I recently attended a family funeral in central
I was reminded of how we can identify ourselves today – Orthodox Jewish men with their black suits, hats, beards; and Muslim women with their hijab or head scarves. Dressing as a kind of identity is old as in this example from
When I was growing up, Roman Catholic Nuns who taught at nearby Catholic schools, or nursed at the city’s Catholic hospital, wore “modest clothing.” Their habits were long and black; their hair was covered. We could see only their hands and their faces – the rest of them was clothing. What was “religious uniform” to me back then was really Christian women dressing modestly, according to their beliefs.[3]
Like the Nuns, the Amish women and men I met or saw in
“The Amish are a Christian religious group who originated in
Although Christian, the Amish look, live, and dress very differently from most of the rest of us Christians. They appear more different from us than do some our Muslim and Jewish sisters and brothers.
Dressing modestly has changed over time, not for the Amish, but certainly for most of the rest of us. Cole Porter[5] wrote, “In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking but now, God knows, anything goes.” Nuns seen now in the
Similarly, Muslim women dress according to local norms as they try to meet the Qur’an’s requirements for modest dress. “It goes by many names -- hijab, niqab, abaaya, burqa, chador. It can be anything from a simple scarf draped around the face and neck to a shawl...”[6] For example, for Persians, hijab becomes chador, a full-length semi-circle of fabric open down the front, which is thrown over the head and held closed in front. Traditionally, light colors and prints have been used, but now in
It’s not just culture or religious authority either. Some women are just choosing to dress more conservatively.
"It's not only Muslim women who are making attempts to be modest when they go out . . . There's also a contingency of Christian women and Jewish women and others who just don't feel that they need to show their bodies. Other women are striving to be modest as well." [7]
[1] This is one of a series of occasional columns in which the author, raised in the Christian tradition, searches for common ground and common history among the teachings, beliefs and practices of adherents of the Abrahamic faiths -- Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
[2] El-Guindi, Fadwa, Veil: Modesty, Privacy, and Resistance, Berg, 1999. Cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chador
[3] For example, see 1 Corinthians 11:5
[4] http://ezinearticles.com/index.php?The-Amish---A-Step-Back-in-Time&id=1127006
[5] from his song, “Anything Goes” for the show of the same name, first produced on Broadway in 1934
[6] http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028muslimwomennat3p3.asp
[7] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0427_060424_muslim_sports_2.html
2 comments:
For some reason, the concept of modest dress carries with it a sort of negative connotation with me lately. I absolutely have no problem with the idea of modesty; I have two daughters, and as a school teacher I am constantly in the presence of young girls who I feel are trying way too hard to dress provocatively. But the image of a burqa to me carries with it a message of subjugation of women. Recent news images have shown women and girls from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wearing 19th century dresses. These women also seem exploited to me.
Modest dress has at least 2 meanings both of which apply to the Amish.
Modest dress is dress that is not elaborate or expensive.
Modest dress is also dress that is not sexually provacative.
The reference to modest dress in the Christian Scriptures in 1 Timothy 2:9 & 10 seems to refer to modest in the first sense: "9I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, 10but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God."
The reference in 1 Coriinthins 11:5 while much more difficult to interpert seems to refer to propriety in worship which may have elements of modesty in both of the above senses and may also have a 3rd sense of modesty relative to God and/or the angels.
It is an interesting question if modest dress involves subjugation. One way to look at that would be to know how the individual woman views it--what are her motives: fiting in, sexual modesty, financial conservation, a redirect to focus on character or grudging obediance. Certainly in the last case there would be subjugation. In the others there might be wisdom that unconciously avoids anorexia and bulmia as well as other forms of attractiveness based competativeness. It encourages viewing women in ways other than as objects--or at least that is the stated intent.
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