The Woman in the Muslin Mask

Western feminists have in the past singled out the veiling of women as a potent symbol of women s oppression under Islam. Daphne Grace explores the far more complex and contested role of veiling over the last 150 years, in which veiling has come to stand for both oppression and resistance. Utilizing a range of literatures, east and west, Grace goes beyond purely historical or ethnographic description to ask why, at the start of the new millennium, veiling is more popular than ever - and to explore what it actually means for the women themselves.Each chapter is arranged geographically and chronologically, beginning with the imperial gaze of Victorian England, moving to the Arab Islamic world of the Middle East and the Maghreb and finally to India, in the process exploring the nationalist, religious, political and cultural meanings of the veil in its many manifestations, then and now.