burial See cemetery; funerary rituals.
burqa (also burka)
From the Arabic term burqu, a burqa is a type of
partial or complete face covering worn by some
Women in various Muslim cultures, at least since
the Abbasid period (c. ninth to 10th century) and
varying by locale and time period. It is most often
a “cloth covering the entire face below the eyes”
(Stillman, 147), but because the term burqu is
often used interchangeably with niqab and other
local terms for face coverings, it may also involve
different regional variations, such as a mesh cloth
over the whole face or an opaque cloth with holes
for the eyes.
No explicit religious injunction for the burqa
is found in the qUran or hadith, and the Ulama
generally agree that it is not required dress
for women. In contemporary contexts, Muslim
women wearing modest dress most often choose
to cover the entire body except the face and
hands. Therefore, it may be said that forms of face
covering such as the burqa are less commonly
worn by Muslim women than other types of mod-
est garments.
Reasons for wearing the burqa must be under-
stood within social contexts. Contrary to ste-
reotypical depictions, there exists no singular
meaning to explain why women may wear the
burqa. Rather, the burqa in its many forms may
be worn for a multitude of reasons, varying from
one context to another. Among countless other
meanings, it might make specific statements
about a woman’s piety, her values regarding sexual
modesty, her resistance to Western notions of sex-
uality, her desire for privacy or mobility in male-
dominated environments, or her membership in a
political or national movement.
Conservative and radical Islamist movements
such as the taliban in aFghanistan have recently
contributed to an increase in the numbers of
women donning the burqa. In this regard, the
Western mass media have helped make the term
familiar throughout the world, and for many, it
has come to symbolize the controversial Taliban
regime’s abuse of Afghan women.
See also hijab; veil.
Aysha A. HidayatullahFurther reading: Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in
Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992); Dawn Chatty, “The
Burqa Face Cover: An Aspect of Dress in Southeast-
ern Arabia.” In Languages of Dress in the Middle East,
edited by Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper and Bruce Ingham,
127–148 (London: Curzon and the Centre of Near and
Middle Eastern Studies, School of Oriental and African
Studies, 1997); Fadwa El Guindi, Veil: Modesty, Privacy
and Resistance (Oxford: Berg, 1999); Yedida K. Stillman,
Arab Dress: From the Dawn of Islam to Modern Times, ed.
Norman A. Stillman (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000).burqa 119 J