Abstract
Women on the streets of Sana’a, Yemen’s capital
CREDIT: Hani Mohammed/AP Photo
The spread of the abaya and niqab in Saudi Arabia happened relatively recently, but its modern history can be traced back to 1932, when four distinct regions were united into a single state: modern-day Saudi Arabia. The new regime began to promote a branch of Sunnism that had been founded by the 18th-century preacher Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Saudi Arabia’s laws have been based on this creed’s strict version of sharia law which incorporates desert traditions which have been taken into Islam. One of these customs is that women should be fully covered.
As Wahhabism took over as the state religion in Saudi Arabia, rules on clothing were gradually tightened. It is now one of the only Muslim-majority countries (Iran being the other one) to impose legally a public dress-code on women. All women in Saudi Arabia, locals and foreigners, must wear an abaya.
Mona Shehabi, a Jordanian fashion designer who has lived in Saudi Arabia since 1980, said: “The restrictions in terms of what women could wear in public started in 1990, at the time of the first Gulf War in Iraq. There was also growing pressure from the Wahhabi preachers. An increasing number of incidents of domestic violence resulted from women refusing to cover their face, particularly in Riyadh. In spite of this, many women continued to resist. Up until 1992 there were some women who did not even wear an abaya”
And so Saudi women have turned to another way to express themselves: they personalise these obligatory garments. Accessories are one channel for this, creating a demand that is being increasingly met by major fashion brands. Some women are even launching their own brands: last April, the Saudi government teamed up with Vogue for a showcase of the nation’s most promising designers in Jeddah.
“In most cases these restrictions boost creativity," said Christophe Beaufays, a 33-year-old Belgian who has worked for five years in Jeddah as a fashion designer. “Jeddah is the most open city and experimentation is in the air: many of the young, high-class women no longer wear a hijab, [to cover their head] in some public spaces, like restaurants or ‘destination’ malls. Their abayas are decorated, even partly coloured, and are made from cotton rather than heavy fabric. Some women have even been seen wearing white abayas, which make an extremely bold statement in this context.” In Saudi society, white is traditionally only worn by men.
Technology introduces Saudi women to a wide range of brands and fashion blogs, and also gives them degree of protection. “The advent of technology has even made the religious police more cautious,” wrote Susie Khalil, a US blogger who has been married to a Saudi for 40 years. “In a shopping mall in Riyadh [in 2012], local police detained and assaulted a Saudi woman who was wearing nail enamel while shopping. The woman refused to be intimidated, and she stood firm and reported the assault.” After a video of the incident went viral online, the head of the Saudi religious police condemned the policemen’s behaviour.
If women in Jeddah are gaining greater scope for self-expression, exactly the opposite is happening in war-torn Yemen, where the influence of Saudi-sponsored Wahhabism is spreading.
“Paradoxically, Yemen has always been more open than Saudi Arabia, particularly in Aden. The abaya doesn’t form part of Yemeni tradition and it was only imported after the 1990s,” added Marie-Christine Heinze, a German anthropologist at the Centre for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient in Bonn, said: “The importation of the black abaya and niqab only occurred quite recently because of a burgeoning middle class that had identified the Saudi economic model for business with its regulations for outer dress.
Women waiting at a beauty salon in Yemen
CREDIT: Scott Wallace/World Bank
“As soon as Saudi Arabia became the country where everyone dreamed of going to make their fortune, middle-class women started to wear the black abaya, as a symbol of superior social status.”
Rooj Alwazir, an activist and founder of #SupportYemen based in the capital Sana’a, has seen this trend first hand. She said: “I’m surprised both that women from the Old Medina find it strange and even offensive that a young woman should decide to wear traditional Yemeni garments, and also that my niece, who’s now 15 and often goes to school without covering herself at all, is dying to wear an abaya in a coffee shop. But I can understand her: the in-fashion here in Sana’a is Saudi, even if all the fabrics are imported, many from Kuwait or Jordan.”
For activist Bushra al-Fusail, wearing, or not wearing, an abaya was a question of survival and resistance. In May 2015 al-Fusail launched a Facebook event called Let’s ride a bike. The idea was to encourage Yemeni girls and women to break a taboo and cycle. Fuel shortages, because of the war, had made driving all but impossible. They wore abayas so they were not seen to flout two taboos at once. “The campaign provoked a flurry of reaction, above all on social media,” she said. “The least conservative told us we could use bikes, but only if we were well covered by abayas. However, as a matter of fact, the women who took part in the campaign do not normally wear them in everyday life. We need to break this reliance on certain in-built traditions, some of which aren’t even ours.”