flashed on screen along internet, 2005.
with Islamic prescriptions
from the Qur’an and
Hadith and cutout images
of veiled women to the
background of the uplifting
soundtrack of world music
singer, Dawud Wharnsby,
singing his song, Veil, in
which a Muslim girl living
in the West defends her
decision to wear hijab in
response to an imagined
western observer’s scepti-
cal comments.

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For some women, the act of wearing hijab also has an explicit pros-
elysing intent. For example, the radical political party, Hizb ut Tahrir
argues that the hijab is a flag for Islam, designed not only to mark out
the Muslim woman’s utter rejection of western capitalism, secularism
and integration, but also to draw infidels towards submission to Allah
(see Tarlo, 2005). By contrast, as already explained, liberal hijab wearers
are more likely to embrace their visual affinities to and sympathies with
modest women of other religious faiths. For example, Rezia Wahid,11 a
textile artist of Bangladeshi origin who adopted hijab just one month
after 11 September 2001, described with good humour the experience of
entering the Vatican in Rome and finding herself surrounded by what
she described as ‘women in hijab’ who welcomed her, assuming her to
be a follower of Mother Theresa. Such tales indicate the potentialities of
affinities being recognized by what might be considered a community of
modest women of different religions.12 It is precisely this sentiment that
the American online clothing store, Headwear Heaven, tapped into when
it advertised its range of inspiring headwear options without specifying
any particular religious affiliations.13
However the various inspirational interpretations of hijab that co-
exist in London and elsewhere are constantly undermined by the more
dominant negative resonance encountered on the streets and in the press
– resonance fed by the complex legacies of Orientalist, imperialist,
secular and feminist discourses as well as by the contemporary political
situation.14 This negative resonance, in which the western dominated
global media invests a great deal,15 builds upon a whole other set of
associations which tie the hijab to ideas of patriarchy, oppression, victim-
hood, ignorance, tradition, barbarism, foreignness, fundamentalism,
suspicion and the threat of violence – associations which have been
greatly inflated by ‘9/11’ and through subsequent events such as the
London bombings of July 2005 and the cartoon controversy of 2006. It
is no coincidence that the cartoon which caused the most outrage was
the one which reasserted the association of Islam with violence and
terrorism, using dress – the prophet’s turban – as the link. Reactions to
this cartoon by European Muslims should be understood not only in
terms of the fraught political situation and Islamic prohibitions regarding
iconography, but also in relation to the fact that since 9/11, people who
look Muslim are constantly having to fend off the association of their
dress with terrorism and oppression.
In the past three years, there has been an undeniable media hunger
in the West for images of covered women whose concealment seems to
serve as a visual shorthand for lack of integration, oppression and threat.
For example, at the Pro-hijab conference in London, there were only four
women wearing niqab (face veils) in an audience of 200, yet there was
an obscene conglomerate of photographers gathered around them like a

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pack of thirsty bloodhounds in pursuit of their image – and all of this

against a backdrop of earnest speeches about how to combat stereotyped
perceptions of Islam.
Any individual adopting hijab in London, whatever their intentions
and beliefs, has to engage with some of this negative resonance of hijab.
In Loraine’s case, she puts up not only with her mother’s hostile
interpretations but also with strangers speaking to her slowly as if she
were either foreign or stupid (something of which many Muslim women
speak). She has also received comments along the lines of: ‘Poor thing!
Her parents must have forced her!’ (a comment she finds particularly
ironic given her mother’s hostile attitude to hijab). ‘My mum’s convinced
I’m a fundamentalist’, she muses, ‘She thinks that if I go on holiday with
her to Florida wearing the hijab I’ll be arrested at the airport!’ – a joke
which might have been funnier were it not for the extent to which
Muslims have been criminalized both in the USA and Britain since 9/11.16
It is this negative resonance that the Pakistani-born British comedi-
enne, Shazia Mirza, tries to expose and challenge in her politically
provocative sketches which, until recently, she performed in hijab (see
Figure 7). The joke for which she is most famous, which she performed
just two weeks after the attack
on the twin towers, involved her F I G U R E 7 Comedienne, Shazia Mirza,
standing on stage in austere black experimenting with hijab, 2003.
clothes including hijab and Photograph: Steve Ullathorne
announcing blankly: ‘My name is
Shazia Mirza. At least that’s what
it says in my pilot’s licence!’ It is
a theme she frequently reiterates
when she goes on tour around the
world and begins with jokes about
how nobody wants to sit next to her
on the plane. ‘I wouldn’t worry’,
she says to an imagined passenger,
‘When I blow up the plane, it won’t
make much difference whether
I’m sitting next to you or a few
rows back!’
It is the same attempt to
confront the associations made
between Islam and terrorism, and
to face racism and suspicion head
on, that we find in a slogan printed
on a sixth-form college student’s
T shirt: ‘Don’t panic, I’m Islamic’
(Figure 8). Yet so sensitive is the

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hijab issue that attempts to expose ‘Islama-

phobia’ often get interpreted as anti-
Islamic gestures. For example, when the
contemporary Moscow-based art group,
AES, displayed their digitally manipulated
photographs from the series, ‘The Witnesses
of the Future’ which showed Islamicized
versions of iconic buildings in famous
western cities, they found themselves
accused of producing anti-Islamic art. The
series was produced in 1996 but became
more controversial in the light of 9/11.
Their defence of the project was that their
art was intended as a psychoanalytic inter-
rogation of western paranoia about Islam.
None the less, at the Rutger’s Maison
Gross School for Arts exhibition in the
USA, T shirts portraying the image, ‘New
Liberty’, which showed the Statue of Liberty
F I G U R E 8 Student attending wearing a burqa and holding the Koran
the Pro-hijab Conference, were withdrawn from sale for fear that ‘the
London 2004.
T shirts would spread the very fears they
purport to deconstruct’ (Figure 9).17 This,
along with an image of Islamicized London (Figure 10), was also excluded
from an exhibition of their work in Walsall in the British West Midlands
for fear that the images might act as ‘an incitement to violence’ given
‘the current political climate’.18 Certainly their proximity to images
produced on some right-wing fascist websites is undeniable.
Similarly the comedienne, Shazia Mirza has received much criticism
for performing in hijab and was even physically attacked by young men
in a British Muslim audience in London’s Brick Lane. In interview, she
spoke of her recent decision to stop wearing the hijab on stage and of
the relief she felt at stepping outside its physical and metaphorical stric-
tures, which had not only framed perceptions of her but also stifled her
freedom of expression. It had become impossible for her to perform in
hijab without ‘representing’ Muslims in general, a burden she ultimately
could not sustain. Her case is interesting for, in many ways, her humour
revolved around exploring, exposing and transforming the resonance of
hijab but ultimately the weight of expectation associated with it was too
inhibiting.
Within this highly charged environment, every action and image with
potential Islamic resonance comes under scrutiny. When in the summer
of 2004 the London metropolitan police published a poster encouraging
people to ring a terrorist hotline, they found themselves accused of

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FIGURE 9 AND 10 Censored images from the series. ‘The Witness of the
Future’. AES ART Group, 1996. Left: New Liberty, right: London.
AES Art Group

re-asserting the link between Islam and terrorism. The poster showed a
woman’s eyes peering from behind a black screen, which was presum-
ably intended to evoke notions of vigilance (Figure 11). To many Muslims,
accustomed to having to defend elements of their clothing practices, the
image seemed a direct slight to Muslim women in niqab (Figure 12).
Of course the hijab occupies an important place not just in external
tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims but also in internal tensions
between Muslims both in Britain and around the globe concerning differ-
ent interpretations of Islam. For example the peaceful protests of hijab
activists trying to reverse the French ban in schools in September 2004
using the language of human rights were, to a large extent, undermined
by the aggressive militant tactics of extremists in Iraq who kidnapped
and threatened to kill two French journalists unless the hijab ban was
revoked (Figure 13). At another level, hijab-wearing women often find
themselves criticized by non-hijab-wearing Muslims for being judge-
mental, over-pious, for getting their priorities wrong, for falsely co-opting
the language of human rights, for failing to criticize gender inequalities
in Islamic countries and for refusing to put the Qur’an in historical or
cultural perspective.

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Police poster, London

F I G U R E 11 F I G U R E 1 2 Woman in niqab with
underground station, 2005. her grandchild, north London 2006.
Photograph: Jenny Newell

F I G U R E 1 3 Pro-hijab protesters outside the French Embassy express hostility

both to the proposed ban on the wearing of religious symbols in French state
schools and to the arrest of French journalists in Iraq in connection with the
ban. London 2004.

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What all of these examples show is the overwhelming, over-

determining resonance of hijab which individuals and groups try their
best to shape but are ultimately never able to control. Adopting the hijab
in London means engaging with this resonance (whether in the form of
racist abuse, suspicious looks, failed job applications or the person sitting
next to you on the bus leaning ever so slightly the other away). As one
young woman put it in relation to her work colleagues’ reactions to her
decision to wear hijab, ‘It is not that anybody said anything. But it is like
racism. If you feel it, it’s there’.

THE AGENCY OF HIJAB

Closely linked to the issue of the resonance of hijab is the question of its
effects – both on the wearer and on observers. In a provocative editorial
entitled, ‘Please don’t rub your religion in my face’ (Guardian, 2003), a
British journalist provides an ironic account of the rant that goes through
his head when confronted by turbans, kipahs and hijabs as he sits on a
London bus on a Saturday morning. His argument is that he does not
know how he is supposed to react to such visual displays of religiosity.
Concerning the Jewish kipah he writes, ‘This apparently helps to remind
the wearer of the existence of a higher authority, as well as making him
an ambassador for the faith. But you can’t help feeling that the kipah-man
is really saying, “I have a relationship with God which by the way, YOU
don’t”’. Concerning the hijab, he asks, ‘Is it saying “Don’t look at me” or
“Look at me”?’ The interest of this lies not so much in the answer as in
the question, for it highlights the extent to which one person’s dress
enters another person’s visual field, not only altering the urban land-
scape in the process but also provoking new thoughts and feelings
(perhaps of solidarity, perhaps of hostility, curiosity, bemusement, irri-
tation). How this process works is skilfully captured by Ian McEwan in
his novel, Saturday (2005), when his surgeon hero, Henry Perowne, finds
himself both distracted and repulsed by the sight of three veiled women
– ‘three black columns’ – entering a Harley Street clinic. ‘He can’t help
his distaste. It’s visceral’, writes McEwan. The sight of the women’s dress
in the streets of central London plunges the hero into a darker mood,
feeding his existing preoccupations with the threat of ‘Islamic terrorism’.
These feelings or emotions associated with dress often have a signifi-
cant impact on people’s relationship to public space. I have heard both
hijab and niqab wearers expressing their reluctance to visit areas where
they will be in a sartorial minority – not so much because they fear attack
(though, at times, some do) but because they feel over-conspicuous, ill at
ease, ‘out of place’. Equally, I have come across non-Muslim women who
feel uneasy going to areas of London where large numbers of women
are covered. For example, an Italian woman who has been resident in

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London for seven years, claimed to feel so depressed at the sight of Arab
women in Regent’s Park that she would rather stay in her flat on a sunny
day than subject herself to this vision. Having been brought up on the
Italian coast where sunshine is associated with peeling off the layers and
the feelings of freedom that come with this, she found the presence of
women in long black robes and, in some cases, face masks, oppressive.
She is one of a number of non-Muslim women who have expressed unease
at their own bare legs and arms when in the presence of covered Muslim
women. As Nilufar Gole points out in relation to the Turkish context, it is
the public visibility of Islam and the corporeal, spatial and ocular aspects
of this that create a feeling of malaise to secular liberal modernists (Gole,
2002). Here again, the malaise is a two-way process. On the other side
of the coin, we find earnest young Muslim men wondering if they should
avoid visiting public parks in the summer owing to the abundance of
naked female flesh to which they are bound to be exposed. On the Quatta-
based website, Islam online, it was helpfully suggested that parks in
western countries should be visited by Muslim men either early in the
morning or in the evening when hopefully women would be wearing
more clothes owing to reduced temperatures. Men were also advised to
lower their gazes and say a prayer if confronted unexpectedly with female
nakedness in the British streets.
Returning to Loraine, it is clear that the logic of hijab affects her
movements in a whole variety of more-or-less subtle ways, preventing
her not only from going to the hairdressers, but from doing a whole range
of other things she previously enjoyed, such as mixing freely with
members of the opposite sex, going to bars, going swimming and hanging
out on the beach in Florida where her family spend their annual holidays.
So wholeheartedly has she taken up the logic of hijab that, like so many
other hijab wearers, she now claims that she would feel utterly ‘naked’
if she went outside without it. Her behaviour has, in effect, become
constrained by hijab, which governs the degree and conditions of her
social interactions with others. The pressure of living up to the virtues
of hijab – of being worthy of it – is a common theme in women’s accounts.
Some speak of not yet being ready to adopt it; many perceive it as a stage
in their spiritual development and talk of the sense of responsibility it
brings with it, of how it makes them representatives of Islam and acts as
a constant material reminder of how they should and should not behave.
One talkative middle-aged woman who used to work in her father’s news-
agent’s shop, commented. ‘I realized [when I adopted hijab] that others
saw it as a barrier, but more to the point it stopped ME from being so
extrovert which was good for me because that was what I wanted’. In
such comments one can sense the powerful constraining moral force of
hijab. The woman in question has since taken this one step further, by
adopting niqab.

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The real and imagined effects of hijab are examples of what Alfred
Gell called the secondary agency of objects, – the capacity of artefacts
which are the products of human agency to take on agency in the lives
of humans (Gell, 1998). The hijab suggests, but also to some extent,
governs, not only who can interact with whom but also the nature of
those interactions. This contextual interactive aspect of Islamic dress
makes it different from other religious dress codes, leading Pro-hijab
activists to argue that the hijab is not a religious dress at all but rather
a requirement of the Islamic way of life based on the separation of the
sexes and submission to God. If it were a religious symbol, they argue,
it would be worn by Muslim women all the time on a permanent basis,
but instead it is worn only in public situations or situations where non-
family males are present. In emphasizing this aspect, hijab activists build
on the original Arabic meaning of the word, hijab – which is concerned
with screening and separation rather than a particular form of dress.
Presumably it is precisely this ‘separation’ effect of hijab that the French
and various other European governments wish to diminish.
Of course whilst the hijab prevents certain interactions, it also enables
and encourages others. As mentioned earlier, it can encourage feelings
of sympathy, trust and shared community. If it has prevented Loraine
from doing certain things and entering certain spaces, it has also given
her access to environments from which she was previously excluded:
prayer rooms at University, the Islamic society, a shared house with
other Muslim women of various ethnic backgrounds and a female
Muslim social world characterized by levels of intimacy and trans-
nationality she has never previously experienced.
At the same time the hijab allows space for individual interpretation
and there are many different styles and nuances to hijab wearing (Figure
14). Differences in fabric, styles of tying, patterns of cloth and accessories
such as hijab-pins leave ample room for individual experimentation and
engagement with fashion.19 Some women have an extensive collection of
hijabs to match a wide range of outfits and invest a considerable degree
of time and effort in maintaining them. Whilst some favour one particu-
lar style on a permanent basis, others modify their style according to the
context.
Jasmine, for example, who works as a teacher in higher education,
now wears a simple gypsy-style hijab in response to some of her male
students from Muslim countries who, she felt, undermined her when
she wore a more ‘traditional’ style. However, with this variety comes the
critical gaze of more pious Muslims who assert that many women wear
the hijab as a fashion accessory and that in doing so they misunderstand
its true meaning. Almost everyone I have interviewed at some point stated
that the hijab is really ‘an attitude of mind’ or that it is ‘in the heart’ so
that if a person does not have the right attitude, then the headscarf

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FIGURE 14 Fashions in hijab tying, London 2004.

becomes ineffective. Stories abound about the hijabi girl who tries to
attract attention in the tight see-through blouse, or the one plastered in
make up or caught sitting on a boy’s lap, thereby letting down hijab and,
by association, other Muslims (Figure 15).
Young women do in fact police each other’s dress to a considerable
degree, exploring the boundaries of what is or is not acceptable in hijab.
Those who expose their necks or leave hair visible often become targets
of censure. The amount of online chat dedicated to these subjects suggests
that young Muslim women in Britain are just as preoccupied with their
appearances as their non-Muslim counterparts. However, the claim that
they are escaping the pressures of competitive consumerism and obses-
sive bodily preoccupation is powerful and attractive and holds some
degree of truth. Certainly, in venerating modesty and piety over visual
displays of overt sexuality, they are presenting an alternative role model
for young women which puts them on a moral high ground in relation
to their non-Muslim peers. The Canadian singer, Dawud Wharnsby,
captures this in these lines from his lyrical song, The Veil:
‘See the billboards and the magazines that line the check-out isles [sic],
With their phony painted faces and their air-brushed smiles?
Well their sheer clothes and low cut gowns, they are really not for me.
You call it freedom, I call it anarchy’.

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FIGURE 15 Anonymous cartoon in circulation on Islamic websites, 2005.

This hijab, this mark of piety,

is an act of faith, a symbol, for all the world to see.
A simple cloth, to protect her dignity. (Wharnsby, 2004)

To the claim put forward by the French government that the hijab puts
unacceptable pressure on young girls to conform to oppressive religious
norms, hijab-wearing women are quick to point out the pressures placed
on young girls in the West to conform to the unrealistic body images
pedalled in the media, and the low self-esteem and proliferation of eating
disorders they see as a result. To them, the veil is lived as a form of resist-
ance to these pressures even if, in the process, they willingly submit to
another set of discourses and disciplinary regimes concerning the female
body.20

CONCLUSION

In highlighting the role of trans-cultural encounters in encouraging the

spread of hijab in London, my aim is not to reject existing research on the
politics of post-colonial resistance and the spread of global religious move-
ments, but rather to suggest that the individual actions of women who
choose to take up the hijab cannot be fully explained without also giving
weight to details of personal biographic experience and the particularities

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of living in a trans-cultural city. Falling in love with someone from

another faith, surviving illness, meeting a convert on an Arabic course,
working with immigrants from different countries are all part of the
texture of life in London. What all of these examples also demonstrate is
the extent to which however personal is a woman’s decision to adopt
hijab, it is always caught up in a broad field of social relationships and
discourses which both shape and are shaped by it. Ultimately, the possi-
bility of personal transformation offered by hijab cannot be divorced
from the transformation of possibilities produced by hijab as it imposes
a certain way of looking and way of being in the city.

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the British Academy, ANR (Paris) and the Ferguson Centre (the
Open University) for financial support for this research. I would also like to thank
all of those who commented on earlier oral versions of this text at Mohammed V
University, Rabat; Pitt-Rivers Museum, Oxford; IRD, Paris; Department of Anthro-
pology, UCL; and the University of Princeton.

Notes
1. Following popular English usage of the term, hijab is used here to mean a
Muslim woman’s headscarf. In Arabic the word refers, not to a type of cloth,
but to general notions of separation, screening, and keeping things apart,
see El Guindi (1999).
2. Whilst university-educated middle-class Muslims represent only a minority
of Britain’s Muslim population, they none the less play a very significant
role in public debates concerning Islam and its development in the West.
One consequence of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, has been
the relentless interrogation of Muslims in the western media and politics.
Whilst the negative side of this takes the form of police searches, arrests,
racist attacks and suspicion, the more positive side is increased consultation
and public dialogue with Muslims in politics and the media. The role played
by middle-class educated Muslims in this process cannot be underestimated.
3. It has received more attention in studies of countries with a Muslim
majority, for example Nilafar Gole’s work on the new visibility of Islam in
the public sphere in Turkey (Gole, 2002).
4. The most significant of these struggles took place in the 1960s and 1970s
when a number of Sikh men suffered dismissal from work for refusing to
remove their beards and turbans. Under the Race Relations Act of 1976,
these dismissals were considered acts of indirect discrimination against an
‘ethnic group’. Because Muslims are classified as a ‘religious’ rather than
ethnic group, their dress codes are not covered by the same legislation (see
Poulter, 1998: Chapter 8).
5. In using the term ‘resonance’ I seek to build on Stephen Greenblatt’s use of
the term in relation to exhibitions of works of art. He writes: ‘By resonance
I mean the power of the displayed object to reach beyond its formal bound-
aries to a larger world, to evoke in the viewer the complex, dynamic cultural
forces from which it has emerged and for which it may be taken by a viewer
to stand’ (Greenblatt, 1991).

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6. Pseudonyms have been used for all people mentioned here except those with
a known public profile.
7. For example, on the day I interviewed her she wore her hijab with a knee-
length pink coat rather than a full length jilbab or abaya.
8. Many of these she buys in the popular chain store, Tie Rack, the point being
that they visually evoke Muslim traditions rather than having pedigree Islamic
origins. For details of Humera Khan’s sartorial biography, see Tarlo, 2007.
9. Conversely, a number of styles worn by Muslims in different parts of the
world such as the sari and shalwar kamiz (both popular in south Asia) are
now being classified in certain pious Muslim circles as ‘un-Islamic’.
10. See http://www.ezsoftech.com/screensavers/presentation/hijab.swf (accessed
26 March 2007).
11. For details of Humera Khan’s sartorial biography, see Emma Tarlo (2007).
12. For example, in some online discussions characterized by intolerance and
paranoia concerning hijab, we find orthodox Jewish women defending Muslim
women’s rights to be modest and to dress according to their religious
traditions without harassment.
13. Interestingly, during the two-year period in which I have been consulting
this website (2004–2006), it has changed its advertising strategy from a
general one aimed at ‘all women’ including religious women and those
experiencing hair loss and ‘bad hair days’ to an explicitly Muslim-oriented
strategy in which it refers to ‘Islamic inspired Hijabs’ and displays different
headwear options in pointed dome-shaped frames, see Head Wear Heaven
(2001–2003).
14. There is a wealth of literature on colonial, Orientalist and feminist percep-
tions of the veil. For some critical discussions of these, see El Guindi (1999)
and Bullock (2003).
15. For discussion of portrayals of Muslims as victims and terrorists in the
British media, see Ahmed (2003).
16. For example, in 2004 both the singer, Yusaf Islam, (previously known as Cat
Stevens), and the Muslim philosopher, Tariq Ramadan, were refused entry
into the USA despite the fact that both are respected public figures with
important contributions to make to debates concerning contemporary
developments in Islam in the West.
17. See Blake Eskin’s article ‘Russian-Jewish Art Angers Rutger’s Museum:
Soros-Sponsored visions of Islamic Future Irk ADL were meant as Irony’
(Eskin, 1998).
18. See inIVA press release, ‘Walsall Council ban photographs’ (inIVA, 2003).
19. For discussion of local and global developments in Islamic fashion, see
Moors and Tarlo (2007).
20. As Abu-Lughod put it in relation to the overlapping fields of power in which
Bedouin women’s lives are located, ‘If the systems of power are multiple,
then resisting at one level may catch people up at other levels’ (Abu-Lughod,
1990: 53).

References
Abu-Lughod, Lila (1990) ‘The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations
of Power through Bedouin Women’, American Ethnologist 17(1): 41–55.
Ahmed, Fauzia (2003) ‘Still “In Progress” – Methodological Dilemmas, Tensions
and Contradictions in Theorizing South Asian Muslim Women’, in Nirmal
Puwar and Parvati Raghuram (eds), South Asian Women in the Diaspora,
pp. 43–66. Oxford: Berg.

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◆ E M M A TA R L O is a Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths College,

University of London. She has a long-term research interest in the anthropology
of dress with particular reference to India and has also published on a number
of other themes including urban anthropology and the anthropology of state
practices. She is author of Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (University
of Chicago Press, 1996, winner of the Coomaraswamy Prize in 1998) and Unsettling
Memories: Narratives of the Emergency in Delhi (University of California Press, 2003)
and is currently working on a book on Muslim clothing debates and practices in
Britain. She recently co-edited with Annelies Moors a special double volume of
the journal, Fashion Theory (June 2007) on the theme of Muslim Fashions and is
currently involved in comparative collective research (with Moors and others) on
the emergence of Islamic Fashion. Address: Department of Anthropology, Gold-
smiths College, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, UK. [email: [email protected]]

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