The Daily Star – Arts & Culture – Muslim women combine tradition and trendy fashion
In the Daily Start in article on Muslim women who combine tradition and trendy fashion
Dr. Hassan Hammoud, associate professor of sociology at the Lebanese American University, explains that women in Lebanon are bombarded by messages and images of how fashionable a woman ought to be in terms of outfit and physical shape. “Young girls try to fit into this model,” he says. “They build an image of themselves made out of what they hear, see and expect themselves to be.”
And if veiled women come from an immediate environment that values fashion, then their clothes will be fashionable, too. “A veiled woman, like any other woman, holds an image of what is acceptable versus what is unacceptable, based on the values of her peer group, her family, her community,” Hammoud explains.
Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Shafii, assistant to the judge at the Sunni Sharia Court, gave the trendy veil phenomenon an even more significant denotation, affirming that it indicates a religious revival among liberal Muslim circles. “The veil is not limited to traditional communities anymore,” he explains. “It is now being embraced by liberal people who were originally trendy.”
Such religious revival among new social circles is all the more important because it isn’t only manifested in non-traditional veiling but also in more liberal viewpoints, politics and approach to religion among Muslim societies, Shafii adds.