Page 135 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

classes entering the public sphere often felt more comfortable doing so if wear-
ing a modern style of covered dress (MacLeod 1995). To complicate matters
further, for some groups notions of religious virtue such as female modesty and
piety were at stake as a motivating force. These women considered bodily acts,
such as wearing covered dress, not so much a critical marker of identity but also
a crucial means to train oneself to be pious. In this case, dressing styles are not
so much a re®ection of a particular state of inner being but rather help to pro-
17
duce particular dispositions, such as modesty (Mahmood 2001). Hence, next
to the “unveiled woman,” another actor appeared on the public stage, namely,
the woman involved in the “new veiling.” Just as in the case of her unveiled
counterpart, this new veiled woman was also often seen as a rupture with the
traditionally veiled woman. Wearing forms of modern covered dress, the lat-
ter became engaged in Islamizing the public sphere while at the same time dis-
tancing herself from premodern veiled women who lacked discipline and self-
consciousness. 18
This raises the questions of the extent to which the development of a new
Muslim public sphere has indeed drawn a greater variety of participants in pub-
lic debates, and, in particular, whether the Islamization of the public sphere has
also brought about certain forms of exclusion. One issue to be discussed would
be the space available for expressing different points of view about notions of
morality, people’s well-being, and the common good. The new Muslim pub-
lics, as they have been called, tend to base their claims to legitimacy and au-
thority on their direct engagements with the central texts. This emphasis on the
importance of unmediated access to the central Islamic texts rather than relying
on the accumulated knowledge of religious scholars may encourage interpreta-
tions that allow for openness, debate, and pluralism. However, it may also lead
to interpretations that are considered normative for all, linking one’s being a
pious Muslim to particular public lifestyles and forms of state authority. For it
is not only secularist state projects that have excluded “others” from the public
sphere. In Iran, for instance, after the Islamic Revolution, wearing Islamic dress
turned from an expression of opposition to the ruling Shah into a dress code
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imposed on all by the new Islamic Republic. In the case of Palestine, Hamas
waged a campaign in 1989—the second year of the ¤rst intifada—for women to
wear Islamic dress. Not only did Hamas sympathizers paint slogans on the
houses of those not adhering to the covered-dress code imploring them to “wear
Islamic dress” but some women were also physically attacked (Hammami 1990).
Moving from self-discipline to disciplining others, both ruling secularist re-
gimes and Islamic governments or strong local Islamic movements may limit or
condition women’s moving into the public sphere. Furthermore, the new em-
phasis on the importance of engaging with central texts may also effect publics
involved in more “practical” forms of Islam. In many settings new patterns of
authority among women have emerged. Often younger, well-educated women,
who have started to engage in reading and interpreting the central Islamic texts,
have become critical of the everyday, ritualistic forms of Islam that are practiced

124 Annelies Moors