I'm wondering if there is any way to discuss what modesty is and means to people, and what are the supposed intentions of being modest? Is it contextual (ie I'm modest for wearing trunks in stead of speedos in Brazil)? Is it perscriptive (in all circumstances you will wear THIS)? Or is it wholly personal (what I think works works)?
To be honest, my impulse for writing this is that I believe that hijabs, jilbabs, khimars, abayas, etc etc etc do nothing to abate sexual desire, (MAJOR FOOTNOTE BELOW) and that basically it is not the responsibility of anyone accept the viewer/vouyer when it comes to imposing sexuality on another person. Of course the subject may provoke a sexual response, but this is incomplete until it is returned. As in when a tree falls in the woods there is no sound (perhaps). I'll take the side that all sexuality is contextual and in order to defuse sexual aggression we must demystify what is actually sexual when it comes to how we present our bodies.
This is not to say that throwing up pictures of naked women/men on billboards will solve the issue, because that is a manipulation of the culturally defined concept of sexuality, not a "liberation." However, normalizing skin is a liberation, at least for skin, and at least for some.
That said, I think the Qur'an makes allowances for far greater nudity and in mixed company than our supposed Western decadence has allowed thus far. (24:31) Perhaps.
(MAJOR FOOTNOTE) This is in no way meant to say that people who were hijab etc are somehow "kidding themselves." What I mean by this is that hijab etc in and of itself is not a modest piece of clothing, but rather it's modest effect is based on its context. If modesty is to . . .
What IS modesty anyways?!?!?!?!
I think its contextual to the culture. I don't want to say its individual because modesty is by definition how one acts around others, in terms of how much of thier body they show and how they show it. For example, I wonder about the Yapese in the South Pacific (Micronesia, kind of near Guam) where even now, one can go into a mini-mart (no, you can't escape them) and see women there topless and in grass skirts. But any showing of thighs, any bit of them by either men or women, is considered extremely inappropriate. Now, what if Islam came there?
That's what I like about the Quran. It talks about modesty, but doesn't tell you exactly how to dress. Even the verse that says the women should extend the khimars they already wear around thier chests only implies that using a khimar was a custom. It also explicitly implies that covering the chest is a good thing. Why? What about the Yapese? So, if covering the chest was for modesty and not for health reasons (and we have no idea if it even would be for health reasons, i.e. to keep baby's feeding place clean).
So, either Islam really was meant only for Arabia or covering the female chest is universal and mandated. ÂÂ
- A Salafi in worship, a Sufi in society, a Secularist in government.
"only implies that using a khimar was a custom."
YES. Thank you. And according to the hadith, men worn them as well; there's a line in Muslim in which Bilal is mentioned as having worn a khimar. Curiously, just exactly what a khimar is--its dimensions, way of being worn, etc--is never defined, which bolsters the idea, in my mind anyway, that it was simply mentioned in passing as a traditional garment in use by men and women in 7th century Arabia. The hadith are so ultra-specific about other things--up to and including how one should wash after exiting the bathroom--that it seems strange to me that something which supposedly forms the centerpiece of a woman's piety should never be fully explained.
I understand that there is a hadith stating that a woman should only show her face and hands, but I haven't run across it myself--does someone (MH?) with access to the original text want to post a transliteration and a translation?
Modesty is, I think, something of a myth. I can tell you that wearing hijab in Egypt makes *no difference whatsoever* in terms of how one is treated by men. Lust is lust, and I think the idea that it can be totally neutralized by dress is some weird conceit left over from the Neo-Platonists. Or rather, perhaps modesty on the part of one sex is useless without modesty on the part of the other sex. If a guy wants to look, he's going to look, no matter what you're wearing. I don't see very many Muslim men following through on the 'lower thy gaze' stuff.
Having said all that, I wear a headscarf quite cheerfully. (Unless, as I've said, it's 90 degrees and 80 percent humidity in New York City.) It could be that it's a total relic and religiously meaningless in the 21st century, as women are now relatively safe from bands of pillaging Bedouin who might otherwise have threatened their sexual purity, or whatever. But I think as a symbol the veil is infinitely more flexible and personal than it is made out to be.
Thanks Omar, Willow. I definitely don't want to make this a "hijab" post cause I personally have no opinion on what a woman wears etc. Since we've been talking about women's clothes and since clothing in Islam is almost always associated wiht women, it begs the question:
If our "goal" Islamically is to create an environment where men and women have freedom to be without the threat of sexual aggression (lower the gaze, etc.) than shouldn't we be working towards that by whatever means necessary, even if it meant bikinis and briefs until people get over the body obsession?
It's interesting that so-called Native Peoples who walk around topless are not considered sex objects per se a la the Yapese (I'm grossly simplifying here I know, but think of National Geographic) whereas white women are.
This idea that "to cover" is in some way subduing sexuality is like baby kiddie talk logic. I can't stand it!
But I do believe Willow and I talked abou t"modesty" not being mentioned in the Qur'an. Is there a source (or non-source) for that?
The fact for me is, that I don't believe Islam, and especially not the Islam of 7th c. Arabia was trying to subdue sexuality. I think it rather embraced it for the time, and rather than subdue it, it wanted to draw up some parameters to keep people safe and still be able to experience erotic bliss. The parameters being so vague as to allow for culture differences. Alhumdulillahi!
It's not concrete, is it.... Relative, period.
"This idea that "to cover" is in some way subduing sexuality is like baby kiddie talk logic. I can't stand it!"
You know what bugs me most about it? It's patriarchy in disguise. If covering subdues a woman's sexuality, then a woman's sexual status is *determined by the male gaze*. Ie, if I, a man, cannot see your hair, you are not free. *I* determine how free you are by how much of *your* body is available to *me*. The male gaze is still the standard by which all other status is determined.
Makes me crazy.
I don't understand why Muslim heterosexual males can't engage in a conversation with a non-veiled woman without wanting to rape her or abuse her?
How is a woman showing an ankle going to arouse an erection?
Groucho Marks was on the Johnny Carson Show, one night, in the 1960s, tellin about how, as a boy, he would go down to the trolley stop, and watch the ladies, in their long dresses, step up into the bus, because he got to see a bit of their ankle and calf.
Now, you can go to certain beaches and see the entire crack of the buttocks, if the woman is wearing a string bikini.
Ironically, the greatest morality is to be found in nudist societies, and primitive societies where clothing is hardly used. Constant sensation ceases to be a sensation.
After you are married for 10 or 20 years, if you see you wife step out of the shower, it is sort of like looking at your own body. You take it for granted. You dont jump on her.
In college, one day, a friend of mine, passing by, said, "They have a free nude art class upstairs, with this gorgeous young blond model. Come up with me so we can see her naked. BUT, you have to take paper and charcoal, and pretend to draw, or they will throw you out."
Well, I went up with him, anxious to see this naked girl. She was age 20, blond, and stunning. But, do you know, within 10 minutes, I discovered that I actually had some ability to draw, and I became so engrossed in the sketching that I was no longer lusting after the girl, with sexual thoughts. I continued with the class for an entire year. They had different models.
It's like a doctor who is a gynecologist. Or a proctologist. It becomes a job, a routine. You don't go crazy all day long peering into vaginas and rectums, or palpating breasts for lumps, or squishing breasts between x-ray plates to take mammograms. It is just a job.
But, when you live in a society where all the women wear burkas, then it is a big deal to get to see their face. I am sure some boys hearts pound with lust if they see a woman's nose when there not supposed to.
Forbidden fruit is always sweetest.
It is so funny when a couple wants to get pregnant, and the wife takes her temperature all the time, to find the day of ovulation, and the husband HAS to perform on demand. It gets to be a chore, believe it or not. When you HAVE to do something all the time, it becomes a chore. When you are forbidden to ever do something, then it becomes an obsession.
This is my experience on the subject, anyway.
A wise old Sikh once told me "If a woman is older than I am, then I think of her as my mother. If she is my age, then I think of her as my sister. And if she is much younger, then I think of her as my daughter."
You can't go to wrong with that advice.
This is why the verses in the Qur'an that address modesty first mention the need to not look lustfully upon someone to whom you are not wed. No matter how much you do or do not show, if you have a society of hypersexualized people, an eyebrow would be more than enough to stir desire.
I also wonder, in societies where veiling indicates eligibility for marriage, if veiling doesn't have the opposite effect than the one intended- i.e. "Look everybody, she's covered. That means she's ready for sex!" I also wonder how modest one is being when one is rather ostentatiously so, e.g. lots of jewelry,expensive clothing, etc.
Ya'll should really check out some of these comments on my blog. *WARNING* lots of inappropriate language:
http://indiscretions.blogspot.com/2006/08/worst-week-ever-why-gods-and-g...
A lot of these forced standards of "modesty" have to do with ownership, as in, "nobody can see my woman, because she belongs to me."
"It becomes a job, a routine."
But is that any more desirable than constant arousal? These are our two choices--the monk and the beast?
What I would like is middle ground. To me the desensualized, clinical display of both male and female bodies (what's the big deal, it's just a butt crack on a beach etc) is just as alarming as the frenzied ejaculatory covering-up enforced in other places. It's two sides of the same coin. No one has sex figured out, that much is clear.
Reading this blog and the comments makes me feel that the Taliban just may have used this reasoning to insist that women not go anywhere and if they do they don the potato sacks, so no one may see even the ankle or the wrist.
What I am saying is, to me the 'hijab' itself maybe the middle ground. The nikab maybe one extreme, while the other maybe showing all the skin you can get away with.
Personally I feel that we come into this world naked and impose this fetishization of body parts ourselves. There's no middle ground except what's culturally relevant for the fleeting moment. As such I need to honor anyone who pushes these edges and those who simply don't feel the need to alike.
If I wasn't holding this laptop up tp the window with one hand and typing with the other in order to gank a little neighbor wireless I'd get my transliterate on with all those "you do it to yourselves" verses in the Qur'an to back all this up.
Alas
(one-handed shift keying and all)
For a different perspective, the Darvish blog ran a post called Wearing Hijab - A Spiritual Concept, which you can read here:
http://darvish.wordpress.com/2006/07/21/wearing-hijab-a-spiritual-concept/
"Personally I feel that we come into this world naked and impose this fetishization of body parts ourselves."
Perhaps. But then again, civilization has never claimed to be nature; that's why we have two different words for them. And I personally see flaws into the "I cometh naked into the world" argument, which, growing up in Boulder, I heard quite a bit (as you can imagine!)...that's all well and good if you're born in a tropical place, but do you want to go naked in winter in Michigan? Human beings need technology (the simplest form of which are clothes) to heat and cool their bodies; this is what makes us different from other mammals. So while I can get behind clothes as a necessary evil from a logistic standpoint, I can't get behind clothes as unnecessary. Unless, again, you live somewhere that is warm and dry 24/7/365. Which makes "I cometh naked into the world and should thus wander around in it naked" just as cultural an assumption as "n female hairs create n+1 male erections". Both assume that there is a given ideal or 'natural' (the pseudo-scientific and equally unattainable word we have used to replace 'ideal' in the west) state for the body to be in; I think the very idea that there is some kind of platonic bodily ideal is somewhat misplaced. I've accepted the fact that every human being everywhere intellectualizes the body. There's no escaping it. We're stuck with our overdeveloped brains.
Peace Willow. I hear you, though I'm not saying that when cold we shouldn't wear clothing. I'm questioning the suppossed inherent sexuality/sexual-deviancy-making aspects of certain parts of the body. Though I also challenge the idea that the body and its parts are each equalized and devoid of sexuality. Smells and pheremones seem to contradict this. Without civilization it seems we would simply smell one another to get the urges bubbling.
As far as overdeveloped brains: My focus is not in negating our own development and where-we-are-now-ness (this isn't about saying hey why can't we all just be naked) but in manipulating/challenging the overdeveloped brain to rethink what is sexual. But agin, this is already happening, hence sexuality's culture pegged-ness. Two culture often differ in what's sexul more than any other difference it seems.
My ultimate point being, these "methods" for supposedly diffusing/thwarting sexual advances are useless and speak more towards (male) control than they do in actually engaging sexuality as it stands in each's culture. Topless on a beach in South Africa is simply not linked 100% to decadence. And working towards nudity seems a preferred direction as in is it not our minds that give us these requirements?
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