purdah

literally, "curtain," purdah is the pattern of veiled and secluded domesticity that characterizes the lives of certain Muslim, South Asian, and Hindu women. Emily C. Smith, member of Muslim Women of Minnesota, says, "Muslim women do not aspire to feminism on the Western model. Instead, they pursue the rights guaranteed to them in their own religious law, which 1,400 years ago granted them independent legal status and rights of voting, inheritance, and divorce. The adoption of Islamic dress is often a political statement by which the wearer rejects the sexual exploitation of women while reaffirming that she does not need to mimic customs and manners foreign to her own culture. To assume that the Muslim woman is universally oppressed is an insult which disregards the achievements of millions of our Muslim sisters worldwide." Leila Ahmed (in Feminist Studies) says, "Although universally perceived in the West as an oppressive custom, the veil is not experienced as such by women who habitually wear it. More than anything perhaps, it is a symbol of women being separated from the world of men, and this is conventionally perceived in the West as oppression." Women Living Under Muslim Laws, formed in 1984, is an international solidarity network that provides information, support and a collective space for women whose lives are shaped, conditioned or governed by laws and customs said to derive from Islam. "Our name challenges the myth of one, homogeneous 'Muslim world.' This deliberately created myth fails to reflect that (1) laws said to be Muslim vary from one context to another and (2) the laws that determine our lives are from diverse sources: religious, customary, colonial, and secular. We are governed simultaneously by many different laws: laws recognized by the state (codified and uncodified) and informal laws such as customary practices which vary according to the cultural, social, and political context." In speaking and writing, then, respect the customs and beliefs of others and know that if change is needed, it will come from inside out, not vice versa.