There has been much debate over the question of the veil. I think the position expressed by our prime minister, Romano Prodi, is sensible: if by veil we mean a headscarf that leaves the face uncovered, then anyone can wear one if they wish. If my own unbiased aesthetic judgment doesn’t sound irreverent, it adds a refinement to the woman’s face and makes her look like all those Virgin Marys painted by Antonello da Messina. Any other form of veil that prevents identification is another matter: Italian law doesn’t allow it. This prohibition could of course lead to other arguments, since even carnival masks would be banned, and if you remember A Clockwork Orange, a comic mask can be used to commit appalling crimes. But let us say these are marginal problems.
If we can identify a sign in all those cases where something represents something else in some respect or capacity, then the Muslim veil is a semiotic phenomenon. The same is true of uniforms, whose primary function is not to protect the body in bad weather, and of a nun’s wimple, which is elegant. This is why the veil stirs so much argument—and yet we never argued about those large headscarves that farm women once wore, which had no symbolic value.
The veil is criticized because it is worn as a declaration of identity. But there’s nothing wrong with displaying an identity or affiliation, and people do so when they wear the badge of a party, the cowl of a monk, or an orange robe and shave their heads. One interesting question is whether Muslim girls must wear a veil because the Koran requires it. Now comes the publication of Islam, by Gabriele Mandel Khan, Italian leader of the Sufi Jerrahi Halveti order, which seems to me an excellent introduction to the history, theology, practices, and customs of the Muslim world. He says that the use of the veil to cover the face and hair is a pre-Islamic custom related to climate. But it is not prescribed by sura 24 of the Koran, the passage always quoted on this question, which advises covering only the breasts.
Fearing that Mandel’s interpretation was perhaps too modernist or moderate, I looked up on the Net the Italian translation of the Koran by Hamza Piccardo, carried out under the doctrinal control of the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy. There I found the whole passage: “And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and be chaste and that they should not show their ornaments, except that which appears; that they should draw their veil over their bosoms and not display their beauty to others except to their husbands, to their fathers, to their husband’s fathers, to their sons, to their husband’s sons, to their brothers, to their brothers’ sons, to their sisters’ sons, to their women, to the slaves they own, to the male servants that have no desire, to children below the age of puberty who have no interest in the hidden parts of women.” Finally, out of scruple I consulted the Koran in the classic translation of the great Iranian scholar Alessandro Bausani, and there I found, with few lexicographical variations, the requirement that “they cover their breasts with a veil.”
For someone like me who doesn’t know Arabic, three witnesses of such different provenance are enough. The Koran is simply encouraging modesty, and if it were written today in the West, it would also be encouraging the covering of the navel, since nowadays in the West the belly dance is practiced in the streets.
Who then was asking women to veil themselves? Mandel takes a certain satisfaction in revealing that it was Saint Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, though Paul limited this duty to women who preach and prophesy. Yet here, once again before the Koran, is Tertullian—who, though a heterodox Montanist, was nevertheless a Christian—in his text On the Ornaments of Women: “You must please only your husbands. And the more you please them, the less you will worry about pleasing others. Do not worry, O blessed ones, no woman is ugly to her husband . . . Every husband demands the duty of chastity, but does not desire beauty, if he is Christian . . . I do not tell you this to suggest to you a totally coarse and wild outer appearance, nor do I want to persuade you that it is permissible to be untidy and dirty, but (I advise you) the measure and the proper limit in caring for the body . . . Indeed they sin against Him those women who torment the skin with spiced embellishments, who mark their cheeks with red and lengthen their eyes with soot . . . God commands you to veil yourselves, so that, I think, the heads of each of you are not seen.” And this is why, throughout the history of art, the Virgin Mary and pious women appear veiled, like so many charming Muslim women.
2006