A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence, from the Middle East to America * By LEILA AHMED

The book responds to a view held among American and European scholars, from the 1990s onwards that some Muslim women wear ḥijāb because they are devout, observant Muslims. For the author and her respondents, wearing ḥijāb was not just an expression of piety but also an instance of the use of Islamic symbols, growing in Muslim societies since the 1970s. This political expression of Islam, popularly labeled ‘Islamism’, was fueled, among other factors, by the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Leila Ahmed contrasts militant Islamism with a non-militant, non-violent Islamism and argues that the practice of wearing ḥijāb is a part of the women's involvement in Islamism of the latter kind. The eight chapters of Part I explore the objectives, motivations, methods and strategies of the Islamists; Islamists’ notions about women and their proper roles; the importance of women in Islamism; and women's role as activists. Chapter 1, ‘Unveiling’, outlines the history from the 1950s when going bare-headed was becoming the norm for women in the cities of Egypt and in other Muslim-majority societies. Ahmed recounts the debates around veiling in the late nineteenth-century era of British colonialism that paved the way for the unveiling movement in the early twentieth century. This historical background informs the resurgence of veiling as an important marker of the tension and confrontation between Islam and the West.