THE ‘DISCIPLINE OF THE VEIL’ AMONG CONVERTS TO ISLAM IN FRANCE AND QUEBEC

This is a very interesting read. Brace yourself for some unexpected surprises that run counter to the typical narrative in mainstream media. The paper is still in proofs.

Excerpts from

THE ‘DISCIPLINE OF THE VEIL’ AMONG CONVERTS TO ISLAM IN FRANCE AND QUEBEC

Framing gender and expressing femininity

Géraldine Mossière

Introduction

In the course of the Islamic revivalism currently spreading across Muslim countries (Deeb 2006; Mahmood 2005; Shirazi 2000; Torab 1996), many women have adopted the veil as a symbol of negation of Western values and domination. However, in Europe and North America where Muslims live as minorities, what sorts of clothing practices do female believers display? What kinds of fashion style have they developed and how? What discourse on femininity do these strategies convey? The particular focus of this chapter is on women who embraced Islam in France and Quebec (Canada). For these converts, being Muslim does not necessarily mean wearing clothes with ‘oriental’ designs. Far from it, they are starting their own clothing companies so as to produce distinct Muslim-Western fashions that they promote through the Internet. By interpreting Islam in a context that is not framed upon Islamic standards, converts construct alternative religious and social representations of Muslim identity that accord with their own interpretation of the Qur’an while simultaneously incorporating the Western background within which they were socialized. In this regard, the many ways that they embody Muslim modesty and simultaneously integrate into their environment (family, workplace, and so on) make it clear that fashion, religion, culture and identity are interacting in multiple, creative ways. This contribution draws on an ethnographic case study that was conducted among female converts to Islam in France and Quebec between 2006 and 2008. As the data shed light on the various strategies new Muslims develop for combining Muslim dress codes with Western styles, I show how, for these women, negotiating Islamic dress codes help to embody Islamic gender discipline while developing innovative, creative and personalized fashion styles. New Muslims shape thereby a specific form of feminism aimed at re-moralizing the self and the society.

The convert women of the study

In Quebec, as in France, the number of converts to Islam is on the rise, as indicated by the current influx of non-Muslim Westerners to mosques, the increased enrolment in Arabic language courses, and the commercial success of the English version of the Qur’an. Furthermore, it has been observed that the number of women converts is notably higher than that of men. From 2006 to 2008, I conducted 40 interviews in France and 38 in Quebec with women who embraced Islam, in addition to a few informal meetings with members of their social circles, and with the significant actors who led their path in Islam. I focused on their conversion trajectories within their personal biographies. The decision to embrace Islam was thus situated in the new Muslim’s personal trajectory, starting from childhood and (possible) first religious socialization until the first encounter and discovery of Islam, the shahada (formal ritual of conversion), the adoption of religious practices and rituals, as well as adhesion to a new community. Observations were carried out at Islamic learning centres for new Muslims during lessons on Islam addressed to converts as well as during social activities organized by the interviewees (dinners, social activities for matching potential partners, and so on). I also examined the social, religious and family trajectories of 5 of the 40 converts I met in each country. I participated in the converts’ everyday lives that are mainly structured around gathering with other Muslims, either at the mosque or in their homes. I also had informal conversations with family members or people from their social circles, as well as with the contact persons who introduced them to Islam. My first participants were recruited by snowball method, and later, by means of advertisements shared by some converts on private Muslim forums. Apart from a handful of converts who refused to participate in the study for fear of a potential ideological and media instrumentalization of their narratives, the recruitment was unexpectedly highly successful. A lot of women expressed gratitude for the possibility to speak about their experience in a secure and non-discriminating environment.

 All participants were socialized in France or in Quebec, most were in their 30s or younger, and the majority were homemakers or students. In both France and Quebec, the vast majority of my subjects resided in large cities although half of them grew up in rural settings (Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Rennes, Marseille, among others in France; Montreal and Quebec in the province of Quebec). Many of the women had relocated to cities to pursue post-secondary education and sometimes to escape from a closed or ‘narrow-minded’ rural environment. Although a few had converted to Islam more than ten years before our interview, most had converted after 9/11. A few interviewees had been divorced at least once, and nearly all of them had remarried Muslim partners at the time of the interview. Most of these partners were Muslim-born, and were not always as pious as their wives. Although their husbands were usually first or secondgeneration immigrants from North Africa and, to a lesser extent, from the Middle East, all respondents identified as both Muslim and French or Quebecois. Moreover, only a small number planned to move to a Muslim country in the future because, although some of these women were facing religious or social prejudice, liberal democracy remained, according to them, the best environment for everyday Muslim life that is, a life based on their interpretation of Islam.

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Veiling: Resistance and accommodation

Most participants admitted that they initially swore to never wear the veil after converting to Islam, nevertheless, nearly all have subsequently adopted the veil, as the achievement of a long process of dealing with their own personal perceptions and stereotypes regarding the adornment of their body and the transformation of their physical appearance. Conversion narratives that I collected in France and Quebec actually indicate the existence of a common hijab-adoption trajectory that parallels the conversion experience: converts initially rejected this Islam-labelled piece of clothing, then gradually began to wear it when going to the mosque or because of social and religious pressure, and finally appropriated it as part of their religious devotion practices.  They usually claimed that in the end, they were hardly able to take it off. In Quebec, one woman remembered the first day that she ‘tested’ the hijab: ‘People were staring at me and I wanted to tell them “it’s not true that I’m veiled, I’m not really like that”. I really needed to justify myself and for each look I got, to say “it’s a joke, me, I’m not really like that, I’m cool”.’ New Muslims select between the different modes of veiling according to the way they understand their participation into public life ranging between active presence in public debates to seclusion in private sphere and virtual interactions through the web. These different strategies of veiling that display different views on ethics and morality are not without creating power relationships between Muslim women. One woman considers veiling in the Quebecois secular society that she comes from as a ‘selfish choice’, one that flouts her own social circle’s sensibilities against otherness:

Just to see people’s reactions, it would break my career, that would be selfish, I would [only be doing] it for me. With my family, my uncles and aunts who don’t know about Islam, it would make my grandparents sad. And I don’t want to feel attacked, I don’t feel strong enough.

By and large, whether collected in France or in Quebec, narratives show how resistance, pressures, discomfort and shame are involved in the (re)construction of one’s self-image as Muslim in relation to parents, neighbours, friends and colleagues. Various technics are used to minimize the veil’s stigma, such as wearing alternative head coverings that are more socially acceptable or that look exotic: hats, caps, African boubous, turbans or headbands are just some of the many compromises employed by converts. In France, one convert wore a cap when working as a postal delivery person during the summer. At the time when I collected data, these clothing practices were seen as just exotic in Quebec’s multicultural context, and they allowed new Muslims to feel quite discrete or even fashion in public. In the French more homogeneous system, however, non-Muslims instantly categorized wearers of the veil, or alternatives to the veil, as Muslims, and then ostracized them. It is worth noting that the differences in terms of how Muslims and Muslim converts were treated in Quebec and in France extended beyond judgements based upon veiling. In Quebec, Muslim populations were able to take advantage of various arrangements made for them in the workplace, such as prayer rooms or flexible work schedules during Ramadan. In France, on the other hand, legislation limiting the expression of religious belonging in public institutions, which was largely supported by public opinion, pushed individual religiosity into the private sphere. This means that working converts planned to stay at home as soon as their husband’s work revenues would provide sufficiently for their family. Others took off their veil when working, albeit reluctantly:

I feel like I’m living a double life. I’m going to my parents, and I take the veil off, or when I’m going to work, I take the veil off. So I’m two different persons. Because if you see me veiled, you see me like that. But then you’ll see me without my veil and you’ll see me differently. See, when I’m veiled, people talk to me about Islam, when I’m not, they tell me dirty jokes.

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Shaping modern and pious femininities

A significant number of converts were active in instrumentalizing their attire, as a way of promoting alternative representations of women and of sexuality or of challenging Islamophobic public opinion. This behaviour was more salient in France, where Muslim populations and lifestyles were more often targets of stigmatization. In Paris, one new Muslim who did not usually veil, decided once to wear the headscarf when she participated in a documentary about motherhood ‘just so that they don’t only show women wearing mini skirts’. In a more rural region of France, a physician began to wear the veil in the hospital where she was practising in order to dispel the stereotype that veiled women are uneducated, but also to clearly show that ‘yes, one should be able to live as a Muslim in this society’. Feeling responsible for contributing to a positive representation of Islam transforms Islamic clothing practices into political gesture while it simultaneously reconstructs converts’ own subjectivities as women.

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