The Hijab

Despite widespread flooding and some landslides elsewhere in Java, things have been quiet here. Christmas passed uneventfully with no bombings. I've been doing domestic things like clipping our toy poodle (Gromit) and cleaning the fish tank. It's been so cool today that I spent the entire day outdoors which is unusual. Normally, the heat drives me to seek air-conditioned refuge inside the house at some point in the day.

I'm more than two-thirds of the way through Karen Armstrong's biography of Muhammad and it is certainly fascinating reading. The historical origins of the hijab came as a quite a surprise. She writes:

We should pause to consider the hijab, and the Muslim institution of the veil. It is often seen in the West as a symbol of male oppression, but in the Qu'ran it was simply a piece of protocol that applied only to the Prophet's wives. Muslim women are required, like men, to dress modestly, but women are not told to veil themselves from view, nor seclude themselves from men in a separate part of the house. These were later developments and did not become widespread in the Islamic empire until three or four generations after the death of Muhammad. It appears that the custom of veiling and secluding women came into the Muslim world from Persia and Byzantium, where women had long been treated in this way.

Once again, we see the effect of recidivism as the old male-dominated, pre-Islamic cultural norms quickly reestablish themselves in the absence of the Prophet's guidance. The more I read about Mohammad, the more respect I have for him. At the same time, the subsequent distortions of his message become more and more obvious.