By Women who face veil — also known as niqabis — are often thrown to the wolves by the Muslim majority to break out of stereotypes imposed on the veil by the Western world through Orientalism and Islamophobia. In other words, women who wear veils are affected by respectability politics.
Respectability politics is a form of moral discourse by marginalized groups to police how fellow members act, appear, or think so that they may seem “respectable.” Proponents of this ideology want to portray themselves as acting according to dominant values, showing that they are not so different from mainstream society and branch out of being othered. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham first coined this term in 1993, in her book Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920, in the context of the Black American community that tried to set aside and undermine cultural and moral practices thought to be disrespected by broader society.
While the hijab — head scarf — straddles the line of being respectable in some Muslim societies and within various Western media, it is the niqab that is always pushed to the back. Hiding the niqab from the “good” Muslim image is due to modern discourse on terrorism that paints female terrorists as face-veiled radicals, who are both active agents in terrorism and passive women in need of saving by the white Christian men. Therefore, to circumvent modern discourses on the veil, many Muslims choose to use respectability politics to showcase to the world that they are just as equal as the Westerners, and at the same time discourage women from veiling.
Modern discourse on terrorism paints female terrorists as face-veiled radicals, who are both active agents in terrorism and passive women in need of saving by the white Christian men.
There are three main facets to respectability politics: The first facet reinforces hierarchy to contrast a respectable individual against a shameful other. Any behavior deemed unworthy within a group will be condemned and considered inferior compared to “respectable” behavior. One example is the Madonna-whore construct, where women are placed into two categories based on their sexuality within most societies. The niqab also straddles the line of the Madonna-whore complex with this mindset, or in other words, the Madonna-terrorist complex. To many Muslims, the niqab is seen through an Orientalist, Islamophobic lens, meaning Muslim women can be seen as Madonna-terrorist to both non-Muslims and Muslims alike.
The second facet is that this ideology encourages people to defy stereotypes to present themselves as respectable. It is easier to become respectable within a society hostile to Islam to pin the veil negatively. Muslims who believe that the veil is a negative article of clothing state that it is not “Islamic.” They often control their fellow Muslims’ so-called religiosity to appear respectable to Western audiences. In this case, we end up with “Uncle Toms” used by Western audiences to prove that there is something inherently wrong with Islam by having an insider perspective. The “insider perspective” is thus used as a weapon against Muslims.
Muslims have to openly dismiss the “bad” Muslim image to counter said insider informants, even if what they say isn’t necessarily true. By stating that the veil is not a part of the Quran or the hadith, they can dispel the myth that Islam is oppressive to women and counter the “insider perspective.”
Respectability politics attempts to delegitimize the niqab as a religious clothing article. Muslims do not want to be associated with it because Western media often represent it negatively. By separating themselves from it, they believe Islam will become legitimized in the West.
Individuals wanting to appear respectable to mainstream society should not be confused with Muslims within the Muslim community who are trying to point out that the veil — whether hijab or niqab — does not have to be worn by practicing women. In this case, Muslims are pointing out that the veil is a part of the Islamic practice, but women should have the right to choose if they want to participate in wearing it. The women who do not wear a hair or face veil are not sinning by not wearing a veil in public. In other words, not wearing a hijab or niqab doesn’t make them less Muslim. This discourse is different from the respectability discourse that claims that there is no veiling whatsoever — besides while doing formal prayer — within Islam.
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Within this respectability rhetoric, any woman who chooses to wear a veil is thought to go against respectable Islam. The niqab is framed as non-Islamic both by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, who claim that while there might be evidence for the hijab, the niqab, on the other hand, doesn’t belong to Islam. Take, for example, Mohamed Sayed al-Tantwai, the now-deceased Grand Imam of Cairo, and the Al-Azhar University, who in 2009 decreed that the niqab wasn’t religiously permissible; and banned it from all Al-Azhar schools. Most dismissals of the niqab as non-Islamic focus on making the face veil a cultural item rather than a religious act of worship.
Anna Piela, the author of Wearing the Niqab, says: “What is striking here is that this dichotomy is used by both detractors of the niqab, who reduce it to Arab ethnic dress without significance for Islamic practice, and its advocates who, on the basis of various Hadith, identify it as one of the outfit styles worn during the lifetime of the Prophet (and therefore rooted in Islamic history), preferable over ‘ethnic’ dress which may be insufficiently modest.”
Respectability politics attempts to delegitimize the niqab as a religious clothing article. Muslims do not want to be associated with it because Western media often represent it negatively. By separating themselves from it, they believe Islam will become legitimized in the West.
The constant framing of the veil — hijab or niqab — by non-Muslims and Muslims alike means that Muslim women walk on a tightrope. For example, many women may not personally believe that they have to wear a veil, and they know that by sharing their stories they can be feeding into Islamophobic stereotypes. Denying Muslim women the agency of telling their stories also proves the stereotype that Muslims are oppressive toward their women. In this sense, to the West, she is a Madonna if she takes off the veil, but a “whore/terrorist” if she wears one. However, in some Muslim circles, she is the whore if she takes off the veil and a Madonna if she keeps it on.
According to The Guardian‘s article Muslim Women Speaking Up Against Violence are Silenced. We Must Amplify Their Voices, Maliha Aqueel comments “Muslim women inhabit a uniquely marginalised space in a world where the existence of rampant Islamophobia both disregards their voices in the wider world and is also used to justify silencing their voices within Muslim communities — by prioritising the issue of anti-Muslim racism over the struggle against patriarchal oppression.”
As a result, Muslim women are silenced by their communities, which fear critique and instead try to appear “respectable.”
The final facet of respectability politics is that the person tailors their behavior to comply with middle-class norms; in the West, this means white-Christian middle-class norms. For example, the veil shows the society hostile to Islam that the Muslim woman does not appear to conform to their ideology of how a woman should be dressed. In this instance, a niqab does not fit the mold of how a respectable white woman — or if you’re in India, a Hindu woman — should appear in public to fulfill the male gaze.
Instead of throwing women who veil under the bus to get the heat off the rest of the Muslim community, we should instead focus on breaking the stereotypes and hate towards these women.
Women see the veil as an article of clothing that expresses submission to men because it is seen as hyper-feminine, and in a masculine society, femininity is not good. Christian women in the West project their Christian theology upon Muslim and Jewish veiling practices. In turn, Muslims in the West internalize their theology upon Islamic theology because the Western construct of gender norms such as what women should wear is built upon Western Christian constructs.
Since the West considers the veil a negative trait, being a respectable Muslim is not to wear a niqab. If you want to be a “good” Muslim, you have to not appear or speak as a Muslim.
Respectability politics is a reaction to white Christian supremacy, and it can be successful at integration. Yet, this integration comes at the expense of others within the group. Numerous laws are being passed dictating what Muslim women can and cannot wear all around the world, not just in Western nations. Since media trends tend to be Western-centric, we often don’t see the anti-veiling rhetoric towards women in Muslim majority lands, including India. The problem with seeming respectable is that it only masks the issues. Creeping Islamophobic laws will not just stop at the niqab or hijab; the only respectable Muslim is not Muslim within Islamophobic discourse.
Instead of throwing women who veil under the bus to get the heat off the rest of the Muslim community, we should instead focus on breaking the stereotypes and hate towards these women. For example, we can include the niqab into our modern discourse on what it means to be Muslim by ensuring women who wear the face veil are given agency; add these women to poetry night, art shows, Islamic events, secular events, etc. We can’t just throw Muslim women who veil away to make ourselves “respectable” because being Muslim is seen as the problem.
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