MARKHA G. VALENTAIslamic worlds. In this sense, much of the contemporary discourse concerning the veil is
a matter of patriarchy’s encounter with itself.
Moreover, arguments about the veil have by and large been discussionsaboutwomen
rather thanwithwomen. This is a point that, for all its obviousness—to the point of
cliche ́, to the point of tears—has yet to be actively addressed. At the most general level, it
is of course an outgrowth of the tradition within patriarchal cultures, both in the West
and in the Middle East, of mediating relations between men through exchanges of and
contestations over women. Thus there exists a long heritage within the West, going back
to medieval times, of articulating Islamic inferiority in terms of Islam’s purported degra-
dation of women. At the same time, the fervent foregrounding of gender relations as a
primary, explicit site of political, social, and judicial conflict is itself relatively new. This,
again, has everything to do with the elaboration in the nineteenth century of the territorial
distinction between private and public spheres, leading, on the one hand, to the convic-
tion that women’s proper location was in the private sphere and, on the other hand, some
decades later, to the feminist repudiation of the doctrine of separate spheres. Crucially,
this repudiation was achievedthroughrather than in opposition to extant territorial di-
vides between men and women. As Linda Kerber and Jane DeHart-Mathews argue, it was
through their increasing participation in social, religious, and reform organizations that
women were:
transforming women’s sphere from the private, family-oriented world of domesticity
into the formerly male world of politics and public policy.... The ‘‘womanhood’’
identified with ‘‘mothering’’ was becoming less a biological fact—giving birth to chil-
dren—and more a political role with new ideological dimensions. The traditional
wordmotherhoodwas being reshaped so as to justify women’s assuming new, ever-
more-public responsibilities. Women now clearly meant to transform the domestic
housekeeping responsibilities of their grandmothers into an attack on the worst
abuses of an urban, industrial society. The household now included the marketplace
and city hall.^19It is within this context—of Western women’s energetic extension, remapping, and trans-
formation of their territory within the local nation, even as Western nations attempted
the same at the global level through colonialism—that Muslim women’s veil first became
a visceral political and cultural issue.^20 Precisely the parallels in these processes, their
shared foundation in a logic of territorialism, enabled Western colonial administrators
and residents in the Middle East to shamelessly blend feminist discourse into colonial
apologetics. The veil, they said (back then, as today), held women back, under men’s
thumb. The veil, they said (back then, as today), was proof of Islamic backwardness and
inferiority. Oppression of women and backwardness are intrinsic to Islam, they said (back
then, as today). So, they said, only by casting off such ‘‘practices ‘intrinsic’ to Islam (and
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