278 Islam and Modernity
Lower-middle-class Muslim women in Egypt put on the headscarves precisely
to participate in public life. Others have confi rmed this trend of women wearing
the headscarf on entering politics or the job market, and/or on pursuing univer-
sity education (El Guindi 1981; Macleod 1991,1993; Göle 1996). The headscarf
symbolises neither the expected modesty nor the suppression of women. It is a
bold Islamic reformist commitment to return to the pure teachings of Islam in
order to make a difference in public life. And yet, wearing the headscarf is also
a clear rejection of the modernist position that assumes an emphasis on Islamic
values rather than forms, allowing the latter to change. In this new contexts, the
headscarf still negotiates its many different forms around the requirements of
classical understandings of the sharia, preserved and advocated by the ulama.
The headscarf symbolises the construction of a religious identity out of the
earlier styles of action.
Donning a headscarf symbolises more broadly the demands made by modern
political societies on religions and cultures. If we turn again to the challenge of
an egalitarian and free society, we recall the tension between sameness and dif-
ference, universality and particularity. Recalling Taylor, the ideal of an egali-
tarian society demanded that citizens conceal their differences to some extent.
Freedom in such a society, however, conceded and celebrated differences. The
Muslim discourse of authenticity between reformist and Islamist options gave
contradictory opinions about the scarf. For the modernist, the idea of holding on
to a particular symbol potentially undermined the general principles of Islam. If
the headscarf meant something different from what the Quran and the Prophet
had intended, then its true purpose was not being fulfi lled. If the headscarf was
merely used to go out in the public world, and not necessarily to preserve a
sense of modesty, then its form has defeated its end. For the Islamist, the idea
of holding on to a symbol in order to emphasise one’s unique subjectivity was
equally problematic. The Islamist vision of identity was intended to obliterate
the self in a total vision of nature and order. Now, the donning of a headscarf
threatened to make a very bold statement of subjectivity. Pluralistic societies
demanded complete dissimulation as far as this particular Islamic practice is
concerned. Overt symbols of religion should be properly internalised, and need
not be displayed in a homogenous or egalitarian public space. For all these
groups, a woman wearing a headscarf seems a thoroughly seditious statement in
the politics of culture and identity.
I turn now to an exploration of jihadi Salafi activism as another form of iden-
tity politics that draws on the various Islamic styles of action. Olivier Roy, Gilles
Kepel and others have argued that Salafi sm and related ‘neo-fundamentalist’
movements should be seen as the successors of Islamist politics, arising out of
the failure of the Islamist movements themselves, or being the consequences of
repressive regimes and international cold-war politics (Roy 1994; Kepel 2002).
Such analyses help to explain the sequence of events that led to the emergence