Who Wears Hijab With The President

Journal of Religion in Africa 41 (2011) 35-58 brill.
nl/jra
Who Wears Hijab with the President:

Constructing a Modern Islam in Tunisia
Simon Hawkins
Franklin and Marshall College, Department of Anthropology, PO Box 3003,
Lancaster, PA 17604-3003,
shawkins@fandm.edu
Abstract
In comparison to other Muslim states, Tunisia is often described as secular. However, the official
Tunisian relation to and construction of religion is more complex. The government bans hijab
from public institutions such as schools, but on certain occasions the president publicly wel-
comes women wearing some forms of hijab. Underlying this seeming contradiction is a govern-
mental attempt to develop a modern form of Islam that emphasizes the position of women in
Tunisia as fully modern. The master narrative of modernization posits an inevitable triumph of
modernity over tradition, making traditional forms of hijab acceptable, but contemporary forms
of hijab challenge this assumed inevitable progression. The state views the status of women as
modern as particularly vulnerable. While otherwise modern men may freely adopt traditional
clothing styles on ritually important occasions, women have no flexibility in shifting between
modernity and tradition.
Keywords
Tunisia, Islam, modernization, North Africa, gender, hijab
According to law, women are banned from wearing hijab in Tunisian public
institutions such as schools and government buildings. Enforcement of this
ban waxes and wanes over time and varies from region to region. However, in
the past few years there have been renewed crackdowns, often coinciding
with the beginning of the school year. Students have been turned away from
schools and universities, and according to some journalistic reports women
have been taken to police stations and required to sign statements that they
would no longer wear hijab; some who refused were assaulted by police offi-
cers and forced to remove their hijab on the street (Amnesty International
2008). One woman reported that the police said, ‘Sign here, take this piece
of rubbish off your head and go home! Never ever think of going back to
school with it. Right now, I am going to attach it to this sheet of paper in
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/157006611X556629

36 S. Hawkins / Journal of Religion in Africa 41 (2011) 35-58
which you declared your full compliance with circular 108 [the law banning
hijab]. Don’t you understand! There is no place in our schools for fundamen-
talists. We are a modern country!’(1 Muslim Nation 2006). Rumors abound
of stores that sold hijab being forced out of prominent locations and parents
of daughters who wear hijab receiving threatening phone calls. The Fula doll,
a Barbie-like figure that wears hijab, has occasionally been stripped from store
shelves. Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s president, has called the hijab ‘an
imported form of sectarian dress’ that ‘does not fit with Tunisia’s cultural
heritage’ (Williams 2008).
With this as prologue, a photograph prominently displayed on the front
page of a leading Tunisian newspaper during Ramadan comes as something of
a shock (TAP 2007). It is a picture of President Ben Ali and his wife, Leila,
hosting an Iftar (breaking of the Ramadan fast) for couples from each of Tuni-
sia’s 24 governorates. In the photograph President and Mrs. Ben Ali sit next to
each other at a round table in markedly Western/modern clothing: a suit for
him, a long-sleeved, V-necked floral dress for her, and uncovered hair on both.
To her side are three women in headscarves and robes, while to his side sit
their husbands, also in robes and two with head coverings. The visiting cou-
ples, with their gray hair and balding heads, appear much older than President
and Mrs. Ben Ali, with their rich black and brown hair respectively.
The initial question that this photo raises is clear. If the state has taken such
an active role in suppressing hijab, why would it feature women in hijab so
prominently with President Ben Ali and his wife? Explaining this seeming
contradiction illuminates the process by which the state, through the use of
public media, has sought to define Islam, the social roles of women, and
modernity. Ben Ali’s policies have sought to create an identity for Tunisia as
simultaneously modern and Muslim, in part by defining Islam in a modernist
form that contrasts with a markedly traditionalist form. This modernist Islam
is depicted as a religion that does not extend into all aspects of life but can be
compartmentalized into specific areas. This is similar to the modernist dynamic
in Turkey, in which ‘Islam has increasingly become “privatized”, increasingly
defined as having to do with private belief (and/or domestic affairs)’ (Silver-
stein 2003, 511). Islam is valued but should not restrict or confine activities in
the public sphere. Crucial to this was the development of state institutions
‘not grounded in a “religious” regime of power and knowledge’ (Silverstein
2003, 512). While the Tunisian state links this approach to modernity, it is
consistent with policies adopted in France and Turkey that are formally linked
to secularism. French secularism, laïcité, ‘guarantees all individuals equal pro-
tection by the state against the claims of religion’ (Scott 2007, 12), while in
Turkish secularism ‘official Islam was given a limited and closely supervised
S. Hawkins / Journal of Religion in Africa 41 (2011) 35-58 37
place in the public sphere [but] autonomous Islamic practices were disallowed’
(Çinar 2005, 18). Notably, these practices include wearing hijab, but also refer
to any religious pronouncements that come from non-state certified religious
leaders or institutions. A crucial difference is the absence in Tunisia of any pub-
lic debate about the relationship of the state to religion in general or the wear-
ing of hijab in particular, due in large part to rigid state control of the press and
media. Formal official statements about hijab are rare, and those Tunisians
who are concerned about the topic look for signs of possible shifts in enforce-
ment in otherwise routine presidential public appearances. France, Turkey,
and Tunisia each invoked national identity to justify the banning of hijab,
albeit in different ways, as will be discussed below.
A key component of the Tunisian government’s construction of religion is
the role of women, who bear a heavy burden as symbolic carriers of either
modern or traditional identity. In this vision women in a modern religion are
free, while women in traditional religions are confined. Men, who are consid-
ered less vulnerable, may move back and forth between the categories of tra-
dition and modernity with relative impunity, but women must commit
themselves to either tradition or modernity. Any shifting of categories by indi-
vidual women casts doubt about the legitimacy of their status as representa-
tives of modernity or tradition. That is, their status in either of these categories
is vulnerable. They cannot actively move between categories, and are thus
comparatively more passive than men, who may repeatedly redefine them-
selves. This rendering of women suggests that even when they follow the form
of modernity, they are never truly modern. Although the ideology of moder-
nity prioritizes women’s choices, women are not trusted to make certain
clothing decisions that index their identities as modern or traditional mem-
bers of society.
Because this article focuses on the state’s construction of Islam and hijab, it
cannot address the complex and varied motivations and experiences of Tuni-
sian women in hijab. This is not to say, however, that the state’s vision and
individual women’s visions are totally distinct and separate. For example,
many Tunisian women in hijab strongly assert the independent nature of their
decision to wear hijab, contradicting the state’s claim that the inherently con-
fining nature of hijab prevents women from acting as modern, independent
citizens. Similarly, while the state argues against a politicized Islam, some
Tunisian women told me that its attacks on hijab have given their wearing of
hijab a political component that had never been their original intent. The
state’s efforts to oppose hijab to modernity have met with active resistance by
some, acceptance from others, but also indifference by many, who discuss the
presence or absence of hijab in terms of more immediate social concerns, such
as marriage (Hawkins 2008).1 The issue is not one that galvanizes the populace
as a whole, unlike in France or Turkey, and neither the attempts to ban or to
wear hijab have taken on the qualities of a mass political movement.
Unlike so many excellent studies of hijab around the world (Abu-Lughod
1986; Ghannam 2002; Macleod 1991; Mahmood 2005; Ossman 2002), this
article does not examine the meaning, motivations, or politics of Tunisian
women who wear hijab. In part, this is because of methodological choices but
also because of the lack of a public discourse on the topic. Unlike in Turkey
and Egypt, where the resurgence of hijab is linked to populist political move-
ments, Tunisian hijab is not associated with a cohesive social movement either
by those who wear it or those who do not. In many ways, the Tunisian state’s
attack on hijab has defined the debate in the modern liberal terms of indi-
vidual liberty. The fact that Tunisian women who discussed their hijab with
me took great pains to emphasize the individuality of their decision and the
social obstacles they had to overcome demonstrates the extent to which the
modern liberal ideology that valorizes individual choice above all has become
dominant. This is a far cry from the situation described in Mahmood’s Politics
of Piety (2005), in which Egyptian women struggled to challenge this modern
liberal model. This is not to say that a social movement of the kind Mahmoud
describes is impossible in Tunisia, but that current conditions make it impos-
sible for it to flourish in any but the most underground form. While the state
is building on a long history in its repression of hijab, it is undoubtedly also
concerned with the growth of populist religious movements in the Middle
East that have linked challenges to national governments with public displays
of piety, such as hijab.2 It is perhaps not coincidental that one of the few Mid-
dle Eastern states to exercise similarly tight control over politics and media,
Syria, has recently banned the face veil, niqab, from the classroom.
Hijab in Tunisia
A key component of the Tunisian state’s division between modernity and tra-
dition is the presence or absence of hijab, a potent but surprisingly vague
symbolic style of clothing. Beyond the fact that different social, religious, or
ethnic groups may interpret and make sense of hijab in quite different ways
(Charrad 1998; Hawkins 2008), there are also extremely different versions of
what counts as hijab. Individual Muslim communities have different versions
of hijab (and indeed, there is usually variety within each community), running
the gamut from the Afghan chadri, which covers the whole body except for a
mesh over the eyes, to a headscarf or turban worn over jeans and a long-
sleeved T-shirt. Western observers may categorize clothing as not hijab that
many if not most Muslims would categorize as hijab.3 For this paper I use the
general Tunisian standard of categorization. While there is a range of different
forms of hijab in Tunisia, each of which carries certain associations, there is a
broad consensus about what minimally constitutes hijab.
There must be some form of head covering that conceals most of the hair
and some of the ears, along with clothing coverage that extends from the neck
to the wrists to the ankles. While there is debate over whether some versions
of this, such as shirts that hug the body while covering it, are proper hijab,4
there is a consensus that it is at least an attempt at hijab. Women’s clothing
that Tunisians categorize as traditional fits this definition, but there can be no
minimal criteria for marking clothing as traditional since there is a range of
specific, distinct traditions linked to region, age, and class. In general, clothing
regarded as traditional is also categorized as hijab, but a range of hijab styles
also exists that Tunisians do not categorize as traditional, whether that be
jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, and a lacy headscarf; or a more austere, tightly
bound, black headscarf, black over-robes, and black gloves. While it may not
be possible to provide a formal description that marks the difference between
traditional and non-traditional hijab, the distinction is a meaningful one in
Tunisia.
As is true throughout much of the Middle East, the recent history of hijab
in Tunisia is tied up in the experiences of colonialism, national modernization
schemes, and resurgent political Islam. In keeping with their general colonial
practices, the French emphasized the importance of Tunisian women discard-
ing hijab as a key component in modernizing the nation (Clancy-Smith 2000;
Perkins 2004). While sharing the goal of modernization, Habib Bourguiba,
the leader of the anticolonial movement in Tunisia, defended the wearing of
hijab as a symbol of Tunisian personality that separated Tunisians from the
French. There was no equivalent clothing for men since, as he wrote approv-
ingly, Tunisian men had adopted the European suit. As Ahmed points out
more generally, in its valorizing of hijab ‘the resistance narrative thus reversed—
but thereby also accepted—the terms set in the first place by the colonizers’
(Ahmed 1992, 164). Bourguiba supported hijab because the French con-
structed it in opposition to France and French values. In his view it was essen-
tially French, and once Tunisia won its independence and no longer needed
to assert its distinctness from France, he attacked it as an impediment to
modernization.
Once Tunisia gained independence, the veil’s usefulness as a tool against
colonial occupation disappeared, and Bourguiba spoke out against the fetters
of traditional religion as retarding modernization (Hopwood 1992). This
specifically included hijab but also a range of other practices, most notably
fasting during Ramadan. While in many ways Bourguiba can be seen as a
secularizing figure, it is important to note that the Tunisia constitution, devel-
oped under his leadership, specifies Islam as the religion of the nation, and he
justified some of his seemingly secular policies with religious language (Char-
rad 2001).5 With regard to Ramadan, for example, he argued that develop-
ment was a form of jihad and thus warranted an exception from the command
to fast. Indeed, during his anticolonial struggle he acquired the nickname al-
Mujahid al-Akbar (supreme struggler), which carries an explicit connection to
jihad, a religious term that refers not only to armed conflict but also to the
daily struggles for justice, discipline, morality, and religion. By the 1980s he
came to regard Islamist groups as the main threat to his regime and ordered
draconian crackdowns, even going so far as to round up men in beards. Dur-
ing this time wearing hijab in public, urban areas was unwise.
In 1987 Bourguiba was replaced by Ben Ali in a constitutional putsch, due
to the president’s failing mental faculties. Although he still viewed Islamists as
the chief threat to national stability, Ben Ali dramatically increased the prom-
inence and visibility of Islam in the institutions of the state. Whereas Bour-
guiba delivered most of his speeches in informal Arabic or French, only rarely
speaking in formal Arabic, Ben Ali has ostentatiously avoided French in favor
of formal Arabic, which carries associations with Islam and classical Arab civi-
lization. Formal state announcements are begun with an invocation to God,
and Ben Ali is routinely filmed engaging in important religious events, such as
greeting Tunisian pilgrims on their return from the haj and attending prayers
during Laylat al-Qadr, the holiest night of Ramadan. Given the obvious sym-
bolic importance of clothing in defining identity, particularly with regard to
modernity and tradition, it is important to note that during prayers in a
mosque the president wears traditional prayer robes. Among the many widely
circulated publicity posters is one picturing him in these robes. His use of
prayer robes, as one might expect, is normally restricted to active religious
worship, but not exclusively. Ben Ali wore the robes during the official visit of
Pope John Paul II, certainly an event with a religious component, but also one
in which he was acting not as an individual citizen or worshipper but as the
head of state.
Early Efforts Linking Islam and Modernity in Tunisia

While these examples draw on the policies established by individual national
leaders, the complex relationships of Islam, modernity, and gender have been
the object of much broader contestation. The roots of the efforts to link Islam
to modernity are deep, and were profoundly influenced by the Enlightenment.
The influential nineteenth-century religious reformer Sayyid Jamal ad-Din
‘al-Afghani’ invoked both the Protestant reformation and the Enlightenment,
arguing that the blind faith of Islam as it was practiced held back the develop-
ment of a modern society (Keddie 1968). His protégé Muhammad ‘Abduh
emphasized that a modern and rationalized Islam places responsibility for reli-
gious interpretation on the individual rather than the ‘ulama (community of
scholars) (Hourani 1962). He argued that there was no contradiction between
scientific reasoning and the Qur’an, condemned as heretical innovations the
rise of sufi brotherhoods and the veneration of marabouts (Islamic saints),
and called for the assimilation of the Muslim world into the modern world
(Kraiem 1975).
When ‘Abduh visited Tunis in 1884-1885 he was warmly welcomed by a
small group of reform-minded ’ulama, and a much larger group of the emerg-
ing modern, educated middle class, precisely the group that later formed the
nationalist group that led Tunisia to independence (Sraieb 1995). Perhaps not
surprisingly, ‘Abduh’s visit was formally protested by the large majority of the
’ulama, who condemned the reformists in general and ‘Abduh in particular as
‘an offensive movement that takes the form of novelties that are opposed to
the doctrines and dogmas of orthodox Islam’ (Kraiem 1975, 92, translation by
author). While they accepted some technological innovations, they stood
against a wholesale adoption of modernity as antithetical to Islam. Despite
these important differences, the emerging nationalists and the conservative
‘ulama were able to find common cause in opposing French colonial occupa-
tion. However, after independence the new state under Bourguiba attacked
the ‘ulama’s power base as part of a move to modernize state institutions. He
thus closed the centuries-old school in Zeituna Mosque, the dominant institu-
tion for the ‘ulama, and built a new, modern school of theology in a less-cen-
tral location. The mosque itself is still a prominent monument in Tunis, but
its use is restricted to a government-controlled site of prayer and worship and
as a historical and architectural landmark.
While it is important to recognize ‘non-Western sources and forms of
modernity’ (Hodgson 2001, 7) and to view various forms of modernity around
the world as more than just reactions to the Western model, one must be care-
ful to not regard the various influences as always clearly distinct. Certainly in
the North African context, where societies on the various Mediterranean
shores have been actively interacting for millennia, it is difficult to suggest
intellectual and cultural changes that were completely isolated from any influ-
ence, positive or negative, from the other societies. That Tunisian attempts to
reform Islam should draw on European ideology of modernization does not

necessarily mark these efforts as merely the product of colonial pressures; they
are also the result of centuries of engagement. The specific history of the
growth of modernist ideology and its relation to Islam, the state, and gender
illustrates the various internal and external forces at work.
The engagement with the modern in Tunisia predates ‘Abduh and French
colonialism. It is worth examining these early activities because they illustrate
not only the complicated roots of modernity and the state in Tunisia, but also
help define modernity and why it has become so particularly linked to the
status of women. Crucial to the master narrative of modernity is a sense of
linear and inevitable progress, a progress exemplified by the epistemic break
between the irrationality of tradition and the rationality of modernity. The
first Tunisian engagements with reform institutions along modernist lines did
not, however, adopt such a comprehensive outlook. The leading nineteenth-
century Tunisian statesman before colonialism, Khayr al-Din, advocated major
changes without supporting the master narrative of modernity. While he is
primarily famous in Tunisia for spearheading the writing of the constitution
and founding a modern school that became the eventual training ground for
the Tunisian independence movement, his writings show him to be more of a
reformer than a strict modernist. Sent into political exile in 1862, he toured
France and wrote an account of his findings that advocated changes in Tunisia
(al-Tunisi 1967; Khayr ed-Din 1987). Notably, his writing draws on a range
of sources, including Enlightenment figures, European history, and hadith
(collections of the prophet Mohammad’s sayings) without any sense of incon-
gruity. He saw no need to separate ‘modern’ from ‘traditional’ sources, but
viewed them as equally powerful. There was no sense of rupture between the
past and the present; indeed, his vision of the unfolding of history was able to
encompass both a sense of general progress and a cyclical rise and fall in which
the past may have had greater achievements than the present.
While he sought to change Tunisian society and make it more ordered and
rationalized, he did not see religion, either as a general concept or as practiced
by specific groups, as an obstacle. This places him in contrast to al-Afghani,
whose anticolonial politics and proposed social and religious changes were far
more self-consciously transformatory. While Khayr al-Din worked to make
teaching in Islamic institutions more systematic and organized, he did not see
Islam itself as in need of change, nor did he focus on gender as an important
category for change or preservation. He was modernizing, but no modernist.
That is, he advocated reforms that would help Tunisia match the achievements
of Europe but did not seek a totalizing transformation of society or view social
change as a dynamic of inevitable progress.6 He was very much a product of
his Tunisian context, but was profoundly affected by the ideas and actions of
Europe.
In contrast, Tahar Haddad (1899-1935) was also inspired by his Tunisian
context, but was more clearly a modernist, focusing on gender, the reform of
Islam, and the linear, progressive nature of time. Dying young, Haddad was a
marginalized figure, rejected by the religious establishment, the French colo-
nial authorities, and the early nationalist movement, but he was later held up
as an example of progressive Tunisian thought by Bourguiba, who himself
broke from the early nationalists. Contemporary Tunisian society celebrates
Haddad as a forerunner of the enlightened modern treatment of women in
Tunisia. Haddad pursued a religious education at Zeitouna, but read widely
on his own, regularly attended public lectures of the more secularly minded
educational group La Khaldounia (named after Ibn Khaldoun), and was influ-
enced by the ideas of Luther and Marx (Balegh 1993). Haddad did not advo-
cate simple change, but for society to ‘break free from the prison of tradition’
(Haddad 1993, 74, translation by author). Islam offered the potential of revo-
lutionary change, but had been ‘perverted’ into the ‘blind imitation of fathers
and ancestors’ (Haddad 1993, 23, translation by author). In particular, he
focused on the position of women as oppressed by traditional Islamic regula-
tions. While he was clearly influenced by his readings (in translation) of Euro-
pean authors, he built his arguments on religious doctrine, arguing that the
poor position of women in contemporary Islam was a thoughtless and possi-
bly deliberate misunderstanding of the actual tenets of Islam (Balegh 1993;
Haddad 1993).
While Haddad did not attend colonial schools, the colonial system for
Tunisians was directly linked to French national secularization efforts. The
first French resident-general in Tunisia, Pierre Cambon, was a disciple of Jules
Ferry, the architect of French laïcité (Husni and Newman 2007). Ferry himself
wrote in his autobiography about the founding of a secular school system in
Tunisia to counter the efforts of the French cardinal Lavigerie and Christian
and Jewish schools in general (Sraieb 1993, 240). These colonial schools did
not exclude Islam, but taught it from a humanist perspective as part of Arab
literary studies and the examination of Arab civilization. There was a deliber-
ate focus on the education of girls, with the first modern girls school for Mus-
lims opening in 1900. In addition to academic topics, the school taught social
hygiene, child rearing, and ‘reformed Islam’ (Clancy-Smith 2000, 35). The
literal and metaphorical connection to veiling was made explicit by the
appointment of a French woman to oversee the school because the colonial
authorities believed that ‘only the hand of a woman can lift the veil that pro-
tects the Muslim woman’ (Clancy-Smith 2000, 39, translation by author).
Such an education would act as a pivot for modernizing Muslim families and
freeing them from superstition, and in turn serve as a humane model of colo-
nialism that would stand in contrast to Algeria (where less humane efforts had
already developed nationalist resistance), and make Tunisia the ‘crown jewel’
of French colonies (Clancy-Smith 2000, 50). The first generations of national-
ists, including Habib Bourguia, were trained in such schools; like many,
Bourguiba went on to do his university studies in France. Indeed, Bourguiba’s
first wife was French, and although he led the movement to win independence
from France, he always expressed great affection for French civilization
and values.
While Bourguiba (and Ben Ali, to a lesser extent) was trained in France,
and might easily be seen as espousing a straightforward Western model of
modernism, it is impossible to completely separate the more recent past from
its roots. Writing in 1929 of the need to reform Islamic teaching in Tunisia in
order to ‘lift the intellectual level of our elite, to enable it to adapt to the
demands of modern life’ (Hopwood 1992, 31), Bourguiba sounds very much
like Haddad writing in 1930. The contemporary state efforts to modernize
Islam and change the status of women are not simply an aping of Western
models, but neither are they wholly free from Western influences, either as a
model or as something to be reacted against.
Women as Markers of Modernity

In this process of self-conscious modernization in Tunisia, the state focused on
women as a crucial marker of successful progress (Charrad 2001). One of the
first legal initiatives of the new state was to pass a personal status code that
established formal equality for men and women, making Tunisia the first Arab
state to outlaw polygamy. The government’s campaign to universalize educa-
tion throughout the nation made the literacy of girls a very high priority. The
state continues to focus on the status of women, and receives international
acknowledgement for its efforts. When then first lady Hilary Clinton visited
the Middle East in 1999, her talking points for Tunisia focused on the great
progress women had made (neatly sidestepping the absence of comparable
democratic reforms). The government prominently features the status of
women in its portrayal of the nation to the rest of the world. A sponsored
‘special issue’ of African Business features a section titled ‘No Glass Ceiling for
Women’ that proclaims, ‘In many other areas, such as custody of children,
divorce settlements, entitlement to assets, child support, maternity leave and
parental responsibility, Tunisia is far ahead of many Western countries’ (Versi
1999, 20). The existence of women in positions of power, particularly with
technological associations, seems to be especially symbolically important. The

sponsored issue of African Business, an earlier advertising supplement to
the International Herald Tribune (C.F. 1998), and the current government-
sponsored English language Web portal (Tunisia Online 2009) each gave
prominence to the identical photograph of a female pilot in the cockpit of an
airplane with her hand on the throttle and her eyes gazing forward. More
immediately visible to foreign visitors to central Tunis are the traffic police,
many of whom, if not most, are women, making them a highly visible symbol
of women in a seeming position of power and authority.7
Not that women marked as non-modern are invisible in state sponsored
images. As the photograph from the Ramadan meal suggests, men and women
in clothing marked as traditional can be featured quite prominently, but their
appearance is limited to specific contexts. A common genre is news accounts,
both on television and in newspapers, of charitable and development work in
which impoverished Tunisians in rural areas are seen gratefully receiving aid
from a benign and modern state apparatus or in conditions that demonstrate
their need for such aid. While men and women in a range of ages are repre-
sented in such photos, older men and women tend to be given particular
prominence. Ben Ali often appears as a paternal figure, receiving the thanks of
aid recipients or sagely listening as they describe their lives and problems.8 In
these photos the traditional attire of the recipients frequently stands out, with
both men and women often appearing with head coverings. However, tradi-
tionally clad figures do not appear solely in positions of dependence but also
as representatives of regions (as is true in the Iftar photograph). A popular
television cooking show during Ramadan presents a hostess in modern dress
with an older woman, often in some form of markedly traditional clothing
with a headscarf, preparing a Ramadan meal from the older woman’s region in
Tunisia. In a less marked context, women in hijab appear in photographs or
videos of conferences or state events, but as with the guests at the president’s
dinner these women invariably wear forms of head coverings that are associ-
ated with age and tradition, rather than non-traditional forms of hijab that are
more likely to be associated with political Islam.
One can better understand the symbolic meaning of the public images of
women in some form of hijab by contrasting them to the images of women in
hijab that do not appear. As implied above, forms of hijab associated with
(from the state’s perspective) extreme Islam, that is, forms that do not have an
association with local traditions, do not appear. This includes wearing gloves
or covering the face, but also headscarves that tightly cover the neck and the
sides of faces, as well as outfits that are entirely black. Just as some forms of
hijab are excluded, so too are some types of wearers. The younger, more urban,
and more educated a woman is, the less likely it is that an image of her in hijab
will appear in state-controlled media, even if she is not wearing politically

marked hijab, such as a burqa or niqab, that has associations in North Africa
with political Islam. Some young women, for example, wear jeans, long-
sleeved T-shirts, and elaborately decorated head coverings. Even though such
attire is not associated with political Islam it rarely appears in media images.
The more attributes of modernity a woman in hijab has, the less likely she is
to be pictured by the media. Although they represent a minority of women,9
the complete absence of young urban women in conservative forms of hijab
from state-controlled images is quite notable. There are multiple reasons why
such women are rendered invisible, the most obvious of which is the perceived
threat from political Islam, but one of the most important is that their very
existence represents a challenge to the state’s model of modernity for both the
nation and Islam itself.
The category of modernity is notoriously varied and contentious, with an
overabundance of both folk and academic definitions. While its usefulness as
an analytic category has been hotly debated, it is clearly relevant to how Tuni-
sians define the nature of Tunisian identity and the relation of Tunisia to the
rest of the world. While the state or its agents explicitly invoke modernity in
legitimizing their actions, the actual definition of the concept is not clearly
articulated and must be inferred from usage. One of the core constituents in
distinguishing modernity from tradition in the government’s symbolic order is
material technology. Much of the paper currency contrasts traditional creations
such as Roman ruins, with contemporary technical features such as satellite
dishes (Hawkins, 2010). The poster of Ben Ali in prayer robes contrasts with
one of him in shirtsleeves sitting in front of a sleek computer. This is, of course,
a classic way of representing modernity, but there are other, less technological
manifestations of modernity that are publicly circulated. Chief among these is
education. Because Tunisian schoolchildren wear distinctive smocks over their
clothes, children in smocks become a convenient symbol for education itself
and can be used to draw a contrast with traditional modes of behavior. If some
currency highlights the distinction between modern and traditional (or ancient)
buildings, the 30-dinar bill contrasts a woman working in a headscarf on a
loom with a group of girls in school smocks. Traditional weaving is not rejected,
but it is contrasted with the lives of the children in school.
Religion and Tradition

The relationship of modernity to tradition in Tunisia is quite similar to but
not exactly the same as the relation of modernity to religion. As noted earlier,
state texts and images frequently invoke religion, but these invocations are
always highly bounded and compartmentalized. Speeches by Ben Ali or his

wife may open and occasionally close with an invocation of God, but follow-
ing this ritual framing the speeches are resolutely secular.10 Thus religion is
honored in these instances, but is kept separate from the actual workings of
the state. Similarly, Ben Ali can invoke a religious identity by wearing and
being photographed in prayer robes, but these invocations are kept distinct
from the workings of the modern state. When photographed with a computer
he certainly does not wear any marked religious clothing, but neither does he
do so in official state portraits or in any images of him conducting official state
business. Religion is relegated to bounded areas and is not portrayed as engaged
in the routine activities of daily life. By implication, religion is reserved for the
non-material realm, becoming a spiritual rather than a pragmatically useful
activity.
Within this context religion itself has become modernized and transformed.
Afghanni’s invocation of the Protestant reformation is relevant here. The ref-
ormation’s symbolic power is as a rejection of superstitions and corrupt prac-
tices. For Afghanni, it rendered Christianity commensurate with rationality
and modernity. While Afghanni himself was very active politically, a theme
that is taken from the changes he championed is the segregation of religion
from the routines and practices of daily life. This, then, is one of the several
difficulties that the modernist state has with hijab that is not identified with
tradition because hijab breaks down the barrier between religion and the rest
of life. A young, urban, educated woman wearing hijab challenges the com-
partmentalizing of religion. She implies a modern world in which religion is
integrated into all components of life. Note here the divided understandings
of hijab and the relationship of tradition to religion. The head covering of an
older rural woman can be interpreted as religious or traditional (or both)
depending on the context. As long as it maintains the possibility of tradition
then it does not challenge the modernism of the state. After all, in the progres-
sive ideology of modernization, modernity inevitably triumphs over tradition.
Linking religion to tradition licenses a non-modern religious perspective.
While the master narrative of modernity places the modern in opposition
to tradition, it need not always denigrate tradition. Indeed, the nostalgia for a
lost tradition is a common trope in narratives of modernity in which a van-
ished traditional past can be honored and its passing mourned (Rosaldo 1989),
particularly within the safe confines of museums and marked regions that
function as cultural preserves. In contrast to the covered traditional women of
Tunisia, Western observers of Bali mourned the loss of the ‘natural’ traditions
of uncovered Balinese women (Wiener 2005). Many Tunisians hold the traits
of lost traditions as markers of a natural authenticity that modernity eventu-
ally replaced.11 One can reference traditional religion with impunity in Tunisia.
As Bernal wrote of a different context, ‘It is the decontextualized, ossified

tradition created by modernity that therefore stands as a representation of
tradition . . . [it] has been rendered powerless and therefore can be reintro-
duced to invoke local identity’ (1997, 147). A comparison with a different
Islamic modernization ideology that also focuses on women can help illustrate
the construction of religion, modernity, and gender in Tunisia.
A Different Model
In An Enchanted Modern, Lara Deeb (2006) examines the self-conscious con-

struction of a modern Islam in southern Beirut, focusing particularly on the
role of women. While in some ways the definition of modernity is quite simi-
lar to the Tunisian example, the differences are illuminating. As in Tunisia,
women in southern Beirut emphasize the importance of technology and edu-
cation, particularly for girls, in marking modernity. Similarly, they condemn
what they see as the binding fetters that tradition can place on the activities of
women, making the active engagement of women in civic life a hallmark
of desirable modernization. The most immediate, visible distinction is the
emphasis on hijab, which is deeply valorized in the community so long as
women have a rich theological understanding of why they are wearing it. Here
the move to modernize religion is not to compartmentalize it but to apply to
the study of religion the rational analytic tools associated with the Enlighten-
ment. The strictures of Islam must not be merely believed, but also under-
stood, and each individual carries the responsibility of seeking to increase his
or her rational understanding. Clearly, this is a different role for religion and
rationality than in the Tunisian case, but the differences extend into the master
narrative of modernization itself.
In the classic modernization narrative, progress is linear and inevitable. One
can look back into the past for certain kinds of inspiration, for moral or char-
acter qualities that may be highly valued, but in general the past is not to be
emulated. Indeed, as Santayana’s maxim holds, one must remember the past
in order not to repeat it. Such a vision of history assumes that, of all things,
one must avoid repeating the past. The past within this narrative is not reviled,
but serves as an inspiration to motivate rather than a model to replicate. The
Tunisian state invokes the past and holds up historical figures for reverence,
but they are not models to be emulated. Alyssa,12 the semimythical founding
queen of Carthage, is given great visibility and is held up as an inspiration for
the contemporary strong role of women, but only in a general and abstract
manner. The lack of any specific information about her historic actions is
unimportant. She is a highly valued symbol, but not an actual role model. Her
existence hints at the future that was to come, but the current age does not
look to her for guidance. She remains a figure in tradition who can never
become modern and whose value for modern individuals is limited.
In contrast, the women of southern Beirut actively look to history for mod-
els on which they can build their lives. They seek to learn more about histori-
cal figures, such as Muhammad’s granddaughter Zaynab, so that they can
better emulate these role models. While they explicitly reject tradition there is
no sense of the inevitable linear progress of history. They seek to move forward
in social development, but they will be moving forward to better approximate
a glorious past. They define tradition as not so much stemming from the past,
but as not embodying rational and thoughtful inquiry; thus the early Muslims
are in the past but are not traditional. It is not merely that Islam is reconcilable
with modernity but that Islam demands modernity, indeed, that Islam is
modernity. If the Tunisian example separates religiously driven acts and dis-
course from daily life and the details of social policy, there is no such division
in South Beirut. The necessity of educating women, their playing an active
role in civil life, and the need for men to take on responsibilities around the
home are not justified by an appeal to modernist concepts such as human
rights but by reference to the Qur’an and hadith.
Ultimately, the South Beirut women are far more negative about tradition
than the Tunisian state. While it opposes tradition to history, the linear model
of history can find value in tradition. Like Alyssa, it can be the seed that even-
tually bears modern fruit.13 It can also be the nostalgic preserve for those
attributes that were lost in the modernization process since the master narra-
tive of modernization carries more than a hint of ambivalence about the proc-
ess. As a result, there is room for tradition to be invoked by the modern. Ben
Ali can very publicly host a Ramadan dinner for guests marked as traditional,
honoring the values they represent. Indeed, he himself can don prayer robes,
which are notable as much for their invocation of tradition as of religion.14 For
all that tradition is seen as opposed to modern structures, it also authenticates
and validates modern institutions such as the nation state itself. As Anderson
reminds us, the justification of a nation depends on reference to a timeless past
(1991). At some level then, the modernist Tunisian state depends on tradition
in ways that are quite alien to South Beirut.
An intriguing similarity between the Tunisian and South Beirut example is
an emphasis on the crucial role of women in symbolically marking modernity.
In both instances the status of women as modern is regarded by the commu-
nity as a crucial marker of the modernity of the community. Of course, this is
hardly an unusual phenomenon. As many have noted (Abu-Lughod 2002;
Ahmed 1992; Chatterjee 1986; Hodgson 2001; Lazreg 1994), the focus on
the need to modernize women was a mainstay of discourse that legitimized
colonialism. Obviously any attribute of half the community plays a large role
in defining the community, but the particular importance of women’s moder-
nity is demonstrated by the absence of a similar rhetoric highlighting the need
for men’s modernity. There is no special attention paid to the status of men in
marking the modernity of society. The singling out of women as carriers of
modernity or tradition is clearly overdetermined. Such discourse depends on
the understanding of women as victims, as passive objects. There is, however,
a further component that arises in the examples discussed above. The moder-
nity of women is held as a more important indicator of the society’s status than
the status of men because men’s status is considered less fixed than that of
women. A man can, it would appear, move back and forth between the cate-
gories—as Ben Ali has done—more readily than a woman. A man who wears
traditional clothing does not endanger his potential status as a modern to the
degree that a woman who wears traditional clothing does.
This ideology may help explain a curious element of the Iftar dinner. Given
that Ben Ali has been photographed in prayer robes at marked religious events,
why did he not wear them for this dinner? It is true that he is consistently
portrayed as a paternal modern figure to dependent traditional Tunisians, but
the guests at this dinner were wearing far more sophisticated and expensive
clothing than rural charity recipients. In terms of the markedly religious nature
of the event itself, it would have been theoretically possible for him to not
wear a modern suit. In reality, however, it would have been utterly impossi-
ble—not so much because of constraints placed on him but because of the
limitations faced by his wife. While Ben Ali has been portrayed in traditional
robes, his wife never has.15 She cannot move between the categories. To do so
would undermine the distinction between the categories and suggest that her
choices were inauthentic. If she were to wear hijab for a religious event it
would not be considered legitimate.
This evaluative stance is not limited to Tunisia. Informally, there are multi-
ple accounts of Middle Eastern or South Asian women putting on or taking
off hijab in airports and airplanes as they wait to return to or leave from home
(Anonymous 2008; Mark 2006). These stories always seem to suggest that
these acts illustrate the illegitimacy of their hijab. Yet one does not hear equiv-
alent stories of Saudi men putting on, for example, thobes in the airport. For
men traveling abroad the shift of clothing seems to be accepted as a reasonable
practice, but shifts by women are seen as illegitimate or forced. The women
must commit to one set of clothing ideologies and not demonstrate cultural
flexibility. Lazreg points out that Fanon attributed the ability of Algerian
women in the FLN to move back and forth between hijab and European
clothing to their revolutionary training, never recognizing a more general
‘relative ease with which women moved in and out of the veil, as actresses
playing roles in different costumes’ (1994, 127).
The factors driving this assumption of the inability of women to shift
between categories is complex, but include the assumed passivity of women
and their lack of agentive power. If Ben Ali changes from modern suits to
traditional robes different interpreters might see it as an expression of religious
devotion or political expediency, but in either case the interpretation hinges
on the motivation for his own decision. The clothes are not presumed to define
him; rather, the choices he makes with regard to clothes highlight attributes of
his identity that he wishes to accentuate. In contrast with this presumed agen-
tive use of clothing, his wife is assumed to have far less flexibility. Rather than
constructing a multifaceted identity, she is required to be more clearly defined
by her clothing. Broadly speaking, the woman seems to be more culturally
bound than the man, who floats above cultural determination. He may liter-
ally wear the mantle of tradition without necessarily compromising his moder-
nity while she may not.
Conclusion
This comparative boundedness and unboundedness is itself part of the ideol-

ogy of modernity. As Hodgson (2001, 9) reminds us, ‘women typically figure
as repositories of “tradition” and “culture” in nationalist rhetoric, provoking
censure and even violence over clothing’ (see also Abu-Lughod 1998; Felski
1995; Hart 2009:740). As the Comaroffs note, this process also works in
reverse, as the ideology of modernity groups ‘counter images under feminized
signs—rural, preindustrial, ritualistic, primitive’ (1993, xxviii). Certainly this
explains some of the rationale of modernizing leaders who focus on women. If
even women are modernized, then truly the nation as a whole is modern. Yet
there is a paradox here. If women are associated with tradition and cultural
determinism, one would expect that women who do try to move back and
forth between the categories would be seen as not truly modern, that they
were still clinging to tradition, yet this is not the case. It is not the allegiance
to modernity that gets questioned but the connection to tradition.16 For all
that they may be seen as the repositories of ‘tradition’, women are held as par-
ticularly vulnerable to losing that connection, to being seduced into moder-
nity or at least out of tradition, hence the referred-to ‘violence over clothing’.
If women are regarded as more culturally determined than men, so too are
they posited as more in danger of losing that culture than men. The rhetoric
of both the champions of modernity and the defenders of tradition empha-
sizes the passivity and vulnerability of women.
This passive vulnerability suggests that even when women are regarded as
modern, their modernity is viewed as different from that of men. The ideology
of modernity is generally associated with individual choice, freedom of expres-
sion, and a general sense of agentive power. The Codes of Personal Status in
Tunisia, particularly in comparison with other North African states, empha-
size the importance of the power of the autonomous individual to make
choices rather than be constrained by familial leaders (Charrad 2000). The
modern figure may choose to don the vestments of tradition without fear of
destabilizing categories because the modern figure is making free, individual
choices. Indeed, the ability to put on and take off the mantel of tradition itself
marks the actor as modern. That a woman may not do so suggests that even
when appearing modern she is never regarded as a truly modern agent who is
able to make independent decisions for herself. Her choices appear coerced,
implying by their unmarked status that men’s choices are far more independ-
ent and modern. Of course, no clothing choices are free of cultural influences,
yet there is a tendency to see the dictates of society only in certain contexts.
As Abu-Lughod pointedly asks, ‘Why are we surprised that Afghan women
do not throw off their burqas when we know perfectly well that it would not
be appropriate to wear shorts to the opera?’ (2002, 785). The ideology of
modernity maintains that the modern citizen has freedom of choice in com-
parison to the traditional native, and women tend to be constructed as passive
actors without agentive power. Because of this, hijab—female clothing associ-
ated with tradition—is doubly marked as clothing that is coerced rather
than chosen.
But as noted earlier, not all forms of hijab in Tunisia are treated the same.
While some are banned with the full force of the state, others are welcomed at
the president’s table. While all are associated with some form of coercion, the
state views the coercion of tradition as far more benign than the coercion
assumed to exist with non-traditional forms of hijab. While the ‘non-
traditional’ might well be classified as ‘modern’, and within the Tunisian state’s
ideology of modernity, hijab by its very nature cannot be modern. It is some-
thing different, and that is precisely the problem. The coercion of tradition
becomes acceptable—albeit in specific and limited contexts—because of its
presumed authenticity and links to a mythic past. The coercion of contempo-
rary hijab, by contrast, carries none of these positive associations. It is almost
as much a rejection of tradition as is self-conscious modernity (indeed, for
some women modernity and contemporary hijab can overlap), and these
forms of hijab therefore appear to be far more of a threat to modernity than
tradition. For the Tunisian state contemporary hijab represents a potential

deviation in the master narrative of modernization, diverting social progress
from its inevitable march from cultural determinism to individual choice.
President Ben Ali models his state’s vision for the appropriate role of reli-
gion in a modern society. He honors religion with words and deeds, but seg-
regates it to confined realms. God appears in the margins of speeches, but not
in the content. Tunisian media highlight his participation in important reli-
gious rituals (at which he may wear traditional robes), but not in more mun-
dane prayers (his charcoal suit is ubiquitous). He builds mosques, but confines
education to modern schools. Within these bounded confines, there are no
difficulties associated with women in hijab. The head coverings of rural, aged,
and undereducated women are accepted, even honored as holdovers from a
lost past. But when hijab departs from traditional forms and appears on young,
educated, urban women, it is suppressed. Hijab in the margins is fine; hijab in
the center is not. While the state celebrates the prominence it gives to women
and their rights, it limits the choices they may make about religion and cloth-
ing. They may not choose an alternative to the state’s vision of modernity and
religion.
Talal Asad describes this conflict between state and religion more generally
as one of secularism in which ‘religion has the option of either confining itself
to private belief and worship or of engaging in public talk that makes no
demands on life’ (Asad 2003, 199). However, he argues that given the modern
state’s penetration into the most intimate details of life, all social spaces are
potentially political, and religious (and particularly Islamic) attempts at social
reform may be seen as challenges to the authority of the state. Further, nation-
alism, which requires a specific loyalty to the national society in a ‘universe of
national societies . . . in which individual humans live their worldly existence,
requires the concept of the secular to make sense’ (Asad 2003, 193; emphasis
original). While the examples of secularism in France and Turkey have important
contrasts, they do share with Tunisia this strong link to nationalism. In each of
these cases the wearing of Islamic headscarves in particular state institutions is
banned. The French ban is more limited, focusing on secondary schools and
does not specifically single out hijab, but rather prohibits any ostentatious signs
of religion. While this might include yarmulkes, Sikh turbans, or large crucifix
jewelry, the public debate at the time the law was passed focused almost exclu-
sively on hijab and was referred to in the French press as the ‘affaire du foulard’
(the affair of the scarf ) (Bowen 2007; Keaton 2006; Scott 2007).17 Tunisia and
Turkey ban hijab for workers and students at most state institutions, and Tur-
key prohibits it even for visitors to such institutions.
Ideologically, the ban on headscarves in France and Tunisia bears a com-
mon emphasis on the rights of the individual to be free from the demands of
religion. In both nations hijab is assumed to be inherently regressive for

women, preventing them from becoming full participants in modern civil
society. In both these contexts hijab is thus a direct challenge to the national
state and to the presumed character of the nation. However, the nations envi-
sion this challenge differently. In France the challenge is seen as an attribute of
Islam as an entity itself and about the existence of communal identities (reli-
gious and ethnic) that are presumably inassimilable into French society. As
such, the French headscarf ban is directly linked to race, expressing the pro-
found unease with the presence of a racial minority within French society.
Clearly the Tunisian ban is not a referendum on Islam itself and cannot be
linked to race. In this sense the Tunisian ban shares much with the Turkish ban.
In both these cases Islam is not excluded from the state but is rather controlled
by the state, which oversees religious education, the licensure of religious offi-
cials, and the practices of religious rituals. In Turkey, however, the state is for-
mally secular, while the Tunisian constitution specifies Islam as the religion of
the nation. Further, Turkish control over religion seeks not merely to modern-
ize Islam but to render it more Turkish and distinct from the larger worldwide
umma of Muslims. At its most extreme the state even tried to require that daily
prayers be recited in Turkish (Çinar 2005). While Tunisia nationalizes religious
practice, it does not attempt to imbue a particular Tunisian quality to religion.
Rather, it enacts the national in religious rituals. Thus the iftar dinner from
which the photograph was taken featured a representative couple from each of
Tunisia’s governorates, and Ramadan cooking shows similarly feature cuisine
from each of the governorates. The television footage broadcast during the
evening call to prayer during Ramadan displays panoramic images of signifi-
cant mosques in Tunisia rather than, for example, Mecca. Religious observance
links the worshiper to the Tunisian state and nation.
Modern Islam as constructed by the Tunisian government is discrete and
discreet. It is separate and distinct from the practices of daily life and does not
call attention to itself except for specifically ordained circumstances. While this
vision of Islam is partially motivated by a desire to combat the rise of Islamic
extremism, its roots predate this comparatively contemporary political issue and
are linked not only to encounters with colonialism but also to a long-standing
engagement with Europe. Silverstein’s (2003) argument that modernization in
nineteenth-century Turkey was no more alien than equivalent efforts in Russia
or Greece also holds true for Tunisia. While Khayr al-Din was looking to Paris
for possible reform models, so too were political figures from the margins of
Europe. Thus while it is certainly true that colonialism played a crucial role in
the development of an intersection of Islam, gender, and modernity, the process
of change should not be seen as simply an external imposition.
There is an irony in the Tunisian government’s valorization of modernity

and the accompanying emphasis on individual autonomy in making choices,
since the Tunisian media are rigorously controlled by the state, elections are
merely symbolic—in 2009 Ben Ali was reelected with 89.62 percent of the
vote (Presidential & Legislative Elections in Tunisia 2009), and individual
expression on sensitive topics is severely curtailed. As with the restrictions on
hijab, the government encourages individual decision making, as long as the
individual makes what the government considers to be the right decisions.
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Notes
1. Young Tunisian men interpret hijab worn by young women as a sign of interest in
marriage. The men presume that a hijabed woman is a more desirable marriage partner, and
that young women seeking marriage try to improve their chances by wearing hijab.
2. The Muslim Brotherhood is perhaps the most organized opposition movement in

Egypt, while Hamas’s military wing rivals the power of the Lebanese Army. In Turkey, the
Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won elections since it came to power in 2002,
and is challenging the constitutionally mandated secularism described in this article.
3. The AP ran a photograph of women in Iraq wearing headscarves and clothing that
covered their arms and legs with the caption ‘Women hesitantly emerge from their homes
without veils’ (Yacoub 2008).
4. Indeed, some consider the legitimacy of hijab as founded on motivation as much as
specific clothing choices (Hawkins 2008).
5. While the struggle over hijab bears similarities to the situation in Turkey, the Tuni-
sian government has never been as formally secular as the Turkish state.
6. This pattern was not unique. The Ottoman Empire sought to rationalize its forces
along a European model, but did not see this as radically transforming the culture or the
religion (Silverstein 2003).
7. Certainly traffic police do not have much real power, but as public evidence of
women giving rather than following orders they are a potent symbol.
8. There is, of course, something potentially ironic in the younger (appearing) man
taking on this paternal identity, but it nicely illustrates the way in which the aid recipients
are infantilized.
9. Because of the sensitive nature of the topic it is impossible to make an accurate
estimate of the women in hijab, but there is a consensus that the number has significantly
increased over the past few decades (Hawkins 2008).
10. Ben Ali refers to God far less in his speeches than do U.S. presidents, who tend to
use similar framing devices (‘God bless America’) but also mention God in the content of
their speeches.
11. When I was doing my fieldwork in Tunis many Tunisians urged me to work in the
more rural, traditional areas, the sites of the ‘real’ Tunisia.
12. Also known as Elissa and Dido.
13. One sponsored article trumpets that in Tunisia ‘women are the children of Dido’
(C.F. 1998).
14. There is no formal requirement in Islam that one must wear robes in prayer.
15. There were rumors that his daughter wore hijab. When she appeared publicly with-
out it, many Tunisians interpreted it as a sign that the government was going to revive its
hard-line stance on hijab.
16. Certainly many Muslims would consider the donning and removing of hijab as
inauthentic hijab, but it is intriguing that Western modernists also view it as inauthentic.
17. However, this nod to ecumenicalism and limitation to specific schools was dropped
in 2010 legislation that banned the public wearing of veils that covered the face, popularly
referred to in Europe as the burqa, although the more correct Arabic term is niqab.
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Journal of Religion in Africa 41 (2011) 35-58 brill.

Who Wears Hijab with the President:

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/157006611X556629

Early Eﬀorts Linking Islam and Modernity in Tunisia

reform Islam should draw on European ideology of modernization does not

Women as Markers of Modernity

technological associations, seems to be especially symbolically important. The

will appear in state-controlled media, even if she is not wearing politically

Religion and Tradition

always highly bounded and compartmentalized. Speeches by Ben Ali or his

As Bernal wrote of a diﬀerent context, ‘It is the decontextualized, ossiﬁed

In An Enchanted Modern, Lara Deeb (2006) examines the self-conscious con-

This comparative boundedness and unboundedness is itself part of the ideol-

tradition. For the Tunisian state contemporary hijab represents a potential

religion. In both nations hijab is assumed to be inherently regressive for

There is an irony in the Tunisian government’s valorization of modernity

2. The Muslim Brotherhood is perhaps the most organized opposition movement in

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