page_title: Women in Islam
section_title: Dress code
hierarchical_section_title: Women in Islam / Dress code
caption_attribution_description: Costumes of Arab women, fourth to sixth century.
context_page_description: The experiences of Muslim women vary widely between and within different societies. At the same time, their adherence to Islam is a shared factor that affects their lives to a varying degree and gives them a common identity that may serve to bridge the wide cultural, social, and economic differences between them.
  Among the influences which have played an important role in defining the social, spiritual, and cosmological status of women in the course of Islamic history are Islam's sacred text, the Quran; the Ḥadīths, which are traditions relating to the deeds and aphorisms of Islam's Prophet Muḥammad; ijmā', which is a consensus, expressed or tacit, on a question of law; qiyās, the principle by which the laws of the Quran and the Sunnah or Prophetic custom are applied to situations not explicitly covered by these two sources of legislation; and fatwas, non-binding published opinions or decisions regarding religious doctrine or points of law.
context_section_description: Modesty (Haya) is a religious prescription in Islam: the Quran commands both men and women to dress modestly and not display their bodies, and Muḥammad asserted that modesty is a central character trait in Islam.
  In the specific context of women, the Quran at 24:31 speaks of covering women's "ornaments" from strangers outside the family. This latter verse of the Quran represents the institution of a new public modesty: when the pre-Islamic Arabs went to battle, Arab women seeing the men off to war would bare their breasts to encourage them to fight; or they would do so at the battle itself, as in the case of the Meccan women led by Hind at the Battle of Uḥud. This type of behaviour is commonly seen by Islamic scholars and the broader Muslim public alike as emblematic of a state of spiritual ignorance (al-Jāhiliyyah).
  All the orthodox schools of sharī'ah law prescribe covering the body in public: specifically, to the neck, the ankles, and below the elbow. However, none of the traditional legal systems actually stipulate that women must wear a veil: it is only the wives of Muḥammad who are instructed to wear this article of clothing (33:59).
  On the basis of the injunction to be modest, various forms of dress were developed in different parts of the Islamic world, but some forms of dress were carryovers from earlier, pre-Islamic Near Eastern societies: the practice of women covering their hair was the norm in the earlier communities of Jews and Christians. The iconography of the Virgin Mary in Christian art always shows her with her hair covered, and this convention was followed into the modern era by both Georgian and Armenian Christians, in addition to Oriental Jewish women; Catholic women would not go to church without covering their heads until well into the twentieth century. The covering of the hair was taken by women to be a natural part of life as a sign of modesty and especially as a sign of respect before God.
  In the twenty-first century, there continues to be tremendous variance in how Muslim women dress, not least because the Islamic world is so geographically and culturally diverse. Laws passed in states (such as laïcist Turkey and Tunisia) with twentieth century Westernisation campaigns – which mandated that women wear "modern", western-style clothing – have been relaxed in recent years; similarly, the end of communism in Albania and the Yugoslav republics also meant an end to highly restrictive secular apparel legislation. As a result, it is now legal for women in these countries to wear clothes suggesting a (post-)modern Islamic identity – such as the headscarf colloquially known as the ḥijāb – in public, though not necessarily in all public institutions or offices of state.
  Conversely, in a handful of states – notably Iran and Saudi Arabia – with modernist fundamentalist regimes, dress codes stipulating that women wear exclusively "religious" garments (as opposed to "secular" ones) in public which became mandatory in the latter part of the twentieth century are still in force. However, these countries are both theologically and culturally atypical within the Islamic world: Iran is the world's only shī'a revolutionary state, while Saudi Arabia is one of only a handful of Wahhabi countries; in none of the others do the same restrictions on women's clothing in public apply. The overwhelming majority of Muslim-majority countries do not have laws mandating the public wearing of either secular or religious apparel, and the full spectrum of female clothing – from bikinis to face veils – can be seen in countries such as Albania, Lebanon and Morocco.
  In a 2018 study done by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, Muslim American women were, "the most likely" when compared to other domestic religious communities to, "wear "a visible symbol that makes their faith identity known to others."" Of the Muslim women surveyed by ISPU, 46% say they wear a visible symbol to mark their faith in public all the time" (this includes the hijab), 19% some of the time, and 35% none of the time. The study did not find there
caption: Early costumes of Arab women.
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