Review: Wearing the Niqab: Muslim Women in the UK and the US, by Anna Piela

Abstract

Countless academic research projects discuss the perennial niqab bans that pop up in various Western municipalities, addressing the legality of these policies as well as the media coverage. However, the voices of the women who choose to wear the niqab are rarely heard. Anna Piela attempts to rectify this research gap by centering on the personal experiences of women who wear the niqab in the United States and United Kingdom, two contexts that are also underdiscussed with the hyper-focus on niqab bans in France and Canada. Building on Piela’s training in gender studies and feminist methods, Wearing the Niqab relies on extensive interviews, in which the women share their own faith narratives and the various reasons they have for wearing the niqab.Chapter 1 provides important context to how the British and U.S. media misrepresent niqabi women with a critical discourse analysis of nearly a hundred articles. Piela finds two common frames in the coverage of niqabi women: “paternalistic feminist,” or helping the women who are assumed to be oppressed; and “security discourses” around fear of what is hidden under the niqab. In response to these stereotypical portrayals, chapter 2 analyzes how niqabi women express themselves through digital media spaces, often using humor, intimacy, and authenticity to come across as less threatening. This chapter could employ media and religion theories a bit more in terms of how the women use media to make accounts of their religious lives.While the background chapters provide useful foundations, Wearing the Niqab is groundbreaking when it begins to highlight Piela’s extensive interviews and observations in chapters 3 through 5. Chapter 3 is one of the highlights of the book, as Piela concentrates on the religious act of wearing the niqab. Feminist scholars trained within a secular-liberal context have a difficult time conceiving of wearing the niqab as a gesture of agency, but Piela frames the women’s discussion around wearing the niqab as acts that are about inhabiting, not resisting, norms. In this chapter, the women articulate their view that wearing the niqab is a form of submission to God’s will, a way to emulate the Prophet and his followers, an act of worship, and a way to grow closer to God. The secular-liberal framing of the niqab as purely a repressive cultural act fails to account for these religious motivations.Building on the theoretical work of the previous chapter, chapter 4 examines the distinct formulation of agency in secular contexts. For instance, women may have religious motivations for wearing the niqab but within the “secular-liberal discourses” (91) of the United States and United Kingdom, it might be more advantageous to consider arguments about rights and freedoms. While the women often utilize narratives of choice, this can sometimes backfire when the courts often protect religious actions that are requirements.Finally, chapter 5 analyzes the racialization of Muslims and misogyny in Islamic communities and wider society. Muslim women who wear the niqab, especially those who are Black, often face intersecting forms of oppression because they are hyper-visible in the niqab but also experience misogyny and racism. This chapter analyzes the complexities of race in ways that studies of Islam too often ignore. For example, Black Muslim women sometimes find the niqab protects against anti-Black racism, whereas White Muslims are perceived as foreign and threatening when they wear the niqab. Piela also discusses the strategies that niqabi women deploy to deal with discrimination and appear less threatening in public, such as showing that they are “engaged” in their surroundings or always being friendly and helpful. When the women face more serious public harassment and violence, they develop strategies to determine safe and unsafe spaces to wear the niqab.Despite the challenges of researching the relatively unorganized group of women who wear the niqab, Anna Piela offers an insightful analysis of the experiences, negotiations, and narratives of niqabi women. Starting in the opening chapters, the book might capture the reader’s attention more effectively if it featured the material from Piela’s interviews with niqabi women and ethnographic accounts. Moreover, sections that discuss online advocacy would benefit from deeper analysis of the role of digital media in creating space for religious expression. With that said, this book offers an original contribution to larger conversations on religious practices within liberal-secular public spaces, personal narratives of religious meaning, and feminist studies of agency.