Religion as fandom, starting with Islamic veils

It's interesting to note that not all women who are comfortable with a Muslim identity are keen on the hijab or niqab. I found it interesting to read this and compare it with two other people I have met and Christian analogues. First a gutsy quote.

Some Muslims would criticise the way my mother and I dress. They believe that there is only one way to practise Islam and express your beliefs, forgetting that the Muslim faith is interpreted in different ways in different places and that there are distinct cultures and styles of dress in Muslim countries stretching from Morocco to Indonesia. But it is not a requirement of the Koran for women to wear the veil. The growing number of women veiling their faces in Britain is a sign of radicalisation. I was disturbed when, after my first year at university in 1988, I discovered to my surprise that some of my fellow students had turned very religious and had taken to wearing the jilbab (a long, flowing gown covering all the body except hands and face), which they had never worn before and which was not the dress code of their mothers. They had joined the college’s Islamic Society, which preached that women were not considered proper Muslims unless they adopted such strict dress codes. After that, I never really had anything in common with them.

As I consider this I recall a conversation with a white British convert to Islam who as a feminist had little problem with her understanding of Islam which she saw as egalitarian in gender terms. So she didn't dress differently to any other modestly dressed western woman; her lower legs showed, there was no veiling. She also felt that it would be islamically okay for there to be a woman prayer leader in the masjid [mosque]. Then I think of another Muslim woman I once worked with who wore hijab but confessed that she really didn't go in for a lot of religious observance. How deceptive appearances can be!

Then there is the comparison with Christian circles. For those who have an awakening, it is normal to want to express our ardour, alliegence and to proclaim our faith. So we look for signs and symbols to make ourselves into walking billboards for our faith and we look for occasions to speak out. We do this for the honour and glory of who and what we have come to love. Many of us tone this down over time as we become aware of how negatively this impacts others and is arguably unloving, not what Jesus would do and probably counterproductive. But we should be aware that this 'falling in love'-style response is not untypical and is a human response to a positive change of affection and alliegence. It happens to football fans, music fans, and dare I say it, not unrespectfully [for it happened to me, dear reader], 'Jesus fans' and 'Islam fans'.

In fact this idea of religious fandom may be quite helpful: it helps us to distinguish a particular response from other ways of being spiritual or even religious within particular traditions. It helps us realise that there are gestalts associated with it; particular typical outworkings of the psychology and sociologies. It may even help us when we make comparisons with the violent forms that fandom can get into .... ?

Muslim: Why Muslim women should thank Jack Straw:
Filed in: Islam, Qur'an, women, hijab, westernised