Islam, Modesty and Sex in the West
“When a woman’s sex is in itself dynamic and alive, then it is a power in itself, beyond her reason. And of itself it emits a peculiar spell, drawing men in the first delight of desire. And the woman has to protect herself, hide herself as much as possible. She veils herself in timidity and modesty, because her sex is a power in itself, exposing her to the desire of men. If a woman in whom sex was alive and positive were to expose her naked flesh as women do today, then men would go mad for her. As David was mad for Bathesheba.
But when a woman’s sex has lost its dynamic call, and is in a sense dead or static, then the woman wants to attract men, for the simple reason that she finds she can no longer does attract them. So all the activity that used to be unconscious and delightful becomes conscious and repellent. The woman exposes her flesh more and more, and the more she exposes, the more men are sexually repelled by her. But let us not forget that the men are socially thrilled, while sexually repelled. The two things are opposites, today. Socially, men like the gesture of the half-naked woman, half-naked in the street. It is chic, it is a declaration of defiance and independence, it is modern, it is free, it is popular because it is strictly a-sexual, or anti-sexual. Neither men nor women want to feel real desire, today. They want the counterfeit, mental substitute.”
Shockingly, the word ‘modesty’ doesn’t have the greatest connotations these days. If it has any connotations at all, for that matter. I know, I know, I too am stumped at why visions of Amish women and ridiculously impractical bathing suits don’t immediately set hearts aflutter, but rather conjure up images of uncomfortable sand irritation and barn raisings. And that is not counting the huge part of the millennial generation that doesn’t even have the decency to feel so strongly as to hate modesty, but is instead almost obliviously flippant when confronted with the word: Modesty? That’s, like, so Little-House-On-the-Prairie chic!
I’m going to go out on a limb here, when I say that modesty is public enemy number one, precisely because it has the unfortunate reputation of being unsexy. Because, let’s face it: these days, nothing is anything unless it’s sexy. I can’t turn on the television without hearing screeching talk show hosts delivering one fashion fatwah after another: Will you take a look at the unsexiness of that too-long skirt! What’s the point of having legs if they don’t look sexy! We don’t care if you need them to walk, you have committed the utterly heinous crime of being unsexy! Don’t even think about calling yourself a woman, unless you plan on hiking that thing up a good sexy four inches or so!
You can see how, in this way, modesty got totally shafted. Never mind that these popular cultural antics have totally eliminated the ‘sex’ from sexy, and left us with only ‘y’. In its new neighbourhood, Modesty lives next door to Sexual Repression and Female Sexuality Control, and takes long moonlight walks with its buddies Oppression and Subjugation. In this cultural environment, then, it is completely unsurprising why the concept of hijab is widely construed as a quaint foreign oddity at its best, a coercive tool of oppression at its worst.
“Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that will make for greater purity for them; and Allah is well acquainted with all that they do. And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; and that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what must ordinarily appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands…. And turn to Allah altogether, O believers, in order that you might succeed.” (The Holy Quran 24: 30-31).
What really catches my eye about this verse is not the blatant instruction contained at a first glance cursory reading. That is obvious. It is not even, contrary to popular sentiment, the principle that women are not instructed to cover for men, but for God alone. It is not a woman’s responsibility to keep a man’s lusts in check: it is his own, which is clearly evident in the verse above.
What is especially relevant to me, in a time where binging and purging have become norms, where the methodical and bloody reconstruction of healthy faces and bodies is seen as a necessity, where shopping is used as a means to fill soul-sized voids, are the words: ‘display their beauty’. It is assumed, stated unequivocally twice in this verse that the believing women are beautiful, ALL of them. Alternative interpretations of the particular Arabic word use ‘ornaments’ instead of ‘beauty’, implying the inherent attractiveness and desirability that has been gifted to the female of the species. Notice how it doesn’t say that about men, although they too are told to guard their modesty.
Which brings me back to our popular ‘get sexy or die trying’ culture, a culture which is primarily operating on the idea that we aren’t sexy to begin with. A sort of lingering and rampant stupidity must be presupposed upon the people this idea is aimed towards, which are in this case, women. Cosmetic companies and the fashion Gestapo commit flagrant highway robbery when they attempt to steal away our self worth (not a stretch when you think of the billboards lining our roads these days), with enough bold-faced audacity to try to sell it back to us. This is mercantilism at its very worst. We are not just ugly when we don’t use cosmetic products or when we choose not to publicly prance around in varying states of undress. No, but we are apparently also stupid, otherwise why else would we be marketed contradictory advertising campaigns that seek to undermine our womanhood and our intelligence: Real women have cellulite, that’s why you need to get out and buy our anti-cellulite cream!
To Muslims, the idea that the human body can be hated is an anathema. Implicit in the above Quranic verse is the assumption that the body is beautiful; not to be hated, not to be scourged, not to be hidden away because of some inherent loathsomeness. And yet, the worship the body is again, an anathema, contained in the realm of the highest heresy. It seems to me, that the current social attitude fluctuates between these two extremes: we either must hate our bodies, or work with slavish desperation to earn an approximation of the worshipped ideal. Consequently, the only way to gain approval is via our interactions with the opposite sex, and our deficiencies in this arena must be compensated by equal helpings of self-hate and self-fixation. Self-worthiness is only established when we obtain male approval, as if being an innately desirable woman is something one must work towards, as if it were not already a God given right and a fact of our existence.
Having denied this, having ripped off every veil of self restraint, having thrown caution to the winds and indulged our desires to the extreme, we find that we missed the point entirely. Super-saturating public space with sex and fantastical nude human imagery has left most men and a lot of women, quite simply, bored. As feminist Naomi Wolf herself puts it, “the ubiquity of sexual images does not free Eros, but dilutes it.” And therein lies the rub: By using scantily clad women to advertise bland objects like washing machines, are we making a statement that the human body is not inherently sexual, but rather an asexual tool? By diluting Eros through the proliferation of these images are we somehow becoming more sexual? Are we paradoxically stripping the sexuality from the very bodies that we constantly try to make sexier?
In ‘A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue’, Wendy Shalit offers examples from Judaism and the return of many women to traditional Jewish laws of sexual modesty, or tzniut, a parallel to those found within Islam.. Her powerful argument for modesty illustrates how the lack thereof has afflicted women. She writes, “When modesty was given a sanction, woman not only had the right to say no to a man’s advances, but her good opinion of him was revered. Today, on the other hand, when our popular culture tells us that women should lust equally to men and feel comfortable about putting their bodies on display in coed bathrooms, on coed beaches - coed everything - women seem to be reporting that they feel only more at the mercy of male desire. The anorexic disfigures her body to become unwomanly because if she no longer has the right to say ‘no’, at least she has her body language at her disposal. So natural modesty has a way of reasserting itself, even in desperate and neurotic fashion. “
Thus, the anorexic today hates her ‘fat’ thighs, and strives with an almost monastic zeal to be rid of them. But thighs only become a fixation when they are seen in relation to other thighs. Cellulite becomes a disastrous concern when the public has a virtually unlimited supply of thighs to look at. This is merely a fact. Thighs that exist in a vacuum, wherein there are no other thighs to compare to, are not loathed blubber but examples of magnificent engineering. They are intrinsically wonderful as the conduits of blood vessels and nerves that innervate our legs, enabling us to walk and move around. They ought to be considered with high regard not only for form, but undoubtedly for function.
Before you think I am waxing poetic on thighs because of some obscene fascination, consider the Old Testament admonition: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath…Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” (Exodus 20:4-5; also Deuteronomy 5:8-9). Neil Postman actually wrote an entire book regarding the ill-effects of images projected through the television, and noted in ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness’, that “the God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking.” The Holy Quran is the Divine Word; the very act of reading it is proving an elevated degree of being. The Word is, then, necessary to counteract the pernicious imagery that permeates our cultural arena. It is the proliferation of the image, in magazines, on television and movies, that serves as a vehicle for the subordination and exploitation of women, and exceedingly of children and males as well, as corporations discover the vast markets of human insecurity that remain untapped.
And so, the truly empowering force of modesty can be seen in the woman who fully accepts her desirability, her femininity, her ability to attract a male, her feeling that her sex is too powerful to remain unguarded. This is an innate sense of the female’s power; it is a subconsciously realized truth, one that is so deeply connected with the female psyche that it cannot be labeled as conceit. Thus, the Islamic notion of hayat, or shyness, is like a veil placed upon women to protect them from the power that is their sex. Wendy Shalit writes that “it is usually a reflection of self-worth, of having such a high opinion of yourself that you don’t need to boast or put your body on display for all to see. A modestly dressed woman is one who is too important for ‘public use.’” If modesty is this self-confident, and self-confidence is so sexy, then isn’t modesty sexy?
Shalit elaborates upon this idea of modesty, opposing the popular misconception that it is anti-sex: “Conventional wisdom has it that the woman who returns to modesty is hiding, running away from sex. This is because today modesty is often confused with prudery. But it is not prudery. Indeed, promiscuity is really much closer to prudery…Promiscuity and prudery are both a kind of antagonistic indifference, a running away from the meaning of one place in the world, whereas modesty is fundamentally about knowing, protecting that knowledge, and directing it to something higher, beyond just two.”
Modesty protects the sacred element of human sex; ‘beyond just two’ is a union sanctioned by God, a marriage of souls to be protected by Divine laws and given status within society. And marriage is not, as many pop culturists love to trumpet, merely ‘a piece of paper’. Islam recognizes sex within marriage as an act of worship, and without modesty we cannot recognize just how holy the union between man and woman is.
We can therefore see how absurd it is to associate modesty with the repression of sexuality. If anything, modesty is the veritable bold, underline, and italics function that seeks to affirm and distinguish human sexuality, elevating it beyond animal procreation. We must understand all women were made beautiful and inherently attractive, and not just in the cliche way that cosmetic companies will have us believe. In order safeguard and protect what we have been given, we need to understand that we have indeed been given it in the first place.
Being beautiful and attractive, and yes, sexy is a Muslim woman’s birthright. And if the Holy Word of God says so, who are we to argue against it?
In Part Two of Islam, Modesty, and Sex in the West, the difference between Islam and the other two Abrahamic faiths with regards to feminism, gender constructs, and sex will be explored.
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Wow.. I’ve waited a long time to read this article, and it was well worth that wait! The exploration of modesty in todays relm of pop culture was long over due. I specifically enjoyed the part about thighs—Thighs that exist in a vacuum…
Vrrrrooooom vrroooom…
Salaam to everybody,
Well here it goes my opinion about the article:
I don’t know if it’s that since English is my second language but I wish I see articles with more simple language and direct to the point. Anyway, here we see the two classical opponents: The Veil vs. Western Nakedness and of course the discourse of western consumerism of beauty against the “pious” Muslim societies in which women “supposedly” don’t let themselves drive by the trends of fashion.
That’s what we Muslims try to “sell” in our discussions defending our modesty. The reality is far from that, one can only surf the net and enter to Muslim women groups to see how many Hijab fashion is out there. Every year a new Hijab fashion comes out and just one has to stand in a corner of a street in Amman, Jordan or in Cairo, Egypt and see all the hijab fashions one can ever imagine. There are thousands of Islamic stores that are making a loooot of money because of “Modesty”. The reality is my dear friends that ALL WOMEN are big consumers. What’s the difference between a Western woman who spend all her salary in a Guess Jeans and a Muslim one who spends the same in Hijabs and Jilbabs? Aren’t both looking for the same thing: to look nice to be accepted in society? The difference is that the later one will cover it with the term of “modesty” but at the end it’s the same thing. Go and make a survey in the Arab world and ask who wants to marry a woman Size 16 or 18. Nobody or very few at most. The reality is everybody like to look nice and have a nice body. Don’t tell me it’s okey to have thighs full of cellulites looking like a sponge cake! Please, let’s be honest with ourselves. In many occasions for clinical depressed sisters taken up the Hijab and loose clothes is driven by the desire to “let themselves go” because the reality is that they’re not happy with their lives. We have seen the picture: muslim women wearing big jilbabs, cooking whoooooole day, hair undone, dirty clothes and having more than 100 pounds. Then they say “we are modest to please Allah”. Not long ago I met a converted Muslim lady who took on Niqab and was very defendant about covering up but at the end that was a reflection of her traumatic experience: she was raped when was very young! In her subconscious a woman body can be an object of the “terrible men predators” who have no control over their desires even at a simple glance of an arm! That’s not modesty! That’s a clinical case.
On the other side, being obsessed with one’s body appearance is also a reflection of some psychological problems too.
The concept of Modesty in Islam is just not to go to extremes and one who wears hijab the same as one who don’t wear it can both break that beautiful concept. I don’t know why but we Muslims believe that Modesty is related to Veil and unveiling means nakedness. Well things are not like that. There are people out there who don’t wear the veil, they are not naked, and it doesn’t mean either that they are obsessed consumerists. There are veiled women also who create more sexual tension more than a woman who wears just long sleeve shirts and long skirts without wearing the veil.
The concept of Modesty in Islam has nothing to do with veiling or unveiling. Most Ulemas agree that Veiling is an interpretation of an Ayat besides some reported Hadiths. At the end all women psychologically healthy want to look nice and there’s nothing wrong about it. There’s a Hadith in which a man who was with the Prophet and kept staring at an extraordinary beautiful woman and what the Prophet did? He didn’t tell the woman go and hide yourself, he just turned the man’s head to the other side. The Qu’ran says wear your beautiful garments but at the end the best garment is the garment of righteousness and my dear Muslim brothers and sisters, that has to do with one character and integrity.
My last question to Muslim men: who wants to have “sponge-cake -thighs wife? Don’t answer to me, answer to yourselves. To me, there’s nothing wrong in a healthy striving to look nice without going to either extremes.
Maryam
(Was I too aggressive? Sorry)
Wasalam dear Maryam,
Thank you so much for reading the article and taking the time to comment on it.
There are lot of interesting points you bring up that I feel compelled to answer, because it is such a complex and fascinating issue.
My article was not written as an anti-Western rant purporting that everything in the Eastern world is fine and dandy at the present moment. On the contrary, I agree with you that the spirit of unbridled consumerism, vanity, and slavery to images is unfortunately spread throughout the world, Muslim or not Muslim. This article simply meant to illustrate how the Muslim requirement of hijab for both men and women, and especially women seeing how negatively it can be construed, is not anti-sex, but rather affirms sexuality.
The problems you mentioned in the Arab world magnificently prove the point of my article, and I must thank you for bringing up such valid cross-cultural examples. If there was indeed a survey conducted in the Arab world asking people what size of woman they would prefer, the very idea of such an exercise would cement what I am saying regardless of the results. The point of the matter is, with the proliferation of television, movies, advertisements, with the proliferation of the image in general, as my article says, there is now an unlimited pool of comparison. Meaning that now enough men have seen enough women to understand the differences, and what they are supposed to desire. Worse, enough men and enough women have seen photo-shopped human forms to prefer a fictionalized ideal instead of real people. These days everyone knows what cellulite is and that we are supposed to hate it, never mind that it is a natural occurrence on most female bodies. If we weren’t exposed to such a wide variety of photoshopped thighs, maybe we would just learn to expect it, much like our earlobes or noses. The last time I checked television has been around in the Arab world for a long time, showing how any society which allows the super-spread of images can succumb to such a phenomenon. For an even longer time before it found television, Arab culture dictated that heavier women were a beauty ideal, seen as healthier and more desirable. With the transfer of images from other cultures and countries, one can see the shift to the coveted Western ideal of thin female beauty.
There is also nothing wrong with wanting to look beautiful and pursuing beauty, as long as we do within the guidelines presented to us by our religion. There is nothing wrong with Muslimahs taking pride in their appearance and wearing beautiful clothing, as long as it stays true to Islam. In a hadith reported by Muslim, the Prophet (peace be on him) said, ‘Anyone who has an atom of pride in his heart will not enter the Garden’. A man then asked, ‘What about the one who likes to wear a handsome robe and good shoes?’ The Prophet (peace be on him) replied, ‘Surely Allah is beautiful and loves beauty.’
My article does not mean to address individuals who may or may not wear hiab. It is a personal matter, and it would be loathsome to make petty judgments. My article only meant to address, in part, assumptions that women who wear hijab do so in order to “let themselves go”, or because it is some austere plot by men to make them subservient, or because Islam sees sexuality as evil. The picture you painted above, of the “Muslim women wearing big jilbabs, cooking whoooooole day, hair undone, dirty clothes and having more than 100 pounds”, disturbs and puzzles me. Besides the fact that being a hundred pounds is no reasonable expectation of beauty let alone health for most women, it strikes me as rather odd as to how a woman could cook the whole day wearing a big jilbab.
An interesting statement you made was: “there are veiled women also who create more sexual tension more than a woman who wears just long sleeve shirts and long skirts without wearing the veil.” I am stupendously grateful to you for having brought this up, because it further illustrates points I made in this article. Veiled women might just be the source of increased sexual tension, precisely because people are just sick and tired of seeing semi-clothed female bodies everywhere. It is like a reverse reaction. If we, as a society, have gone as far as we can possibly go in terms of public decency and exposure, we have nowhere to go but into the past to look for something new to get excited about. If we have bored ourselves as a society, then veiled women might just be perceived as a new source of sexual excitement. Maybe exhibition just go so boring that people are finding inhibition exciting.
To conclude this, I would just like to say that modesty is a very important characteristic of Islam that encompasses many things, as well as the physical aspect. I am in no way saying that women who do not wear the veil are not modest, not at all. Long sleeves and long pants, baggy clothes, limited interactions with the opposite sex, all these things are a few of the many ways women personally choose to preserve and guard their natural modesty. However, as a Muslim, I believe that Allah (SWT) has mandated the wearing of the veil, the khimar or headscarf, in particular. This is not only because of the obvious idea that hair is a huge part of a woman’s sexuality, but also because it enables the Muslim woman to be distinct in her identity, her devotion to her Lord, and one of the ways in which she expresses her obedience to His Will.
Thank you again for taking the time to comment. And you most certainly did not come off as aggressive. A robust style of argument is necessary when one discusses important matters such as this.
Salaam-alaykum,
Thanks for your response. Now I can understand more clearly what you meant in your article.
However when I mentioned the woman in big jilbabs cooking whole day, that character does exist and I bear witness of that. I’ve been Muslim for almost 11 years now and visited some Arab countries and even here in America it does happen. Some women spend more than 80% of the time with hijab even while at home and I have seen with my own eyes when even their husbands come they forget to take it off. Is that modesty? Is that healthy? I’m sure not and I’m sure you don’t agree with it. What I meant was that “in the name of Modesty” some women let themselves go or become prisoners of Islamic fashion consumerism which is wrong too.
I myself, for instance, opted to have a modest look easy acceptable by the West (I mean not head-scarf) because at the end I’m a Muslim who should dress modestly as it’s commanded in the Qu’ran and at the same time I’m a Hispanic Western woman who have a completely different cultural-historical reality from a Middle-Eastern, Asiatic, or North-African Muslim woman (I believe the beauty of Islam and of any religion is to have a rainbow of cultures and not everybody looking the same and acting the same). Perhaps in me there’s some of the women from Al-Andalus of the Muslim Spain who participated in debates with men and without veiling, who knows?
My point was to express my disagreement to see one more time the usual two opponents: Muslim women vs Western women. I guess both have a lot to reflect on and amend.
Sis. Maryam.
Great article. Some interesting points that merit further discussion. In part II or III perhaps?
The article seems to suggest that it’s the proliferation of idealized images of women that cause women to feel “unsexy”. But does that mean that everyone has to wear hijab (muslim and non) for women to feel sexy again? Women could still compare with each other, but presumably that’s not so bad…
So the problem is male attitudes. Take away the unrealistic expectations and women may feel better about themselves or they might not. A hijab may be liberating or confining - some may appreciate their inherent sexiness in annoyminty, others might lose confidence because they are never noticed.
If a woman in a burqa sits down in a forest, how do we know she’s sexy? I’ve seen enough “what not to wear” to know that wearing too little is just as bad as wearing too much. There has got to be something more to this…seeing as a woman’s beauty is one of the Islamically permitted reasons for marrying a women, there must be some basis of comparison…
I think what your suggesting about the power of modesty and confidence is interesting…but since it takes confidence to wear hijab in north america, I don’t know if it would resonate the same way with someone wants to fit in (and hates herself for not fitting in). Would they very people who need hijab the most be the least likely to wear it?
I agree with the discussion of hijab not preventing consumerism. Saudi Arabia is a very high per capita consumer of cosmetics.
Thank you for your comments! I wanted to address this one in particular, because it was the reason I wrote the article:
“A hijab may be liberating or confining - some may appreciate their inherent sexiness in annoyminty, others might lose confidence because they are never notcied. ”
Hijab is not meant to be anonymous, and it is never, ever confining if it is a) worn for the reasons I mentioned in the article (either consciously or subconsciously realized) and b) it is not coerced upon any person. Hijab is the whole modest attitude, while the khimar or headscarf is merely one part of it, and I assume that is where coercion plays the primary part.
I wrote my article to say that women do not want to cover up to hide their sexuality, but to protect it. If a woman realizes that she is inherently sex and sexual as God made her to be, she won’t really feel like she needs attention from random, strange people, the way women in modern societies have been trained to use that to assess their self worth. Of course most all women want to feel pretty and sexy, and there is where the personal relationship with the spouse factors in. But in terms of random attention from men on the street, that is precisely what a woman who knows she’s sexy anyway, does not need.
I do not mean to imply that everyone should wear hijab to feel sexy again, because societies are comprised of many people from different faiths. The example of the traditional Jewish laws of modesty for example, may not mandate a specific headscarf, but they too have their own requirements for preserving the concept, the general idea of modesty. And secular women, simply by being human females, also have innate sexuality that they must feel is worthy of protecting. If we have lost that feeling, as a global society, then we have to reassess our culture and figure out why.
A woman in a burqua is not sexy because she is wearing a burqa. The burqua does not make her sexy, neither does hijab. The burqua, an interpretation of hijab in some cultures, is the acknowledgement that she IS sexy just for being a woman. It is parallel to the Jewish woman wearing her long skirt or the agnostic woman not wanting to wear short skirts because she feels like she doesn’t need the requisite male attention that accompanies it. The skirt doesn’t make her sexy, it just exposes her sexiness, while the long skirt again, doesn’t make her sexy, it just protects her sexiness. A woman getting attention for her looks isn’t getting attention because she is smart, funny, or has a degree in biotechnology, she is getting noticed for her physical attributes: at her legs, her arms, her animal composition. That kind of attention gives no one any real confidence, and I think, women subconsciously or consciously, are well aware of that.
Women, before they wear hijab or feel the need to dress modestly, first of all need to realize that they are sexual and sexy to begin with, at the very core and essence of themselves. To be quite honest, you don’t need hijab if you don’t think you are sexy or if you don’t feel sexy, that is what D.H. Lawrence was attempting to say all those years ago. A woman who wants men to desire her because she feels like she can’t attract them just as she is, will resort to exposing flesh, as he puts it, or if you look the hyper consumerism present in the global communities: attempt plastic surgery, crash diets, spend money on useless creams. It is not a Western problem, not at all, it’s a global female problem. As a Muslim, I speak to Muslim women by using the Quran to illustrate that God acknowledges the desirability of all females, and that is why it is mandated in the Quran.
Of course in Arab countries it is a cultural thing, and of course it is easier to wear it. What I mean in my article is really knowing, knowing why a person decides to cover themselves up. There might be a lot of women walking around in the Arab world wearing a hijab the same way a lot of people wear pants: unthinking and as a habit. In Saudi Arabia the burqua is forced on women, so I don’t think the real realization of the inherent sexuality business that I am talking about is getting acknowledged there: and with the advent of television, movies, so much global intermixing, of course women will feel that they aren’t sexy without cosmetics. I mean to get to the root of why women in all cultures and from all walks of life, from all religions and societies, inherently feel the need to be modest: if they are women they are in the possession of a fantastic sexuality that does not need to be recognized by a construction worker named Tony for affirmation.
Also, I liked this comment and thank you for including it, because it is so true: “There has got to be something more to this…seeing as a woman’s beauty is one of the Islamically permitted reasons for marrying a women, there must be some basis of comparison. ”
Firstly, to me, beauty is beauty. You don’t need to hordes of women or men to look at one and like her or him for the way they look. And, precisely because we ARE permitted to choose on the basis of beauty, you can see how damaging it would be to have so much choice: one would never be satiated with one person for their beauty, because there is so much more beauty out there for him or her to look at it.
Secondly beauty is not sexuality, a concept which is being sold to women all over the world. Not all women are beautiful in the same way; some adhere better to the reigning societal preference. But all women are indeed sexual, or sexy, and they all possess that inherent desirability, no question about it.
Whoops, look at me writing an essay in my comments!
“Whoops, look at me writing an essay in my comments!”
I was assuming that “vrrooommm vroommm” was referring to yourself getting revved up to write up more on this topic… 
I agree with the thesis presented (despite me being an outsider, a male), though I do think (as you mentioned in the last post) that in some cases that the wearing of hijab is not necessarily done for modesty but due to habit or it being the societal norm.
Modesty is a frame of mind; I know sisters who don’t regularly wear hijab who are more modest than some who do. I do think this frame of mind spawns from the very line of thinking you’ve presented, that women realize that have something that needs to be protected and that the temporary attention received when exposing their beauty can lead to harm.
When I say harm I am not solely referring to physical harm, but in terms of how others judge and view women. Male attitudes towards women are growing more and more extreme, with today’s men respecting women less for their character, behaviors, education and achievements, and judging women solely based on physical looks. Well, that could be a blanket statement, heavily affected by my experience working in blue collar towns.
I’ll end the comment right there before I start my own essay.
I keep getting stuck on the fact is the idea of this being a Western ill or at least one of modern times. Haven’t women been doing all sorts of werid things to look sexy or beautiful for a long time?
Corsets is one off the top of my head, but I’m sure there are thousands of others. If you want a non-West example, Ayesha Patel wrote a very good article on skin bleaching. Spending hours in the gym trying to get thinner thighs isn’t any different that bathing in fair n’ lovely. You’re still trying to conform to someone elses conception of what’s sexy or beautiful - Western or Eastern.
It seems to me, especially considering the quotations, that modesty requires confidence more than it begets it. How do we get girls to be more confident? (particularly Muslim girls in the West facing multiple societal pressures). That seems to be the central problem…
Well, the *Vrroom Vrooom* was more of a juvenile attempt to simulate the sound a vacuum makes. However, no more essays, I still need to save some for Part II.
I dont think this is a solely Western problem. You can see it everywhere. I do think, however, that exactly because Muslim societies might have become immune, if you will, to the concept of hijab, we can see its benefits more positively and clearly in the West. Its almost like Muslim countries have taken this for granted. I believe that the idea of modesty, which had its time in the West not too long ago, could reassert itself most wonderfully in this day and age, especially in Western societies where it hasnt been taken for granted.
*...must….stop….impending…essay…*
With regards to self confidence, well, as a Muslim woman, I can only postulate that it is directly related to faith in Allah (SWT) and ones conviction in ones religion. For Muslim women, if we believe in Allah (SWT) and that the Quran is His Word, true and unchangeable, then there is no way we can possibly deny Him when He says:
”...And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; and that they should not DISPLAY THEIR BEAUTY AND ORNAMENTS except what must ordinarily appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display THEIR BEAUTY except to their husbands…. And turn to Allah altogether, O believers, in order that you might succeed.” (The Holy Quran 24: 30-31).
At the risk of being glib, a risk I love taking, the basic message is - you shouldn’t care what people think, because God thinks your beautiful: which is a really positive message. Sadly, I think most people care what others think…
Secondary message being the commodification of body parts or the projection of a feminine ideal is harmful to women: I think technology had a role in proliferating and excerbating this problem - but the problem itself isn’t new (i.e. Greek art).
Tertiary message being that the cosmetic/fashion industries make women feel insecure to sell them products: there probably hasn’t been an industry that’s been more harmful to women than these industries.
I think it’s interesting that the confidence to be modest can be similar to the confidence to be immodest - that is you don’t care what other people think…
“How do we get girls to be more confident? (particularly Muslim girls in the West facing multiple societal pressures). That seems to be the central problem…”
Better parenting.
WHEN IS PART TWO COMING
btw, re: the ‘sponge cake thighs’ comment… beauty based on being healthy and beauty based on the Western standard propagated in the culture should be distinguished.
there’s no such thing as “too” healthy (although exercising yourself to underweight status is of course, no longer healthy). and being healthy is naturally attractive. muslims should concentrate on that more as it’s completely compatible with islamic teachings.
being overweight by ‘letting yourself go’ due to laziness or worse, gluttony, is by anyone’s standards, unislamic. it’s something to watch out for because of the new sedentary lives people have in this day and age.
YOU’RE MY HERO ANAM!
I personally think this website answers all of our questions and more:
http://www.theproblemismen.com/
On the subject of the OTHER kind of modesty:
A group of men once visited Rabi’ah Basriyah to test her to see if she would make an unguarded comment. “All the virtues have been scattered upon the heads of men,” they said. “The crown of prophethood has been placed on the heads of men. The belt of nobility has been fastened around the waists of men. No women has ever been a prophet.”
“All that is true,” she replied. “But egotism, worshipping one’s self, and “I am your Lord, the Most High” have never sprung from a woman’s breast. All these things have been the specialty of men.”
(Tazkirah Al-Awliyaa’)
i absolutely loved this article, i agree when you say that it seems like now a days it a crime to be unsexy, modest. To be attractive, you must look like the “ideal” lustful person and if you are not then you are basically a nobody. The way you related modesty back to being sexy was nice. Modesty is beautiful and it’s a beauty that must be understood.
so…when is PART II COMING? can’t wait!.....
-momitul