Translated extract from

Christina von Braun / Bettina Mathes Verschleierte Wirklichkeit. Die Frau, der Islam und der Westen. Aufbau Verlag Berlin 2007 ISBN 3-351-02643-9
pp. 5 - 7, 54 - 75

Christina von Braun / Bettina Mathes Veiled Reality. Women, Islam and the West.
Translated by Rupert D. V. Glasgow

2007 Litrix

CONTENTS

Introduction 9

CHAPTER I Ex Oriente Crux: The Cross with the Headscarf 32 The Symbolism of the Cross 33 The Historical Cross 35 The Secularization of Cross Symbolism 41 The History of the Veil 52 The Diversity of Veils 54 The Veil in Christianity and Islam 60 The Ottoman Empire: the Fight for the Veil 75 The Veil and the Sleeper 79 The Cross with the Headscarf 87

CHAPTER II The Symbolic Gender Order in the Three Religions of the Book 94 The Symbolic Gender Order as a Reflection of the Religions 94 The Role of the Male in the Gender Order 107 The Alphabet as Castration Machine 115 The Relationship of Writing and the Body in the Three Religions of the Book 121 Three Alphabetic Writing Systems 126 The Two Sorts of Spiritual Father 141

CHAPTER III Ex Occidente Looks: The Power of the Gaze and the Female Body Exposed 149 Image Prohibition, Image Worship and the Symbolic Gender Order 149 Curtains Up: the Sex Bomb 155 The Art of Exposure 168 The Fabrication of the Beautiful Body 173 Veil and Hymen 184

CHAPTER IV Harem Fantasies: The Joy of Discovery and Cultural Hegemony 192 Submission 194 The Naked Truth: The Harem as Pornographic Fantasy 203 Feminist Views of the Other Woman 210

CHAPTER V Orient and Occident: Two Orders of Knowledge 230 The Western Order of Knowledge 242 Two Perceptions of Time 249 The Sexualisation of the Orient as a Function of the Two Orders of Knowledge 253 The Orient as the Place of the Mother Tongue 263 The Orient as the Place of Social Renewal 269 The Orient as the Driving Force behind Innovation in the Field of Knowledge 271 Creative Destruction 276 The Mother in the Age of her Technological Reproducibility: Orient and Occident 278

CHAPTER VI The Female Body as Portable Mother Country 283 The Collective Body 285 The Female Body as Representative of the Community 291 The Consequences of the Religious Codex for the Gender Order in Islam 303 Female Emancipation in Colonialism 309 The Veil in Post-Colonialism 316 The Honour Killing in East and West 322

CHAPTER VII Secularization, Globalization and Gender 333 Turkey: Background to the Development of the Secular State 335 The Symbolism of the Female Body in the Turkish Process of Secularization 340 Islam and Globalization 350 Feminist Exegeses of Islam 356

CHAPTER VIII Ex Oriente DAX: Money, Gold and Gender 366 Islam and Capitalism 368 History of Money 373 The Oriental Economy 385 Body and Sign 390 Sacred Prostitution 396 The Transition to Profane Prostitution 405

Money and Prostitution in the Middle Ages 410 Money and Prostitution in the Twentieth Century 416 Ex Oriente Nix 423

Afterward 429

Notes 437 List of Illustrations 476

The Diversity of Veils

(pp. 54 75)

If one considers the history of the veiling of the female body, what emerges is that the veil was not invented by Islam, indeed was not even adopted from the outset, but was taken on in its confrontation with the older (pre-Islamic) cultures and the two other monotheistic religions, Judaism and Christianity.76 The veiling of women, which is today perceived as a specific characteristic of Islam, is in fact in the words of Renate Kreile an outstanding element of the unity of the Mediterranean [], which is deeply rooted in the pre-Islamic Middle East.77 As the historian Leila Ahmed describes in detail, at the time of the emergence of Islam in the 7th century, the veiling of women was a common custom in the Christian regions of the Middle East, in Byzantium and the Mediterranean area. The Christians had adopted it from the Syrians, the Jews and the Greeks. In Islamic areas the veil was initially worn only by Mohammeds wives and later by women from the upper classes of society. It was only from the 9th century onwards that it became an obligatory part of the civilian (as opposed to sacred) dress of women, although the form it took varied from region to region and even today depends on which of the numerous groupings within Islam the women in question belong to. To describe the veiling of women as a genuinely Islamic custom would thus, according to Ahmed, be a distortion of historical facts78 which hides the reciprocities and continuities among the various cultures and religions in the Middle East and Mediterranean.79 The veil therefore forms an inextricable part of the history of the Christian West: if we nowadays regard the veil as alien this is not because it actually is alien to western

culture but because we have made it alien to ourselves. Connected to this repression of the veil from our cultural memory is also the fact that forms of female headgear that differ scarcely if at all from the Muslim headscarf or veil are not perceived as veils. Even today women in the rural areas of South Germany wear headscarves.80 If we notice such scarves at all, we consider them part of the traditional rural dress, not symbols of dangerous rustic backwardness or pre-modern misogyny. Nor do we view the habit worn by nuns with the mistrust we show towards the Muslim veil, even when the nuns in question work in such culturally sensitive institutions as schools or hospitals, institutions where children and patients are as much at the mercy of the people who work there as primary school pupils are of headscarf-wearing teachers. Eventually, fashion designers even succeeded in lending the headscarf a certain sex appeal. When haute couture made the headscarf socially acceptable in the 1950s (first and foremost as travel attire), film stars such as Grace Kelly, Brigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau, and even crowned heads such as Elizabeth II or Queen Fabiola, proved only too willing to be photographed in headscarves.81 Our perception of the Muslim veil clearly takes place within the context of our non-perception of the western headscarf. Yet the fact that we are no longer willing to admit the religious and sexual implications of the latter does not mean that these do not exert a cultural influence. To grasp this influence, we must take a look at the long history of the veiling of women. The historical perspective shows that it is not primarily the veiling of women that calls for explanation, but rather their unveiling. What is the meaning conveyed by the veil? Put like this, the question itself is an expression of repression. There are few symbols more ambiguous, contradictory and changeable than the veil. While the European languages suggest that the various forms of hiding the female body can be subsumed under the concept veil (German Schleier,

French voile), Arabic lacks any such general term. That the unambiguousness and historical constancy implied by the word veil is historically untenable is shown by just a brief review of the most important meanings. The veil (over the female body) first assumes a historically tangible form both as an attribute of the goddess and as a garment worn by mortal woman. The earliest evidence comes from Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean, where the various forms of the mother goddess (Ishtar, Isis, and later on Demeter and Vesta) are often portrayed as veiled. In Babylonian texts, according to Alfred Jeremias, night is invoked as the veiled goddess.82 The statue of the Egyptian Isis is said to have borne the inscription: I am the universe, the past, present and future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil.83 Homer reports that the Eleusinian mysteries venerate Demeter as the Lady of the Shining Veil.84 A legal document from Assur (ca. 1450-1250 B.C.) stipulates that married women should cover their head whenever they appear in public: Married women and widows must veil the head when they tarry in open places.85 In ancient Greece too, the veil is part of the attire worn by married women from the upper classes. Brides likewise wear a veil over their face as a sign of their pudency a custom practised both by the Jews and the Greeks and later adopted by the Romans. In Hebrew the literal meaning of the word for bride (kallatu) is the veiled one. By lifting the brides veil the bridegroom symbolically exposes her pudenda, and by knowing her he symbolically performs the sexual act.86 The veil as an attribute of the goddess symbolizes her independence as well as the essential unavailability of what is sacred: the unmarried priestesses of the Roman Vesta, for example, guard an inner realm protected by curtains and hidden from the sight of normal mortals, where they perform their rituals unseen.87 In the secular sphere, by contrast, the veil is used by a wife to show her association with a man (her

respectability) and thereby distinguish herself from the prostitute, who was forbidden from donning the veil under threat of severe punishment: the whores head is to be free under threat of strict punishment, runs the above-cited legal document from Assur. Common to these distinct meanings of the veil is the fact that they mark the wearer as a sexual being. Even the mother goddess was envisioned as sexually active; her sexuality was considered sacred and had its place in the temple.88 The goddess herself frequently appears as the incarnation of female sexuality and eroticism. In the cult of Ishtar, ritual chants describe the beauty of her breasts and her vulva, as well as the sexual act with her lover, the shepherd Dumuzi. In Christianity, by contrast, the veil signalled the renunciation of sexuality and reproduction, yet without thereby suppressing the other meanings entirely. In his treatise De virginibus velandis, written around AD 216, the Christian author Tertullian thus exhorts unmarried virgins to protect their chastity with the veil: I ask you, Virgin, cover your head with the veil! Take up the weapon of chaste discipline; surround yourself with the rampart of modesty [] For wedded you are to Christ, to Him you have surrendered your body.89 Finally, to cite one final paradox, the veil can mark the womans body as absent and mysterious the veiled Muslim woman is invisible to mans eyes on account of the veil and it can symbolize that invisible secret of virginity hidden within the female body. Portrayals of the Annunciation since the 5th century have thus shown Mary busy at work spinning and weaving when the angel announces that, though a virgin, she will give birth to a son.90 Following the invention of the maidenhead in the 11th century, the veil came to symbolize the invisible hymen of the virgin. Corresponding to the veils diverse and conflicting meanings is the richness of its forms and colours. There are transparent and non-transparent, coloured and black

veils; there are those that cover just the hair of the head, others that also conceal the nape of the neck and the shoulders, and yet others that come down over the face as well, covering either one eye or both. Then there are those that conceal mouth and nose but not the head, and those that hide the whole body from view, consisting either of a cloak with long, wide trousers or of a loose tent-like gown that is pulled over the head and leaves just a small lattice-like slit for the eyes. There are veils made of finest silk and others made from coarse cotton. Some are all one colour; others are brightly patterned.91 The semantic richness of the veil, in other words, is so great that only a vague idea of it can be given here. For the current debate concerning the headscarf, however, it seems to us to be important to take a more detailed look at the different meanings of the veil in Christianity and Islam, as well as at their points of contact and the influences they have exerted upon one another. For Islam the veil has played a major part in its confrontation with Christianity. One cannot help but thus conceive of the history of the veil as the common history of Christianity and Islam. In the following section, therefore, we shall not so much be providing an overview divided according to religion as presenting the most important aspects of the veil in a direct comparison.

The Veil in Christianity and Islam

Although the veiling of women in Christianity has a long tradition, at its heart Christian doctrine proclaims a message of unveiling, as recorded in the last book of the New Testament, the Revelation to John. The Greek word for revelation is apokalypsis, literally unveiling, which is composed of kalypta, referring to a sort of veil-like shawl, and the prefix apo ( = away from, off). The Latin concept of revelatio also 9

denotes a symbolic act of unveiling (velum = veil or curtain). It might be objected that all three monotheistic religions of the book are religions of revelation, since they are founded upon the revealed Word of God. The German term Offenbarung (offen = open) here suggests common ground between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, though precisely in the matter of the accessibility of the divine this does not exist. Both Judaism and Islam are based upon a hidden God who must not be represented in images who thus remains veiled and with whom the believer cannot come into direct contact: he must therefore veil himself in confronting him. For this reason, when both Moses and Mohammed received the revealed Word it was necessary for their head to be veiled. In the Hebrew Bible it is said that on the Mountain of God Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God (2 Moses, 3.6), while in the case of Mohammed tradition has it that prior to his abduction, as he felt the approach of God, he called out: Wrap me up. Indeed, in Islamic tradition Mohammed is also known as the Veil Man (d lhimar).92 In two surahs of the Koran he is explicitly addressed as O Veiled One (73.1) and O Covered One (74.1).93 If he is portrayed in an image (which is seldom the case), then it is usually with his face veiled or left blank. The caricatures of Mohammed published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten in September 2005 and subsequently reprinted in certain German and French papers in February 2006 which depict the Prophet in degrading postures, for example as a bearded sabre-rattler and pimp or as a pig or pig-eater (pigs being considered impure in Islam as in Judaism), were a conscious infringement of this religious taboo and an intentional disparagement of Islam. The caricatures thus triggered fierce criticism and led to violent protests in the Islamic states of the Middle East: embassies and cultural institutions of European countries were set on fire, flags publicly burned, and the West denounced wholesale as an enemy of Islam. This violence and the concomitant rhetoric of violence are to be

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condemned. Yet they show that the caricatures precisely because they were directed at the foundations of the Islamic faith were interpreted as an attack by the West on Islam and on Muslims, which was countered not entirely surprisingly with fundamentalist measures. As a religion of unveiling, Christianity obeys a different logic. The notion of unveiling implies being able to see and comprehend the Truth of Christ, i.e. the secret of God, unconcealed. This represents a turning away from the belief in the fundamental inaccessibility of what is sacred, a belief nurtured both by the polytheistic religions with their veiled goddesses and by Judaism with its God who must neither be invoked by name nor captured in images. The attitude of Christianity and of Christian societies towards the veiling of women can only be understood if this redeeming import of unveiling is taken into account. The assumption that the divine can be confronted unveiled adds new meanings to the veiling of women also practised in Christianity. As only the man is regarded as the image of God, only he is permitted to face Him unveiled, eye to eye as it were. The woman by contrast is a creation and copy of the man and for this reason must wear a veil in church. Accordingly, Paul not only warned the Christian women of Corinth, who contrary to the Jewish customs with which he was familiar appeared in public without veils, that they should veil themselves in church every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head (1 Corinthians, 11.5) but also provided the reasons for this veiling of women and only women: For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God: but the woman [must because she] is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man (1 Corinthians, 11.7f.).

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The reason for the veiling of women in the face of the divine, therefore, is their supposed function as a copy. Whereas the man is viewed as a creator, the woman is merely something reproduced. Paul found the model for this function of the veil in nature. The fact that the women of the time let their hair grow long he interpreted not as an expression of cultural ideas of femininity, but instead regarded the custom as an expression of the natural concealment of woman, which was symbolically duplicated by the veil and thereby acknowledged as such. Men by contrast, according to Paul, did not wear veils because the hair of their head was by nature short: Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman have long hair, it is a glory to her: for her hair is given her for a covering (1 Corinthians, 11.14f.).94 The Vatican has upheld this command to this day. Women may only meet the Pope with the hair of their head covered. What is noteworthy about Pauls interpretation of womens hair is that he seems not to ascribe it any magical sexual powers that have to be brought under control by the veil. Yet the view that womens hair was the seat of female sexuality was widespread in antiquity, finding expression for example in the myth of the terrifying Gorgon Medusa, who had snakes for hair. Long hair symbolized sexual magic and fertility, was considered seductive and dangerous an ambivalence later present in Islam as well and was thus subject in all cultures to special rituals.95 The ancient Germanic peoples tamed the magical power they saw as emanating from womens hair by plaiting it or covering it with a net or scarf. Covering the hair of married women was so much a custom that the New High German term Weib is even attributed to it: Wiba the veiled one initially denoted the headgear of the married woman.96 The reason that these precautions were generally directed at married women is that the magical power

Translators note: the modern German term Weib means a woman or female, emphasizing the sexual aspect. Frau is the more general term. Weib is cognate with the English wife.

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of womens hair was associated with the sexually active woman, which is why virgins, who were not perceived as sexual beings, usually went unveiled. In this point too, Christianity introduced an innovation. As mentioned above, virgins too were supposed to veil their head and face in order to demonstrate their renunciation of sexuality. This custom followed the pre-Christian tradition of the bridal veil, yet now provided it with a Christian meaning. The choice of sexual asceticism and lifelong virginity made the chaste woman the bride of Christ, as shown by Tertullians above-cited admonition to the virgins. According to the Church Father Athanasius of Alexandria in a letter dating from 356, this new notion of virginity compels the heathen who see them [to] express their admiration of them as the temples of the Word. For indeed this holy and heavenly profession is nowhere established but among us Christians, and it is a very strong argument that with us is to be found the genuine and true religion.97 The veil of the Christian virgin is a sign of her withdrawal from the world, therefore, symbolizing the overcoming of sexuality and turning the womans body into a sacred vessel dedicated to the Lord.98 Islam rejects both celibate communities of women (and men) and the Christian hostility towards sex. Sexuality is regarded basically in a positive light: Unlike the virgin Jesus, the Prophet of Islam is extolled as someone who enjoys not only the company of women, but also the pleasures of sexuality. [] Sexual pleasures are a foretaste of Paradise.99 This high regard for sexuality does not mean that it is free. As in all cultures, sexuality in Islam is subject to a host of regulations, which can in general be described as measures for maintaining the separation of the sexes and are directed at both sexes. The veiling of women in public space is one such measure, but not the only one. It can even be said, according to the sociologist Nilfer Gle, that in the Islamic system there are a lot more prohibitions on men and women being

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together than curtailments of womens rights.100 On the veiling of women the Koran says: And tell believing women that they should guard their private parts, and not flaunt their charms beyond what it is acceptable to reveal; they should let their headscarves fall to cover their necklines (24:31). Because female sexuality, though viewed as threatening, is not condemned, the obligation to wear a veil only applies to women old enough to be capable of reproduction. This represents a return to older, non-Christian functions of the veil as protection for man from womans dangerous (because impure) sexuality and fertility, which is nonetheless necessary for survival. The reason given for the segregation of women, writes the Islam scholar Malise Ruthven, is fear of their sexual power: perhaps an atavism of the cultural memory, a recollection of the female deities who have been destroyed by the triumphant one and only God.101 According to Fatima Mernissi, what is attacked and disparaged is not sexuality in general, but woman as an embodiment of destruction and symbol of chaos.102 The fact that the veiling of women in public space did not entail the overcoming or suppression of their sexuality but rather indicated a specific way of dealing with it is substantiated by comments from Turkish women whose veils were removed with the foundation of the Republic in 1923: they felt this measure to be a neutralization of their sexual identity comparable to that of unveiled western woman. If a woman appears unveiled in public, her sexual energy has to be tamed in other ways: for example, by a perception of her as an emancipated woman with equal rights and thus as asexual. In other words, the Kemalist woman may have removed her facial veil and shawl, but instead she has veiled her sexuality, publicly armoured herself, made herself untouchable, unattainable.103 The unveiling thus demands a specific form of internalized self-discipline new to Islamic cultures, which envelops the body like a

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second, invisible and therefore seemingly natural skin: a tissue of cultural disciplinary techniques that might also be described as a super-ego that covers the skin (but is at the same time internalized). One small episode recounted by the Munich psychologist and psychoanalyst Doris Laufenberg (who deals primarily with Muslim immigrants) provides a concrete example. During one of her trips to the Middle East she visited St. Catherines Monastery on Mount Sinai. Her original intention was to meditate, but there were too many tourists, so she went to an empty Mosque nearby and asked the two attendants if she might pray there. She was not wearing a veil, but was granted permission to do so. When she left the Mosque afterwards one of the attendants told her he had been watching her and seen that she had not been praying. She replied that she always prayed in secret, inwardly. The young man nodded and said, I understand, you wear your veil within.104 The veiling of women in Islam refers to the realm of the divine. Restrictions for women, according to Ruthven, are closely bound up with conceptions of sacredness.105 Historically and etymologically, therefore, the veil worn by women is derived from the curtain that protects the private from the public. Not revelation (revelatio) but separation is here to the fore. The Islam scholar Ludwig Ammann writes: The noun hib, derived from the root HGB, appears only rarely in pre-Islamic texts. It is not one of the concepts that are used for veils or shawls covering the face and body, but denotes a curtain at the entrance to a house. Corresponding to this is the verb haaba in the sense of to hamper entry. In Koran usage, hib refers to partition curtains and screens.106 Only at a later date hib was then transposed to the veiling of the female body in public.

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Similar considerations also apply to the harem, which plays such a major role in the western imaginary. The Arabic word for harem (harm) goes back to the same root as the word for sacred (harm). In Arabic the hRM derivatives cover the semantic field of what is sacred, inviolable, forbidden, awe-inspiring.107 It was with precisely this inaccessible space that the female body or rather, the female pudenda was equated. What is protected by the veil is the womans fertility and child-bearing capacity. The harem is derived from this religious significance and denotes a secluded realm inaccessible to the view of strangers, a sacred taboo sphere of vital social functions.108 As the representative of the hidden aspects of divinity and the power of reproduction, the woman must be covered up when she is outside the protected realm of the harem, bearing the harem with her in the form of the veil. Here it becomes clear that the harem was not originally the place of sexual dissipation conjured up time and again in the western imagination, but a private realm to which the male head of the family, whose actions in public were always visible, could withdraw. A distinctive architectural feature of Islamic womens chambers is what is known as the mashrabiyya. This is a usually wooden ornamental partition sometimes even several partitions forming a bay that lets air and light through but divides the womens chambers off from those of the men. As it can be seen through, its function is to mediate rather than to shut off. The mashrabiyya can be interpreted as an architectural form of veil, and conversely the veil is a wearable, textile form of mashrabiyya. Like the veil, the mashrabiyya grants a view that is not itself seen. Traditionally used on both the outer and inner walls of the houses in the past, its primary social function was to prevent the women of the family from being seen by strangers, by providing a screen that would allow them to look down into the street below, or into the courtyard, or qaa from the floor above without being seen.109

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According to Muslim logic, part of the reason that men and women must be separated is that both are perceived as sexual beings. Fatima Mernissi has described the spatial separation of the sexes as a strategy for conflict-avoidance,110 though from an Islamic perspective the conflict always originates with the woman. Her sexuality is seen as causing chaos (fitna) and threatening the man in his social identity. For the man, writes Mernissi, everything is at stake in this encounter: peace of mind, selfdetermination, loyalty to Allah and social standing.111 Of course, the mans sexuality (and freedom of movement) is also subject to religious restrictions in Islam. Corresponding to the veiling of women in public space is the prohibition of looking by men. Not only must the woman not be seen by the man, but the man must not look at her either. The great Islamic jurist and theologian al-Ghazali (died ca. 1111) describes the gaze of a man at a strange woman as a sinful act, tantamount to copulation with the eyes.112 The womans veil thus helps the man to be blind to the charms that emanate from the female body, particularly the hair. At this point a further important difference comes to light with respect to the function of the veil for Christian virgins. Their veil too was to protect them from the eyes of men and in this way help preserve their innocence. Yet here the veiling of women is not matched by a prohibition on the mans gaze. Rather, along with its function of putting up a barrier to mans dissipative gaze, the veil also serves to impose a prohibition on the womans gaze. This, at least, was how Tertullian would have it. In his treatise De virginibus velandis he calls upon virgins not actively to look, but to lower their eyes beneath the veil: with the veil, he urges them, rear a rampart for your sex, which must neither allow your own eyes egress nor ingress to other peoples.113 In the Christian context the veil thus symbolizes the lowering of the womans eyes, which lacks a counterpart in any comparable

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restriction on the mans gaze. In the course of the Middle Ages, this prohibition on the womans gaze, encoded in the veil, was to become a broad feature of respectable femininity, prompting even women who wore no veil to lower their eyes in the presence of a man. Even today, the active gaze is perceived as male, even if it is no longer reserved exclusively for men. With the help of optical aids (binoculars, microscopes, cameras), women too are coming to acquire this gaze. Yet the power of the gaze in itself is equated with masculinity. In this context it can scarcely be regarded as a coincidence that the public veiling of women in West Europe lost its symbolic value at the very time when with the central perspective a visual medium became available that gave rise to a unilateral, depersonalized gaze and a homogeneous, universally observable space. Since the 16th century the veiling of women whether virgin, wife or widow in mourning has grown meaningless to the extent that the gaze from a central perspective has become significant for the control of public space. In a nutshell one might say that the invisible gaze tolerates no veiling, for it is geared to controlling the womans body (and increasingly the mans as well): before it the woman must cast down her eyes; in its presence she is to show herself. These connections are to be dealt with in detail in the following chapter. For the time being let it be pointed out that the absence of women in public space, together with the prohibition on gazing at women that is imposed upon men in Islamic societies, has prevented the formation in these societies of the panoptic control of the individual in public described by Michel Foucault114 and the accompanying internalization of this gaze in the course of the European civilizing process traced by Norbert Elias.115 Of course, Islam has not been closed to western influences. These have simply had different effects from in the Christian cultural sphere. The public realm,

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according to Ruthven, is conceived of as the sum of its private components, not as a separate entity requiring legal protection.116 Precisely because public space does not demand the visual accessibility of the female body, public life can also take place in private spaces, and women in Islamic countries are not automatically excluded from it. In her analysis of socially institutionalized meetings of women in Damascus, Friederike Stolleis shows that these gatherings, which appear to western eyes to be merely coffee mornings, are not in the western sense private in character, but fulfil public functions in a society segregated by gender. When women in Damascus meet for a sub hya (breakfast meeting), an istiqb1 (reception day) or an amya (savings association), for a few hours a sphere of action comes into being in which free and equal people verbally resolve their own affairs which is what for Hannah Arendt constitutes the public realm. According to the womens own accounts, the domestic realm is consciously left behind and excluded from the conversations, and children too are left at home if possible. This public realm is thus [] clearly separated from the private realm and its specific activities.117 Ludwig Ammann points out that in defining the difference between public and private many non-western societies do not start from the public sphere that means so much to our political and legal discourse about citizens and their rights and responsibilities, but rather their starting-point is the private with the private sphere not considered a relatively insignificant remainder category. [] In other words, here the private is regarded as the primary, and not the other way round.118 The consequence of this is that public space is not conceived as a uniform, homogeneous, quasi-neutral realm in which private interests must take second place, but as an extension of the private into the public. To this extent it is only natural that prohibitions on viewing must also hold in public space. The Arabic word for nakedness (aura) comes close to

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openness or gap in English,119 thus describing a state in which something can be seen that is only meant for initiates. The precedence of the private over the public may be the reason that municipal space in Islamic countries often seems to West Europeans to be alien and lacking in structure, though this is perfectly recognizable to Muslims. Conversely, however, the derivation of the public sphere from the private in Islamic cities also brings to light the invisible regulation of public life in western societies. In Turkey, when the foundation of the Republic led to the abolition of the veil for women, the public space had to be reorganized. The more the women emerged from their isolated private life, the more the state found itself called upon to organize the now public life of women. One law after another was passed, and even political measures were taken. [] On municipal public transport, in cinemas, theatres, bars, and even on the trams newly introduced to Istanbul separate compartments were introduced for women.120 Before the shaping of the public sphere in accordance with the rules of the panoptic gaze imposed itself in the Occident, in other words before the female body was uncovered, women in western countries were happy to be influenced by the headgear of Oriental women. From the Crusades onwards, above all through the improvements in trade relations with the textile centres in Bursa, Damascus and Baghdad in the course of the Middle Ages, married women from prosperous families in the German-speaking countries to the north of the Alps adorned their head with veils, hats or bonnets (which became increasingly fashionable from the 15th century on) made from precious fabrics such as velvet, damask and brocade. These were often decorated with goldwork embroidery and intended to indicate not so much the religiousness as the social standing of the women in question.121 The authorities in turn attempted to combat this clothing

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luxury with rules of dress that put a curb on the dissipated headgear of married women. Yet the predilection for headgear may also be interpreted as a self-protective measure against the increasing power of the gaze in public space, implying a sense of uneasiness in western women about uncovering themselves in public. One example of this is the Nuremberg rain-cloth so called because women originally placed it round their head and body as protection against the rain. Between the 15th and 17th centuries, the town council of Nuremberg repeatedly tried to standardize its appearance and size, among other reasons because its use was being governed less and less by its original function. The rain-cloth or Schurtzhembd, as it was initially called, was at first a simple linen or woollen cover. [] The more distinguished the wearer, the more precious the material became. The more precious the material, however, the less the cloth could be used as protection against the rain.122 What was objected to was not only the luxurious decoration of the cloth, which on occasion exceeded the limits of the wearers social standing, but also the fact that beneath the cloth the womens identity was hidden and an outside observer could not tell what was going on. A decree issued by the town council of Regensburg in the 15th century and headed Ban on women and maidens covering their head either with Schuerzhembden or anything else ran: After an abuse and disorder hath come to pass among the female sex here in this commendable town; which is that both day and night on open streets they cover their head and face with Schuerzhembden, table-cloths and other cloths ill according with customary headwear, and thus make themselves unrecognizable; it is an honourable counsel, in praise of God Almighty and the Virgin Mary and also for the protection and honour of the entire female sex, that an end be put to this abuse.123 As the wording of the decree makes plain, the rain-cloth defies the right to visibility of an anonymous (fictitious) observer

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who controls public space. Conversely, the rain-cloth defends its wearer from the tutelage of this gaze. It is remarkable that in the current debate on the headscarf no importance has been attached to this protective measure to which western women resorted.

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For a detailed account see Leila Ahmed, Woman and Gender in Islam. Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, New Haven, London, 1988. 77 Renate Kreile, Der Schleier. Verbindendes Kulturphnomen?, in Zeitschrift fr KulturAustausch, 3 (1996), pp. 70-73, here p. 70. 78 Ahmed, Women and Gender, p. 5. 79 Ibid., p. 36. 80 An account of the rich regional traditions is provided by Meral Akkent and Gaby Franger in Das Kopftuch. Ein Stckchen Stoff in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Basrtu. Gemiste ve Gnmdzde Bir Para Kumas, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1987. 81 See the pictures in Akkent and Franger, Das Kopftuch, p. 79. 82 Alfred Jeremias, Der Schleier von Sumer bis Heute, in Der Alte Orient, 31 (1931), p. 9. On the religious symbolism of the veil, see also Moshe Barasch, Der Schleier. Das Geheimnis in den Bildvorstellungen der Sptantike, in Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann (eds.), Schleier und Schwelle II. Geheimnis und Offenbarung, Munich, 1998, pp. 181-204. 83 Jeremias, Der Schleier, p. 15. 84 Ibid., pp. 48-52. 85 Quoted in Akkent and Franger, Das Kopftuch, p. 65. 86 See Jeremias, Der Schleier, pp. 33ff. 87 Hildegard Cancik-Lindemaier, Arcana Aedes. Eine Interpretation zum Heiligtum der Vesta bei Ovid, in Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann (eds.), Schleier und Schwelle I. Geheimnis und ffentlichkeit, Munich, 1997, pp. 163-78. 88 Volkert Haas, Babylonischer Liebesgarten. Erotik und Sexualitt im Alten Orient, Munich, 1999. 89 Quoted in Akkent and Franger, Das Kopftuch, p. 70. 90 Jeremias, Der Schleier, p. 39. 91 Claudia Knieps, Geschichte der Verschleierung der Frau im Islam, Wrzburg, 1993, p. 70. 92 Jeremias, Der Schleier, p. 60. 93 Knieps, Geschichte der Verschleierung, p. 375. 94 In Islam the wearing of a beard was imposed on men in order for them to distinguish themselves from the men of other religions. See Malise Ruthven, Der Islam. Eine kurze Einfhrung, Stuttgart, 2000, p. 141. 95 On the significance of hair in conceptions of femininity in cultural history, see also Inge Stephan, Das Haar der Frau. Motiv des Begehrens, Verschlingens und der Rettung, in Claudia Benthien and Christoph Wulf (eds.), Krperteile. Eine kulturelle Anatomie, Reinbek, 2001, pp. 27-48. 96 Akkent and Franger, Das Topftuch, p. 85. 97 Quoted in Peter Brown, The Body and Society, p. 259. 98 Ibid. 99 Ruthven, Der Islam, pp. 138f. 100 Nilfer Gle, Republik und Schleier. Die muslimische Frau in der Moderne, Berlin, 1995, p. 91. 101 Ruthven, Der Islam, p. 141. 102 Fatima Mernissi, The Meaning of Spatial Boundaries, in Lewis and Mills, Feminist Postcolonial Theory, pp. 489-501, here p. 498. 103 Gle, Republik und Schleier, p. 99. 104 Doris Laufenberg, personal communication. 105 Ruthven, Der Islam, p. 127. 106 Ludwig Ammann, Privatsphre und ffentlichkeit in der muslimischen Zivilisation, in Nilfer Gle and Ludwig Ammann (eds.), Islam in Sicht. Der Auftritt von Muslimen im ffentlichen Raum, Bielefeld, 2004, pp. 69-117, here pp. 86f. 107 Ammann, Privatsphre und ffentlichkeit, p. 89. 108 Ibid., p. 91. 109 David Bailey and Gilane Tawadros (eds.), Veil. Veiling, Representation and Contemporary Art, Boston, London, 2003, p. 23. 110 Mernissi, Spatial Boundaries, p. 496. 111 Ibid., p. 494. 112 Quoted in ibid., p. 492. 113 Quoted in Akkent and Franger, Das Kopftuch, p. 65. 114 Michel Foucault, berwachen und Strafen. Die Geburt des Gefngnisses, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1994.

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Norbert Elias, ber den Proze der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen, 2 vols., Frankfurt-am-Main, 1976. The concept of civilization contains cultural presuppositions and implies among other things the superiority of the West over the Orient. See also Nilfer Gle, Die sichtbare Prsenz des Islam und die Grenzen der ffentlichkeit, in Gle and Ammann, Islam in Sicht, pp. 11-44. 116 Ruthven, Der Islam, p. 123. 117 Friederike Stolleis, ffentliches Leben in privaten Rumen. Muslimische Frauen in Damaskus, Wrzburg, 2004, p. 167. 118 Ammann, Privatsphre und ffentlichkeit, p. 78. 119 Ibid., p. 87. 120 Gle, Republik und Schleier, p. 62. 121 See also the examples given in Akkent and Franger, Das Kopftuch, pp. 88-91. 122 Ibid., pp. 139f. 123 Quoted in ibid., p. 141.

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