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Head Covering

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Clarissa

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A child of the 70s, the idea of women covering their heads, now heavily associated with Islam, doesn’t seem that alien to me.

OK, this is both unfair and misinformed. This practice is only “heavily associated” with Islam in the minds of Islamophobes. The fundamentalist varieties of several religions require women to cover their heads. Orthodox Jews and Orthodox Christians do that, for instance. Crowds of Muslims don’t cover their heads while crowds of Jews and Christians do. Hasidic Jews actually have women shave their heads completely when they get married. But somehow I don’t hear anybody denounce this barbaric practice as a woman-hating abomination that it is.

I might be wrong but I do think that Sikhs also require that women cover their heads (as well as men).

This is SO not a specifically Muslim practice.

30 responses to “Head Covering”

  1. Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky) Avatar
    Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky)

    Most Hasidic women don’t do the shaving thing. It is only one Hasidic group that does that.

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  2. David Gendron Avatar
    David Gendron

    AMEN!

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  3. charlesrowley Avatar
    charlesrowley

    If women choose to cover or not to cover their heads freely and without coercion, that is a matter entirely for them, in my judgment. For the most part, that is now the situation for Christian women, When head-covering is forced upon women by men – their spouses or their religious leaders or whomever, that is a serious problem for liberty. Among the religions, the problem is most serious among Muslims because penalties for non-compliance tend to be far more harsh.

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  4. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    There is a difference of scope and purpose. Only some very orthodox Jewish women engage in head covering (and some of them use wigs so it doesn’t really look like head covering) and Catholic women only do so in church. Orthodox practices tends to vary a lot from church to church and/or country to country (Bulgarian churches have a shelves with scarves women can use during service though some don’t use them while I don’t remember seeing that in Romania).

    Islamic headcovering is currently a political as much as religious practice. Supoosedly the loathesome Muslim Brotherhood announced it in the 50’s (or earlier) as a priority and were laughed at, Egyptian women were too modern to follow such a primitive practice they were told – who’s laughing now?

    While I find it an unpleasant look for almost any woman that tries it (modesty through unattractiveness?) I don’t hate it. I _do_ hate face covering, which is social poison and face covering in a place where it’s not customary has nothing whatsoever to do with modesty… (and I know Muslim women who find it alienating and freaky too).

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      ” I _do_ hate face covering, which is social poison and face covering in a place where it’s not customary has nothing whatsoever to do with modesty…”

      – Oh, I agree, it’s completely disgusting.

      “There is a difference of scope and purpose.”

      – The purpose is always to mark women as inferior to men and make them feel like property. The Russian Orthodox Church that has 2% following in Russia and an enormous governmental support nonetheless is trying hard to introduce a dress code for women. Because, according to them, women who are not shrouded provoke men to rape them. The last scandalous pronouncement on the subject took place yesterday.

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      1. Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky) Avatar
        Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky)

        I don’t get how choosing to wear a hat for religious reasons would make someone feel like property. It’s just an article of clothing, not a price tag or a deed of ownership.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          Every action within a religion has a symbolic meaning. Or do you think it’s a coincidence that so many religions coincide in making women shroud themselves? Obviously, there is a meaning behind that.

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      2. Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky) Avatar
        Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky)

        I don’t think a hat or wig is the same as a shroud. Also, whatever the reason may have been originally for a practice, that’s not always the meaning religious people ascribe to it today.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          Have you seen how these wigged women dress? If that is not a shroud, I don’t know what is.

          As for the self-serving monologues of those who practice these rituals, I have zero interest in them. Yesterday, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church justified shrouding the Russian women as a way to combat sexual violence. The jerkwad is obviously inventing this completely idiotic way of reasoning. Why should I be interested in his lies?

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      3. Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky) Avatar
        Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky)

        Below-the-knee skirts = shrouds? Okay then.

        First you say headcovering’s bad because every ritual has symbolic meaning, then you say it doesn’t matter what meaning people ascribe to the practice. Where does this terrible symbolism come from if not from people’s thoughts?

        The justification you cite is indeed noxious but that’s not the reason everyone gives for headcoving.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          “Where does this terrible symbolism come from if not from people’s thoughts?”

          – I can’t read people’s thoughts. But I can form my own after analyzing what I see and noticing that the most patriarchal, fundamentalist forms of religions cover up women. Since I don’t believe in coincidences of such magnitude, I’m forced to draw conclusions.

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      4. Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky) Avatar
        Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky)

        Lots of National Religious women in Israel and Modern Orthodox women in the US who aren’t patriarchal cover their hair.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          “Lots of National Religious women in Israel and Modern Orthodox women in the US who aren’t patriarchal cover their hair.”

          – Yes, just like crowds of Muslim women wear burqas as a feminist gesture.

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          1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
            bloggerclarissa

            This way we will soon arrive at the conclusion that mikveh are not disgustingly sexist.

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            1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
              bloggerclarissa

              Or a very similar approach to women as dirty when menstruating in Russian Orthodox Church.

              As I aid before, all these religious fanatics are equally disgusting in their hatred of women.

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      5. Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky) Avatar
        Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky)

        Fundamentalists wear burqas, therefore any woman who wears hats is also participating in fundamentalism regardless of the beliefs she espouses? The logic here is just really twisted.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          Yes, it is. Who said something this weird??

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    2. el Avatar
      el

      \\ Only some very orthodox Jewish women engage in head covering …

      In Israel both Haredi and (most of) National Religious women cover hair. May be abroad it’s different.

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      1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
        bloggerclarissa

        The entire haredim community (the female part) in Montreal is shaved and wigged.

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      2. Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky) Avatar
        Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky)

        They’re mostly not shaved. They wear wigs on top of their hair.

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  5. el Avatar
    el

    // This way we will soon arrive at the conclusion that mikveh are not disgustingly sexist.

    Men have to go to mikveh too.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      After they menstruate??

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      1. NancyP Avatar
        NancyP

        Too funny!
        I don’t have an issue with the educated Muslim women students and physicians who wear hijab as a sign of Muslim pride. I’d rather they wear the scarves than feel that they have to hide being Muslim. I don’t see any sign of these students and physicians being submissive doormats, either, and most dress quite well, better than I did as a medical student. (I did Preppy Drab for years – sigh).

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  6. musteryou Avatar
    musteryou

    For the man is the glory of God, but the woman is the glory of an ape.

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  7. NancyP Avatar
    NancyP

    I never understood why Orthodox Jewish women don’t wear cloth hats or scarves, instead of wigs. I get that the head covering is supposed to show respect in the presence of G-d. Men just make a fetish of it, in a way they wouldn’t think of doing for their own head covering. I suspect that if women were accepted as authoritative scholars by the majority of the Orthodox communities, the head covering would devolve to “whatever is seen as appropriate by the women themselves”, rather than “whatever the menz think is sufficiently “modest”.

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    1. Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky) Avatar
      Sarah Brodsky (@sarahbrodsky)

      Lots of Orthodox women do wear hats or scarves instead of wigs.

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  8. mhairi Avatar
    mhairi

    Maybe its different in the US, but in the UK currently, headcovering is very heavily associated with Islam, both domestically and as part of the representation of the muslim world, both in popular conciousness and in the media.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      And in my post, I’m demonstrating that this association that you are promoting is Islamophobic and unfair.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        How so? No non-muslim women are petitioning to have dress-codes changed to accommodte the odd shame they feel abut their hair (or their faces). That’s all muslims.

        If you can find cases of non-muslim women being hired and then wanting to cover their hair (or suing potential employers for not wanting shrouded employees) or refusing to show their faces to male police officers or border guards then I might believe you. But at present, as a political issue in Europe head and face-covering is a 95% muslim issue. Noticing (and disapproving) of tht is hardly being islamophobic or unfair.

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        1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
          bloggerclarissa

          I was responding to a very specific statement that associates head-covering with a single religion and pointing out that this is factually untrue. Employment, Europe or border guards were not something that I was trying to address here. Instead, I discussed them here: https://clarissasblog.com/2010/10/18/please-pardon-our-progress/

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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