For Muslim Women, Proper Dress Is an Issue Clothed in Complexity

Hejab is the covering worn by Muslim women--the veils and scarves, long coats and body-concealing robes. In different places it takes different forms, because the Koran’s instruction that women dress modestly is interpreted in various ways.

Even the question of whether men and women are equal is open to debate among Muslims, says Leila Ahmed, a professor of women’s studies in religion at Harvard Divinity School. “Look at the diversity in the way Islamic women are treated,” Ahmed says. “In Saudi Arabia they can’t drive cars. In Jordan they can pilot planes.”

Everywhere in the Muslim world, however, hejab has one aim: to encourage modesty and to discourage impure thoughts or actions. “The beauty of the body is restricted for the spouse,” says Mary Ali, co-founder of the Institute of Islamic Information and Education in Chicago. In Islam, men also must cover themselves, though not as extensively, Ali says.

I dream of seeing St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai and the Khyber Pass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But, like many Western women, I’ve been disinclined to visit the Middle East because of hejab and its philosophy.

Now that the terror of Sept. 11 and the war in Afghanistan have underscored the differences between Islamic fundamentalists and the West, I am more compelled to understand why many Muslim women willingly observe hejab and how it affects Western women who travel in their world.

In the last half-century or so, Western women have increasingly ventured to Muslim countries. English filmmaker Sarah Hobson traveled dressed as a man to the Islamic shrine at Qom in Iran, where women are forbidden. The indomitable Irishwoman Dervla Murphy was pelted with rocks in Iran on a bike trip in the early ‘60s from France to India.

In most cases, however, Western women in Islamic countries have not needed to fear violence as long as they behave circumspectly and cover up in culturally appropriate ways. To do this, a little research is required because the dress code for Muslim women varies.

Ali says that a head scarf and a bulky coat over Western clothes is acceptable in Jordan. The shalwar-kamiz , a traditional outfit of loose pants and tunic, is favored by Pakistani women. In Iran, black chadors, which veil the body from face to toe, are required for women and girls older than 9.

But for Western women travelers these rules don’t always precisely apply. Palo Alto-based PVA Travel Planning, which specializes in tours to the Arabian Peninsula, supplies women clients with long robes under which jeans and tennis shoes may be worn. Women are also advised to pack scarves for covering their heads and necks when they’re in conservative places such as rural markets. PVA owner Peter Voll says women can sunbathe in bikinis at resorts in Dubai and Oman, and that mixed-sex snorkeling trips can be arranged for tourists in Saudi Arabia.

Independent travelers must be careful to avoid attracting attention in Muslim countries, where single women are pitied, misunderstood or worse. To appear uncovered in places like Iran is to risk being taken for a prostitute. “Dress even more appropriately for the culture than anyone else. If you are an American, you don’t want to push it,” says Sarah Timewell, who leads tours to the Middle East for San Francisco-based Geographic Expeditions. Western women who have visited the Middle East are often surprised by the advantages of hejab . When they observe hejab, they get to meet local women and find themselves in places tourists generally don’t see. At a souk in a small Moroccan town, a man led Deb Skelton, who guides tours for Berkeley-based Backroads, and a woman friend to the local red light district, or “women’s market.”

“He thought we [were] prostitutes,” she says. Skelton and her friend stayed long enough to see how shabby the area was. Later, male colleagues told her they’d been to that souk dozens of times but had never seen the women’s market.

Such misunderstandings aside, Western women travelers often find a sense of security in hejab . Christiane Bird, the author of “Neither East nor West: One Woman’s Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran” (Pocket Books, 2001), felt “incredibly safe” traveling in a coat and scarf through Iran in 1998. “Unmarried men and women can’t even touch there. I had very few worries about sexual assault,” Bird says.

Hejab confers safety and respect and says that the wearer is “of good moral character,” Ali says. For this reason and others, hejab observance has grown recently, not only in Muslim countries but among young, educated Islamic women in America, Ali says.

Ahmed, who came to the U.S. from Egypt 20 years ago when women there were abandoning hejab, has noticed the same resurgence. “In a sense, it’s liberating,” she says, because Islamic women in mixed-sex workplaces and schools are breaking taboos simply by being there. For them, hejab is like “a uniform that declares sexual neutrality. A miniskirt is at least as sexist as hejab, “ Ahmed says.

I would rather wear neither. But someday, when the war is over, I will cover myself and go to the Middle East to find out what freedom means to Islamic women.