Hijab (pre-1000 or 1970s?)

[Herbert Stahlke]

Karen Armstrong, in one of her books on Islam, (_Mohammed_, I think, but it
might be _The Battle for God_), provides some documentation that the
practice of hijab was borrowed from Byzantine Christianity around the 9th or
10th c., before the Crusades, when Byzantine Christianity was still very
powerful in the region and practiced head-covering for women.  When it began
to be called "hijab" in Arabic is a separate question that I don't know the
answer to.  As the NYPost article indicates, the practice is not grounded in
the Qu'ran or the hadith.

Herb

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
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Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 9:32 PM
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Subject: Hijab (pre-1000 or 1970s?)


  "Hijab" is not in the OED.  There are 59,200 Google hits.  I think we've
discussed it before, but the ADS site is not working.  I'll check back
tomorrow.
   Today's NEW YORK POST (15 August 2003) opinion by Amir Taheri insists
that
the "hijab" (as a particular style of headgear applied to women)  does not
date to the Koran, but was created in the 1970s.

http://nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/taheri.htm
August 15, 2003 -- FRANCE'S Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has just
appointed a committee to draft a law to ban the Islamist hijab (headgear) in
state-owned establishments, including schools and hospitals. The decision
has drawn
fire from the French "church" of Islam, an organization created by
Raffarin's
government last spring. Germany is facing its hijab problem, with a number
of
Islamist organizations suing federal and state authorities for "religious
discrimination" because of bans imposed on the controversial headgear.
   In the United States, several Muslim women are suing airport-security
firms for having violated their First Amendment rights by asking them to
take off
their hijab during routine searches of passengers.
   All these and other cases are based on the claim that the controversial
headgear is an essential part of the Muslim faith and that attempts at
banning
it constitute an attack on Islam.
   That claim is totally false. The headgear in question has nothing to do
with Islam as a religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the Koran, the
fundamental text of Islam, or the hadith (traditions) attributed to the
Prophet.
   This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by Mussa Sadr, an Iranian
mullah who had won the leadership of the Lebanese Shi'ite community.
   In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told this writer that the hijab
he
had invented was inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic nuns, itself
inspired by that of Christian women in classical Western paintings. (A
casual
visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the Louvres in Paris, would
reveal the original of the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings
depicting
Virgin Mary and other female figures from the Old and New Testament.)
   Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear, Shi'ite women would be
clearly marked out, and thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by Yasser
Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the time controlled southern Lebanon.
(...)
   The garb is designed to promote gender apartheid. It covers the woman's
ears so that she does not hear things properly. Styled like a hood, it
prevents
the woman from having full vision of her surroundings. It also underlines
the
concept of woman as object, all wrapped up and marked out.
   Muslim women, like women in all societies, had covered their head with a
variety of gears over the centuries. These had such names as lachak, chador,
rusari, rubandeh, chaqchur, maqne'a and picheh, among others. (...)


(ANCESTRY.COM)
   7 January 1987, MOUNTAIN DEMOCRAT (Placerville, California), pg. A9, col.
2:
   Said mullah Hussein:  "The protest is forbidden.  A;; women not dressed
according to the hijab are liable to sentencing for public nakedness against
the
dictates of the Koran."