Many religions have always expressed an interest in the way people dress and wear their hair, although traditionally most of the attention was focused on women. The concepts of ‘modesty’ and ‘hidden’ occur in the holy books written by men. One of the strangest things I have discovered in recent months is that at least one faith has quite serious regulations about underwear. (It’s tough researching interesting material to bring you, but hey, someone has to do it!)
For some time, some American Christian parents have been able to pack their off-spring off to American Christian universities, safe in the knowledge that their minds would not be polluted by any secular learning that challenged the divine, and their bodies would be kept (theoretically?) free from sex, drugs, tobacco, and alcohol by the enforcement of campus honour (honor) codes. (It’s not just Muslims who favour segregated learning.) I am not sure of the present regulations, but certainly in the latter part of the last century some of these Christian universities enforced a dress code, keeping male hair short, and making sure that women wore skirts and men trousers.
This latter restriction is interesting as it is not just about restricting choice for women, but about attempting to preserve clear distinctions between the sexes. Such a concept is rooted in the teachings of the holy books and holy authorities. For example in Deuteronomy, the Bible says:
The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God (Deut. 22:5).
In his book Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the prominent religious scholar, writes:
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) declared that a woman should not wear a man’s clothing or vice versa. He cursed men who imitate women and women who imitate men …
The evil of such conduct, which affects both the life of the individual and that of the society, is that it constitutes a rebellion against the natural ordering of things. According to this natural order, there are men and there are women, and each of the two sexes has its own distinctive characteristics. However, if men become effeminate and women masculinised, this natural order will be reversed and will disintegrate.
Among those who are cursed by Allah and His Angels, both in this world and in the Hereafter, the Prophet, peace and blessings be on him, has mentioned the man whom Allah has created as male but who becomes effeminate by imitating women, and a woman whom Allah has created as female but who becomes masculinised by imitating men. For this reason the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) forbade men from wearing clothes or things pertaining to women.
Wearing adornments on the wrist and neck, and on the ears is an imitation of women, as this is something that is only for women. So it is not permissible for men to wear bracelets, earrings, anklets, or chains.
It is one thing for a religion to disapprove of the way an individual dresses, it is another for that disapproval to be enshrined in law, and for individuals to receive punishment for daring to exercise a choice which harms no-one.
The Kuwaiti parliament passed a law on December 10, 2007, against anyone imitating the appearance of a member of the opposite sex. They could be jailed for up to a year or fined up to 1,000 dinars (£1,790). According to Human Rights Watch at least 14 people have been arrested in Kuwait City since then and thrown into prison for the new offence. A Kuwaiti newspaper said the “confused” men were “deposited in the special ward” of Tahla prison, and that prison guards shaved their heads “as a form of punishment”. Citing friends of the accused, Human Rights Watch said three of them had been beaten (one of them into unconsciousness), and all denied access to lawyers.
Duaij al-Shimmari, a member of the Islamic Constitutional Movement, said: “Non-believers have their religion and we have ours … We will not allow anyone to interfere with our religious beliefs.” Dr Ali al-Omair, a Salafist MP, said: “The law criminalising people who imitate the appearance of the opposite sex must be implemented and respected … Kuwait should ignore any international criticism.”
I have problems with the Kuwaiti law, and with the whole issue of religious rulings about the need to preserve gender discrimination.
First, it may be reasonable to legislate to protect people concerning issues that they have no choice about - gender, race, age, ability - but it is not reasonable to legislate to enforce a religious belief. To force people via law to conform to a particular religious practice makes a mockery of any spiritual concept. How real is the spiritual devotion if the practice is enforced on pain of imprisonment, torture, or death?
Secondly, the notion that there is one way for a man to dress and one way for a woman to dress is ridiculous. Such distinctions are constantly changing and reflect different cultures and historical periods. Would you want to insist that Scottish males wearing kilts should be forced to put on trousers, just so that gender distinction be enforced? Would you insist that trouser wearing Italian males revert to skirts (tunics or togas) because that is what there male forebears wore? There is a strong case to be made that in the West, trousers are a more normal form of female dress these days, and that women who wear them are only doing what is natural for them.
Thirdly, the notion of enforcing gender differences through clothing ignores the science about sexuality. Religion may wish to believe that gender is dichotomous, but in reality it is on a continuum. Male and female may be at the extremes, but there is a whole range of sexuality in between. Gender is determined in the womb, and for half the foetuses maleness develops out of the female (the other half just remains female). However, that developmental separation is not always neat or complete, and, in part, homosexuality (male and female), transsexuality, and bisexuality are just one expression of foetal developmental processes (see Wilson, G. and Rahman, Q. (2005) Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation. London: Peter Owen).
Fourthly, most of the dress regulations seem concerned with hiding sexuality (though I don’t understand why trousers worn by men which potentially allow women to see the shape of male legs and rears are permitted, whereas trousers worn by women, potentially exposing the shape of such parts to men, are not). To try to hide sexuality to me seems a bit like saying to fish, “We have to hide the water you are swimming in and use to breath.” It is trying to deny a powerful part of what it fundamentally means to be a human. It is also trying to curb self-expression. Rather than deny it or denigrate it as something dangerous and evil, it is far healthier to be able to accept any gender blurring and expression of sexuality, to be able to enjoy it, and to be able to learn to self-regulate response to it.
See also: Thoughts on Sex and Religion by the chaplain.
(Sources: Brian Whitaker’s Boys Will Be Boys or else and Human Rights Watch)
Just a few thoughts on this, in no particular order.
In Europe, we have, after a long political struggle, achieved a secular (or partially secular) society, one in which people can practise religious observance but government and law are (in theory) independent of religious influence. Because that is our history and the point at which we have arrived, we see it as “normal” and we tend to think of it as “right” and ourselves as “superior” to societies that have not made that split.
Other societies may not see it that way. They may have government and law and morality fully integrated with religion. Because that is their history and the point at which they have arrived, they see it as “normal” and tend to think of it as “right” and themselves as “superior” to societies that do not have an integrated system.
We may deplore their system but they also deplore ours. We can marshall cogent reasons for our point of view but, mutatis mutandis, so can they.
We should also remember that, not so long ago in historical terms, the Christian world also had an integrated system. You only have to look at accounts of Catholic kings burning Protestants and Protestant kings burning Catholics to see it in action. Traces of the Church-State integration still abound today.
I think it right to protest when human beings are oppressed and regimented by fools with guidebooks full of petty restrictions. But in view of our history (and the fact that there are organizations at work trying to carry us back in time), I think we should do so with a certain amount of humility. Outrage is too often the handmaiden of arrogance.
Would you want to insist that Scottish males wearing kilts should be forced to put on trousers, just so that gender distinction be enforced?
No, but there was a time when this was done. The kilt was outlawed and many, unable to afford trousers, put a line of stitches down the kilt between the legs.
Thirdly, the notion of enforcing gender differences through clothing ignores the science about sexuality.
True. It is stupid to legislate what clothes men and women can and must wear, respectively. Unfortunately, in some religions, there is a clear conflict between modern science and ancient religious precept. If independent peoples wish to ignore the former in deference to the latter, it is in practical terms difficult to do anything about it and of dubious morality to try to do so by coercion.
I think we have to realize, as I have said before, that what animates the religious mind is not reason and logic. We can reason until we are blue in the face but it will not influence the religious believers one iota. There is simply no point in trotting out 101 reasons why it is wrong to force women to wear a veil. We know the reasons. The question is what (if anything) we do about communities that enforce such restrictions. And that question takes us onto very difficult ground indeed.
SilverTiger
You write: We may deplore their system but they also deplore ours. We can marshall cogent reasons for our point of view but, mutatis mutandis, so can they. Agreed, but the fact that others may have cultural reasons for objecting to human rights doesn’t mean that we should not go on stating what we believe to be true, surely. Reasons may not be always be heard, but they may be sometimes, and the alternative is acceptance or coercion.
You write: I think it right to protest when human beings are oppressed and regimented by fools with guidebooks full of petty restrictions. But in view of our history (and the fact that there are organizations at work trying to carry us back in time), I think we should do so with a certain amount of humility. Outrage is too often the handmaiden of arrogance. Agreed. I deliberately quoted from the bible to show that I didn’t think it was a specifically Muslim issue. I didn’ t think that in writing “I have a problem with ….” I was being arrogant or outrageous, but stating a view in a considered way. Does our flawed history mean that we can never speak, regardless of the views we hold now?
You write: There is simply no point in trotting out 101 reasons … I disagree profoundly. I think there is a time to speak and a time to be silent. And I agree that what to do about communities that enforce such rules is a delicate political/moral issue. However articulating the debate is important for the speaker, for the wider community, and perhaps for part of the religious audience - unless you accept that such people are beyond the pale and not at all susceptible to reason to any degree. My humanism, and my exit from faith on partly rational grounds, won’t let me go there.
Athinkingman….kudos on a thought provoking post. There remains in America fundamentalist and evangelical colleges that define what is worn to class by the different genders. The college I attended in the late 70s dictated dress, including hair length for men, hem length for women. Skirts/dresses were to be worn during class time, to meals, to the library and to visiting faculty offices. Men could not wear T-shirts except for athletic purposes.
While many will point to culture for attire differences, for the most part dress for both genders has its roots in adapting to the given environment and functioning within it. For the Inuit women to wear dresses would have been suicidal. Farm women and men doing the same work dressed in similar manners. Native peoples who live deep in the Amazon dress in a manner in keeping with their environment. Traditional Arabian dress for men with long flowing robes to protect them from the desert heat does not appear to me to be that different the robes worn by their women. Yet Islamic apologists now go to great lengths to articulate and enforce legalistic differences, an effort that is more about keeping women repressed with the overly of religious language than it is about essential differences between male and females. It is past time for us all to embrace that females are not intellectually or biologically inferior to males, once beyond procreation issues most, if not nearly all, of the difference are more due to nurture than nature.
SilverTiger….You make an interesting observation regarding the evolution of government structures and government’s association with religion. Is it possible that religion and government relations go through a type evolutionary progression? In the West, particularly in Europe government and the accepted religion in the given area were closely linked from the Crusades to late 1700s to the degree that the government/royal ruler determined the religion for the area. Government was used to enforce religious regulations and teachings (a prime example is John Calvin and Geneva). When such close relationships were eventually found to be detrimental to both the relationships evolved into the current system.
Could it be that Islam is going through the same phase? The Jihadists in their teachings, language and desire to keep the holy sites pure sound strikingly similar to the Crusade teachings, language and desires to purify the holy sites. Using government to enforce religious teachings and force uniformity of belief has many similarities to the Europe of the above noted age. While I would defer to expert sociologists I cannot help wonder about the similarities. While the window dressing and cultures are different, underneath are not the driving ideas similar?
Transvestite Christians (I fall into the first category but not the second) often seem to find it necessary to defend themselves against Deut 22:5, rather than dismissing it as patently nonsense and irrelevant in a modern society. After all, does anyone feel unchristian for not observing Deut 22:11 “You shall not wear cloth of wool and linen mixed together”?
I’d write more but you might appreciate that within my circles this topic has been done to death… always really good to hear a fresh and interesting take on it such as this though.
Good to hear from you Becky, and thanks for reminding me of the mixed fabric verse.