Hijab

Etymology

The Arab word is resulting from the root hajaba which means “to conceal with the glance, to hide”. The word hijab thus takes also the direction of “curtain”, “screen”. The Semantic field correspondent with this word is broader than for the French equivalent “veils” which covers to protect or for hiding, but does not separate.

History

What one calls veil in occident and which one attaches to Islam existed quite front him. A law of in Mésopotamie Assyrian under the reign of king Teglath-Phalazar Ier (−1115 with −1077) already outside returned the port of the obligatory veil to any married woman. It also appears with the Greek world: Helen of Troy veils herself to leave.

In the ancient Greek world, the condition of the woman will be worsening and she will undergo her historical defeat with the century of gold of Périclès. Only the prostitutes are entitled to education then. The suitable woman veils herself to leave and does not reflect. This situation will be found in all Mediterranean and the worst is than that will be presented like a right.

In the company of the anteislamic Arabic peninsula, the women had overall a very strong position, a freedom and rights more important than those of the men (to repudiate his/her husband and not the reverse, to sleep with the men of their choice, etc).

But private of rights, the men started to assert some and reversed the course of the history by changing condition gradually. Consequently, the statute of the woman was degraded: the repudiation of a woman by her husband leaves it without rights and without recourse, it could as many marry women as it wanted and who often depended on him to survive. Enough quickly, these repudiated women was found in misery, slavery and the prostitution.

The veil spreads with the Islam, like symbol of found dignity, at the time. The religion requires of the women who convert to veil themselves in order to be “distinguished from the slaves”; Islam brings a statute and rights to them: the husband cannot any more repudiate them wrongly or rightly and if the divorce is pronounced, they preserve the means of subsistances."

The translation of the word khumurs the best allowed one indicates than it is a broad clothing. The word jouyoub wanted to say by an Arab poet Islamic handle speaking about the beauty of beautiful which left “naked” its chest (to draw their attention, the prostitutes showed their “naked” chest).

The Coran thus invites the women to show their centres, to fold back their full clothing on their chests and to be revealed only in front of theirs. It as well as invites the women the men not to have provocative behaviors.

The hijab in the texts

Some estimate that the veil has importance according to the sociocultural context in which it appears and which it is thus not a basic principle of Islam. Others estimate that it is obligatory.

In Coran

With regard to the religious direction, the word hijab is used seven times in the Coran. In any case it does not refer to the ladies' garment, for which other formulas are used.

On the other hand, the word hijab has the direction of “curtain” to indicate the insulation of the wives of the prophet Mahomet:

“ And if you ask them (with the women of the prophet) for some object, ask it to them behind a curtain: it is purer for your hearts and their hearts . ”
sourate XXXIII, 53; translation Muhammad Hamidullah)

This separation, initially reserved to the women of the Prophet Mahomet, would have then extended to the free Moslem women. One could thus also translate hijab by “dissimulation”.

It is however important to specify that the veil is not a practice specifically Musulman E, but rather Arab and former to the Islam. It is practiced besides in other cultural and religious surfaces. The purpose of it is first to mark the social differences, respectability, crowned.

The term “veils” in French, that which one carries on the head is approached twice in Coran:

“ Tell the believers to lower their glances and to keep their chastity. It is purer for them. Allah is, certainly, Parfaitement Expert of what they do. And say to believing to lower their glances, to keep their chastity, and to show of their atours only what appears about it and that they fold back their veil on their chests; and that they show their atours only with their husbands, or their fathers, or with the fathers of their husbands, or their sons, or wire of their husbands, or their brothers, or wire of their brothers, or wire of their sisters (...) ”.
(Sourate XXIV, verses 30,31; translation Muhammad Hamidullah)

In this case of the sourate 24 An-nûr which has just been quoted, the goal is that the men and the women are free and pure. The word used is khimâr (rear RTL خِمَار). Wa liadribna Bi khumurihenna went jouyoubihenna . According to the references of the Arab language (see Lisân ul- 'Arab of Ibn Manzhûr or Al-Qâmûs Al-Muh' ît of Al-Fayrûz Abâdî), the khimâr , synonymous with nasîf is “what covers the head” (rotten).

According to the exégète At-Tabariy (9th century), this passage recommends to the women “ to hide their hair, their neck and their earrings . ” (Arab: rear RTL وليلقينخمرهن, وهيجمعخمار, علىجيوبهن, ليسترنبذلكشعورهنوأعناقهنوقرطهن).

The crowned text invites the women who, according to the practices Bedouins carried tied and floating fabrics, to fold back their full clothing on their chests, to reveal themselves only in front of their and not to have a provocative behavior, this concerning of the remainder as well the men as the women.

Coran aims initially to social safeguarding, it invites more to the propriety than with decency with the sexual connotation, at least when it treats clothes, injunctions which aim to the vestimentary propriety of the two sexes. In the sourate XXXIII, verse 59, Coran gives a precise list of what it is necessary to do and with which that is addressed:

“ O Prophet! Say to your wives, your daughters, and to the women of the believers, to bring back on them their large veils: they will more quickly be recognized by it and will avoid being offended. Allah is Pardonneur and Miséricordieux. ”.

The word translated by the veil in many translations of quality is actually, in Arabic jalbibihenna (rear RTL جَلَابِيبِهِنَّ), who is possessive a female plural of djellaba ( galabeyya as an Egyptian).

The object of this sourate would not be “to camouflage” possible female charms but to allow to the women, in the past object of desire reducing their freedoms, to affirm that they are free.

In Hadiths

For of Coran, it is necessary to take into account some hadiths: " All the body of the woman east 'will awra (with being hidden) except her hands and its visage" (Pays by Bukhari). In Islam Shiite Sunnite and also , no scientist recognized in the history declared the port of the veil for the woman as something which is not prescribed, all are of agreement to say that the veil is an Islamic regulation. For the sunnites, there is Ijma on the question.

The debate relates only to the extent of 'will awra of the woman. Abu Hanifa thinks that the feet of the woman are not one 'will awra while Mâlik ibn Anas or Ahmad Ibn Hanbal considers them that the feet of the woman must be hidden by basing on others hadiths authentic.

Revealing

In Egypt, one considers that the first questioning of the veil takes place at the end of the 19th century: Qasim Amin, which belongs then to the modernistic current of thought which seeks to interpret Islam to make it compatible with the modernization of the company, is expressed in favor of an evolution of the statute of the woman in her work Tahrîr Al-mar' has ( Women's Liberation published in 1899). It is expressed in particular for the education of the women, the reform of the procedure of Divorce and the end of the veil and the containment of the women. In this time there, Amin refers to the facial veil ( burqu : veil white Mousseline which recovered the nose and the mouth) that the women of easy class downtown carry, that they are Christian or Moslem. The hijab of then is indeed related to the insulation of the women. It is generally considered that it is at this time that the hijab cease to be the symbol of a social status and richness to become a symbol of backwardness and a stake social, political and religious.

In 1923, Huda Sha' arawi, regarded as one of the first feminists, takes off his facial veil while returning of a feminist meeting with Rome, thus launching, according to many authors, a movement of revealing ( Al-sufûr ).

In Turkey and Iran, the revealing is imposed at the beginning of the 20th century by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Shah of Iran, which see the adoption of the Western behavior like a sign of modernization. In Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba prohibits the port of the veil in the Public administration and strongly disadvises to the women carrying it in public.

With the Morocco with the advent of independence, the king Mohammed V, father of the king Hassan II, request with his/her own daughter to take off the veil as a public, like symbol of the Women's Liberation. However in the presence of the King, the deputies see themselves obliging to veil the hair by respect of the tradition.

During last years of the War of Algeria, the French organize supposed ceremonies of collective revealing to show the civilizing work of France in Algeria in favor of the emancipation of the Algerian women (see the work of Todd Shepard, the battle of the veil during the war of Algeria , in the Islamic scarf in questions, under the direction of Charlotte Nordmann, Paris, Amsterdam editions, 2004).

In the Years 1960, the port of the veil became a very minority phenomenon in the majority of the Arab countries, except for the countries practitioner the Wahhabisme. Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, the port of the veil is obligatory for the Iranian women, but also for the tourists and the women nonMoslem. In April 2007, the police force challenged tens of contravening and distributed: 10000 warnings.

Contemporary direction

Currently, the majority of the authors are intended to make of it the equivalent of the zay Al-chari `I or “Islamic clothing”. It indicates the behavior initially that the fundamentalist Moslem women adopt as from the years 1970 consistent in an evening gown and loose, (the Jilbab), of sober color and a veil, will khimâra, also of sober color, entirely recovering the hair, also covering the neck, the shoulders and the chest, resembling the guimpe of the Western Nonne S, so that, in accordance with the Islamic law, only the hands and the face of the women appear.

The obligation to veil itself is discussed, but generally deduced today from a whole of verses of the Coran and Hadith S of the Mahomet prophet. One does not find a trace of such a controversy in the texts of the old oulémas and exégètes. Their ground for dispute was rather to know if it is obligatory with the woman to hide her face or not. The obligation to hide the other part of the body (with share the face, hands and feet for some) is even reported in the books devoted to the subjects of consensus (ijmâ'), like that of Ibn Hazm (11th century) Marâtib ul-Idjmâ .

The hijab thus indicates a behavior in conformity with the Koranic regulations and implies modesty and piety, but it also indicates, and especially, a new manner of covering the head and is distinguished from the forms used traditionally or in the countryside. It is what A.E. Mac Leod indicates by the expression new veiling , “new warping”.

This one diversifies as this new manner of covering the head is spread so that hijab does not indicate only any more the behavior of the fundamentalist ones, but the whole in the new manners of veiling itself adopted, mainly by the women belonging to the middle-class during the years 1970 and 1980, and whose behavior became current in the whole of the Arab Monde and of the Muslim world.

Of course the term returns to a diversity of phenomena: the hijab is not the same one and does not have the same direction in Iran, in the laic Turkey or in France. In France particularly, the veil became for certain women a manner of asserting their religion publicly, as well as certain manner of freeing itself from constraints imposed by the medium of life.

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