Burqas in My Backyard

Since moving to Philadelphia last summer, I’ve been struck by the large number of African-American women here who wear head scarves and full burkas – the latter-dressed entirely in black, with face fully covered except for a thin opening around the eyes. Until this piece appeared a couple of weeks ago in the Philadelphia Inquirer (as much focused on the implications of the fashion choice during the hot summer months here as on other implications), I was unable to find a single news report about the phenomenon, or a single stock photo of women so dressed. This struck me as pretty remarkable, given the visible presence of the community here in Philly.

At the international level, of course, burqas have had powerful symbolic implications in recent years. They came to be synonymous with the Taliban rule in Afghanistan and that regime’s oppression of women. It has provoked Europeans along the Christian/Muslim divide. France has banned the wearing of head scarves in schools, and in the Netherlands there is an ongoing debate about whether to ban burqas in public.

So what to make of its non-trivial presence in the US, within a mostly native-born community? I suppose it’s evidence of how even the most serious cultural diversities at the international level are being replicated in the domestic context, even without the (often present) factor of immigration. Of course, no one is forcing American women to wear burqas, in the way that the Taliban did; and most Americans (myself included) would vigorously advocate the right of those women who choose to hew to a religious wardrobe, of whatever description. But the phenomenon may point to another small way in which “foreign” will have less meaning going forward.

Update: As Peggy notes below, “the photo depicts not a burqa — the garment traditional to Afghanistan and other parts of South and SW Asia — a full-length abaya robe and a niqab, a snug head covering with only a narrow, horizontal slit for her eyes. A burqa, by contrast, is a one piece garment typically with a kind of lattice work over the eye area.”