100 Books Like The Veil

We all know that the oppressive structures of patriarchy are all-pervasive. But can we see "oppression" in black and white? Certainly not! 

Unless we put things in context and see through their nuances, the vicious Islamophobic tendency (subtly or not) comes into play, caricaturing Islam as the sole source of gender-based oppression. No doubt, the condemnation of Islam flows from prejudice and half-baked Orientalist assumptions surrounding the religion.

Leila Ahmed, a pioneering figure of Islamic feminism, hits hard at the stereotypes surrounding Islam and challenges them. I learned from her that Islam is anything but monolithic, especially from the perspective of gender. She devotes chapters on Egypt to link the percepts of Islam with colonial modernisation.

For academics like me, this book adds a dynamic perspective and opens the big picture. However, for even those bearing the burden of prejudice, I am sure this book will be educative.

“Where are the women?” So goes this 1989 classic’s opening gambit.

We think politics is the domain of men, Enloe points out, but women have long been out there doing vital and often invisible work, whether as diplomats’ wives, sex workers recruited around US army bases, farmers, or labor leaders.

Bringing this gendered labor to the forefront of international relations is Enloe’s strength. She discusses how images of women “work,” as in the Chiquita Banana ads that introduced American housewives to this unusual fruit and helped expand United Fruit’s bloody empire, but also studies women’s transnational labor organizing.

Reading this book in graduate school guaranteed I would never think of those little stickers on bananas in the same way. Like many other historians of US foreign policy, I still assign sections from Enloe regularly, particularly in my “Transnational America” class. 

I remember my daughter, an astute and sensitive reader from a very young age, coming downstairs in tears after finishing this book when she was in high school.

Her tears were understandable; though Homegoing, remarkably, addresses the lives of members of seven generations of two connected Ghanian families in a mere 320 pages, we as readers come to care deeply about each of the fourteen characters whose stories fill the book.

The storytelling is that concise, yet also that rich and distinct, depicting two separate—but tragically related—trajectories for these families caught in the inevitable and devastating web of slavery, from the late 1770s to the present, and from the infamous Cape Coast Castle to Alabama, Harlem, and San Francisco—and back again.

What may be construed as violence is a matter of the vantage point and the politics of language (the language of culture vs. the language of the state) surrounding human rights. Rogers paints a unique parallel between female circumcision and torture from a psychoanalytic perspective.

Both entail bodily "mutilation" or disfiguration of a certain kind, yet they are treated differently in the discourses of human rights. The cut flesh of the circumcised woman becomes the sole bearer of the truth surrounding the "violative" cultural practice.

But, the act of state-sponsored torture perpetrated on the purported terrorists, who are imprisoned without a trial (e.g., the prisoners of Abu Gharib), escapes the landscape of human rights (why would you care for the rights of the terrorists?). After all, "sacred" is such flesh that is rendered legitimate in the fantasy of the sovereign nation-state!

This book is an eye-opener to me. It implies… show more.

Fifth-century BC Athenian society was male-dominated, so most of our evidence comes from – and is about – men. Elegantly written, immaculately researched, and pleasingly illustrated, Aphrodite’s Tortoise goes a long way towards restoring the gender balance, uncovering the complex role that women played in Greek society, whether as wives, priestesses or slaves. At the heart of the book is the use of the veil, which not only protected women from the male gaze as they ventured outside (hence the title) but could convey a variety of visual signals depending on how it was worn. It’s a really stimulating book, the kind that makes you sit up and think about not just the ancient world but our own.

This book describes in detail with extreme clarity that knowing our true being is peace, happiness, and love. Our true self is always present consciousness which knows the mind, body, and the world. The belief in the existence of a separate inner self and an external world obscures our true nature. With the veiling of our true nature, an imaginary self that is limited and situated in the mind-body is seemingly created and the search for happiness in the outside world begins. Suffering is the veiling of one's true nature or happiness, not the lack of happiness. After the dissolution of the separate self that we think and feel to be, happiness and love shine forth. Peace and happiness are not the states of body and mind, but inherent to our real nature.

One of the first things people still ask me about living in Turkey is, do you have to wear a headscarf? Whether a woman covers or not and the manner in which she wears her scarf reflects much more than differing levels of religious conviction. Göle explores the extremely nuanced and conflicting relationships around the subject, combining sociological research with historical analysis and in-depth interviews. She examines the ways young women form their identities in relation to the issue of covering, how they adapt fundamental religious tenets in response to the pressures of modernity, what covering contributes to debates about politics, nationalism, and other issues. Anyone wanting to know more about the practice of veiling beyond the standard modern/backward, secular/religious divides should read The Forbidden Modern. By the way, if you’re still wondering, the answer is no.

Readers of my book frequently tell me how surprised they are by Chapter 3, which tells the story of the fearless Egyptian women who took to the streets in 1919 to demand an end to British colonial rule and the establishment of a democratic state. To those readers interested in learning more about Egypt’s female revolutionaries, I happily point to Margot Badran’s pathbreaking scholarship and, in particular, to this book, which explains why feminism and nationalism ran hand-in-hand for so many Egyptian women in the early twentieth century.

Bergen’s exclusive and candid interviews with Osama bin Laden captured the evil terror cult leader\’s quiet charisma. I could picture Osama’s lonely childhood desire to connect with his powerful father.

Osama desperately sought strong father-mentor figures after his father’s death. Imagine young Muslim youths flocking to the powerful radical terror cult leader who struck terror in America, the great satan!

I write about Islamophobia in the US but often wonder how it manifests in other countries. I now know where to go for answers.

This book examines Muslim racialization in four countries – the US, the UK, India, and China. It takes readers through the history of Islamophobia in each country, examining the role of media in stereotyping and Othering Muslims. Importantly, the book also explains how anti-Muslim racism has figured in recent ethnonationalist movements and counterterrorism policies.