WI: Hijab compulsary for males too?

ninebucks

Banned
In the Qur'an, Muslim men and women are instructed to dress in a modest fashion, and that instruction is essentially left vague, aside from not walking around with one's genitals hanging out, the definition of modest dress is largely an issue of personal interpretation.

The justifications for the more extreme interpretations of Hijab, therefore, come not from the Qur'an itself, but from the Hadiths, the collected sayings of Mohammad.

So, let's say that one day Mohammad is walking around, and he is asked by a faithful follower to clarify upon what is required as far as modest dress. He replies in such a manner that strongly implies that the instruction to cover one's hair, face, chest, body, etc. does not only apply to women, but rather, Muslim men should wear the hijab (and variations thereof) too.

What effects would this have on Islamic history, if the overwhelming majority of Muslim men refused to show their faces in public? How would the Crusaders react when faced in battle with men completely covered in white sheets save a strip for their eyes? Would Islam still have the reputation for mysogyny if Hijab wasn't seen as something men force upon women?
 

Keenir

Banned
So, let's say that one day Mohammad is walking around, and he is asked by a faithful follower to clarify upon what is required as far as modest dress. He replies in such a manner that strongly implies that the instruction to cover one's hair, face, chest, body, etc. does not only apply to women, but rather, Muslim men should wear the hijab (and variations thereof) too.

like the Tuareg in OTL?
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
The problem here is that the definition of hijab has changed from place to place and from time to time. The idea that women should be covered from head to toe, including the face, is a fairly recent conceit and would not have been operative throughout vast parts of the Islamic world during most of Islamic history. So what you're asking for is a rather narrow definition of "hijab" that would remain consistent throughout Islamic history and throughout the Islamic world - a bit ASB, in my opinion.

Most of the scholars agree that standards for sartorial modesty do apply to men, and are in fact observed throughout the Muslim world. Shorts, for example, are not commonly encountered in the Middle East. In the Gulf and southern Iraq, men wear long, flowing gowns (dashadish); in the latter region, this is traditionally covered by a loose abaya and complemented with a shemagh that conceals their hair (contrary to the Wikipedia page, which says that only women wear abayat). In Iran, devout men usually wear long-sleeved shirts, buttoned to the neck and wrists. These sort of things do meet the definition of male hijab, and are probably the sort of thing you'd expect in a culture that values modesty but does not objectify men in the same way that it objectifies women.
 
yes, hijab has much more to do with the local culture than with quranic insrutructions. In regions such as persia and afghanistan, the veiling and seclusion of women predates the arrival of Islam in those regions. The hijab isn't as strictly enforced in Indonesia and parts of South Asia.

Some of these regions have a strict dress code for men also: the Taliban for example required beards and turbans. Men who did not grow beards were sent to "beard camp" and kept there until their beards reached sufficient length.
 
like the Tuareg in OTL?
First thing i thought of.

How would the Crusaders react when faced in battle with men completely covered in white sheets save a strip for their eyes?
That makes me think of pictures i've seen of Turkish warriors where they're wearing scale-mail that goes almost to the ground and the helmets have a mail curtain, kinda like this one.
helm-trk.gif

So all that you can see is hands, eyes, and shoes.
 
The rule that women must cover their heads isn't based simply on religion; its a semetic cultural trait, which you can also see in some Jewish groups (Hassidic Jews most prominently). It just managed to slip into religion, like so many things.

If it's a mayor cultural change, the Jews would probably be influenced as well, with even more ridiculous headdresses.
 
Top