Stephanie Cronin - Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World: Gender, Modernism and the Politics of Dress

In recent years bitter controversies have erupted across Europe and the Middle East about womens veiling, and especially their wearing of the face-veil or niqab. Yet the deeper issues contained within these controversiessecularism versus religious belief, individual freedom versus social or family coercion, identity versus integrationare not new but are strikingly prefigured by earlier conflicts. This book examines the state-sponsored anti-veiling campaigns that swept across wide swathes of the Muslim world in the inter-war period, especially in Turkey and the Balkans, Iran, Afghanistan, and the Soviet republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia. It shows how veiling was officially discouraged and ridiculed as backward and, although it was rarely banned, veiling was politicized and turned into a rallying-point for a wider opposition. Asking a number of questions about this earlier anti-veiling discourse and the policies flowing from it, and the reactions that it provoked, the book illuminates and contextualizes contemporary debates about gender, Islam and modernism.

Stephanie Cronin is a Lecturer in Iranian History at the University of Oxford, UK.

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Anti-Veiling Campaigns in the Muslim World
Gender, modernism and the politics of dress
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Gender, modernism and the politics of dress

Edited by
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First published 2014
by Routledge
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2014 selection and editorial material, Stephanie Cronin; individual chapters, the contributors

The right of Stephanie Cronin to be identified as author of the editorial material, and of the individual authors as authors of their contributions, has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Anti-veiling campaigns in the Muslim world : gender, modernism and the politics of dress/ [edited by] Stephanie Cronin.
pages cm (Durham modern Middle East and Islamic world series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Hijab (Islamic clothing) 2. Veils-Religious aspects-Islam. 3. Hijab
(Islamic clothing)-Government policy. 4. Clothing and dress-Political
aspects-Islamic countries. 5. Muslim women-Social conditions. I. Cronin,
Stephanie.
BP190.5.H44A58 2014
305.48697-dc23
2013040891

ISBN: 978-0-415-71138-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-88455-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Taylor & Francis Books

Introduction: Coercion or empowerment?
Anti-veiling campaigns: a comparative perspective
STEPHANIE CRONIN

PART I
Turkey

From face veil to cloche hat: the backward Ottoman versus new Turkish woman in urban public discourse
KATHRYN LIBAL

Anti-veiling campaigns and local elites in Turkey of the 1930s: a view from the periphery
SEVGI ADAK