Wearing the Niqab - (Dress Cultures) by Anna Piela (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Bringing niqab wearers' voices to the fore, discussing their narratives on religious agency, identity, social interaction, community, and urban spaces, Anna Piela situates women's accounts firmly within UK and US socio-political contexts as well as within media discourses on Islam.

The niqab has recently emerged as one of the most ubiquitous symbols of everything that is perceived to be wrong with Islam: barbarity, backwardness, exploitation of women, and political radicalization. Yet all these notions are assigned to women who wear the niqab without their consultation; "niqab debates" are held without their voices being heard, and, when they do speak, their views are dismissed.

However, the picture painted by the stories told here demonstrates that, for these women, religious symbols such as the niqab are deeply personal, freely chosen, multilayered, and socially situated. Wearing the Niqab gives voice to these women and their stories, and sets the record straight, enhancing understanding of the complex picture around niqab and religious identity and agency.

Review Quotes

Wearing the Niqab is marketed as the first in-depth examination of niqabi women in the USA, and to my knowledge this is true. It would work well in undergraduate courses on religion and media, showing students how to critically analyze media images and content. It also offers a good addition to the abundant scholarship on Islam and gender, making it well suited for a variety of religion courses.
Sociology of Religion

Anna Piela does what almost no one else has: she listens to the women who actually wear face veils (niqabis) in the West and takes what they tell her seriously. ... Scholars and students of Islamic studies, religion and secularism, and gender studies could all benefit from this text.
Journal of Contemporary Religion

In Islamophobic cultural settings, women who wear niqab are often construed as threats to be neutralized or problems to be solved. An act of religious or spiritual significance is overly politicized. Hostile observers erase entirely the spiritual and social experience of the niqab-wearer. With her excellent ethnographic research and her sympathetic analysis, Anna Piela has shed much-needed light on Muslim niqab-wearing women. Her book is of great value to a wide variety of scholarly and lay readers, and I strongly recommend it.
Shabana Mir, American Islamic College, USA

About the Author

Anna Piela is Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University, USA. Her first monograph, titled Muslim Women Online: Faith and Identity in Virtual Age, explored debates held by Muslim women who interpreted Islamic texts and discussed them on e-forums. Piela is interested in the notion of agentic textual and visual self-representations of Muslim women. She has worked as a research consultant for the Muslim Women's Council in Bradford. Her articles have appeared in New Media & Society, Hawwa, The Muslim World and Contemporary Islam. She has written about Islam-related issues for Times Higher Education.