1 - Historical Account

1In Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, South Thailand, Malaysia and Brunei, the head veil is known as tudung, or more traditionally kerudung. In Indonesia, after the fall of Soeharto in 1998, the veil acquired a new name and is popularly called jilbab. In modern times, the meaning of jilbab has shifted along with the development of women’s movements in Muslim countries (Mumtaz and Shaheed, 1987; Milani, 1992; Stern, 1939; Stowasser, 1994; Syamsiyatun, 2007; Turner, 1974; Walther, 1993; El Guindi, 1999; Abbot, 1974; Abu-Lughod, 1986; Ahmed 1992). In Indonesia, during the authoritarian New Order era, the jilbab was forbidden in state-owned schools and universities. Shortly before Soeharto’s fall, a number of Tarbiyah (New Islamists movement) activists from state-owned universities protested against this ban. One of the issues, which constantly made the news on the grassroots level, was Islamist representation, whether in the sociopolitical or sociocultural arena. The Al-Ziyy Al-Islami (Islamic dress) ideology, calling for decency and conformity to the ultimate Islamic mores, is motivated more by a pretext of ethics — taking the spirit of Sharia as the ideal — than by doctrinal segregation based on the founding discourses of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), with its conspicuous gender hierarchy that granted the right to divorce and polygamy, as well as child custody, to men. The Tarbiyah movement is, to some extent, the result of the upward mobilization of the lower and middle classes. It advocates ethics such as self-discipline, autonomy and morality in the midst of a corrupting setting, and considers the economic crisis as brought about by unjust, avaricious capitalism, while a social and cultural crisis brews away, caused by immoral conduct of godless behavior. Esposito (2000) and Gellner (1994) have demonstrated the interpenetration and cohabitation of conflicting factors surrounding the practices of self-veiling, particularly in the context of modern secular capitalism.

2This paper examines the persistent entanglement of global forces with Islam and gender relations, with a particular focus on women's agency in the self-willed veiling tradition. Religious law, religion and the gendered body, challenges to religious authority, and the complexities of freedom and submission in religious texts will be investigated in the context of Indonesian women’s veiling. Case studies will draw on veiling in the last ten years, the Reformation era. Multivocal facets of veiling will be analyzed from divergent political, sociocultural, educational and economic standpoints. Female subjects were interviewed by applying quota sampling in the framework of qualitative research. This study also examines the literature related to veiling movements, for example, Islamic popular magazines such as Annida or Sabili. The data will be reframed on the basis of authority, gender hierarchy and women’s agency in contemporary Indonesian Islam. Questions on how global media — ideas and technical proliferation — affects local practices will be investigated.

3A portrait of the evolving landscape of Indonesian women veiling was drawn by applying quota sampling methodology, in which the assembled (miniature) sample has the same proportions of women who veil as the entire population in Indonesia, with respect to known characteristics, traits or focused phenomenon. The Indonesian population is divided into exclusive subgroups. As Java’s inhabitants comprise 60 per cent of the population, 60 interviewees were chosen by intersecting gender, generational gap/age, geographical location, educational background, as well as sociocultural, politic and economic stratum. This also applies to Sumatran women, who accounted for 40 of the interviewees. I then identified proportions of these subgroups in the population. These same proportions were applied in the sampling process. Subgroups were levelled based on the intersection of age and generation: women in their adolescence (15–25 years old), mid-career women (26–50 years old) and elderly women (50–years old and above). The intersection of geographical location (urban, sub-urban and rural/village) and of classes (low-, middle-and high-income) were also taken into account. The final intersection focused on educational background (uneducated, educated until elementary–middle-high school, undergraduate and postgraduate). I examine how educational background influences Indonesian women on the issue of the head veil. Finally I ensure that the sample is representative of the entire Indonesian population, highlighting manifold aspects and studying the traits and characteristics noted for each subgroup.

2 - The Price of Intergenerational Freedom

4During the 1998 uprisings against Soeharto, the jilbab left a smile on every woman’s face and butterflies in her stomach. The smile came from witnessing a whole swath of humanity lose its fear and regain its dignity through a piece of cloth. The butterflies came from a rising worry that the Indonesian turmoil may have been both inevitable and too late. If any Indonesian woman did not feel these impulses, she was probably not paying much attention to what was going on around her. This uprising is at its core existential, not political. It is much more Ayu Utami, a prominent novelist, than Tutut (Soeharto’s daughter, who appeared in the media in 1998 wearing the veil). The Soeharto regime had, to one degree or another, stripped women of their right and access to their own bodies. It took away their freedom and did not allow them to develop their full potential. Ayu Utami in her book Saman proclaimed “I am a woman” — I have value, I have aspirations, I want the rights every woman in the world has. The wearing of the veil went hand in hand with the breaking of taboos, which subsequently led to conservative control on women’s bodies through the formulation and ratification of Perda Syariah obligating the wearing of head veils.

5It is novelists such as Ayu Utami and Helvy Tiana Rosa, not political scientists, who best articulate the mood of 1998. Like the documentary films readily available in the streets then, their novels gave a voice to the rebelling woman, defending her rights against patriarchy, be it Ayu breaking taboos with her partially naked body or Helvy, fully clothed, claiming independence against the repressive military regime. “We have endured agonies beyond what any human can bear. When our ferocious anger was raised against the rottenness of oppression and darkness, our revolt was called chaos, and we were called mere thieves. Yet it was nothing but a revolution against despotism, blessed by gods.” This was the clamour of student activists in 1998 when they toppled Soeharto. Yet, a decade later, the FPI, MMI and other Islamists groups (of mostly men) had emerged to control women’s wearing of the jilbab. The liberty no longer belongs to the wearers, the women themselves, but to the observers, to patriarchal eyes. More surprisingly, moral polices are no longer dominated by men — there are more women controlling other women!

6In the two decades since the 1998 Reformation, which allowed the wearing of the jilbab in schools, the number of girls wearing the jilbab has increased steeply. Though the the jilbab movement in Indonesia was born out of a demand for freedom and dignity, many Islamists and ultraconservatives hoped that the movement would prompt the government to enforce a law obligating Muslim women to wear the jilbab on a daily basis — which apparently materialized in many Perda Syariah. Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential dangers of ‘Westernization’ and too much freedom among Indonesian youth, warning that it will make it harder for Indonesians to safeguard their nilai ketimuran (Eastern values). In Indonesia, at present, there are countless young girls who have been forced to wear the jilbab in the name of being kaffah Muslimah. To have a daughter is socially accepted in Indonesia — provided she does not stray from ‘Eastern values’. As discussion of women’s bodies becomes taboo, the number of women who voluntarily wear the jilbab will increase. Yet in our hyper-connected world, Indonesian girls are linked to each other through Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media. The combination of having their bodies treated as a taboo subject and consequently covering themselves from head to toe, yet enjoying a certain freedom in other aspects, has fuelled a complex hybridity of being a modern Muslim woman.

7An interview with a girl living in a pesantren reveals how the clampdown on freedom has increased the stress of those trapped in ultra-conservative circles. Such tales show that behind the gloss of happiness and the neatness of Muslim decorum, conundrums lurk, waiting to be unravelled. Women are now paying the price of the freedom that their predecessors had fought for in 1998 against Soeharto’s surveillance on Muslim conservative groups. Even jeans (the most unforgivable being pencil jeans) have been denounced as a source of evil and a bad influence from the West. Banners promoting the wearing of loose skirts for women are found everywhere in Islamic schools and institutions. No jeans! No tight outfits! Or you will be labelled as liberal, a label that suggests misdeeds, impurity, immorality and a corrupted heart, as if it were an acute disease. Jilbab enforcement has become intergenerational, locking more girls into forced obedience.

8The ‘jingle’ of Shariah law with its cheerful euphemism and endless religious khutbah (sermon) of becoming a better Muslim Woman is materialized through the wearing of the jilbab. It is a charade in which women have to convince themselves and their community that they are good Muslims, that they truly love God, and that they have dignity. Almost all those interviewed experienced sexual harassment when they were unveiled. “I suddenly became aware of how fragile I was when unveiled, and how secure I am now with the jilbab. How peaceful my life is with Allah’s ridlo (blessing),” a veiled student said. Harassment among girls brought on by male pressure is frequent. The little bit of security offered by a piece of cloth has been the only consolation for girls who have traded in their sense of dignity and self. Now even that tradeoff has run thin as apparently even veiled women experience constant harassment in public. With or without the veil, women are cajoled, ticked off, hectored, humiliated and bullied at home or at the workplace.

9The reality is more mundane. Inevitably, at a time of rising jilbab-donning among girls and women across Indonesia, attention has turned from the religious-spiritual path to the birth of a popular culture hawking an array of Islamic merchandise, highly visible at any Islamic institution, malls, hypermarts, even small shops in remote areas. Assorted forms of jilbab are on sale, for example, jilbab Krisdayanti, jilbab Inneke Koesherawaty, or a more local one in Karanganyar called jilbab Ibu Rina. The spiritual hiatus has been filled by the commodification and capitalization of the jilbab and Muslim apparel, indeed of any products with an Arab association, from cosmetics and toothpaste to foods such as kebabs, and quack healing products that exploit the Quran and Hadith.

10The 1998 protesters who toppled Soeharto and menaced the SBY regime are demanding more freedom, fair elections and a crackdown on corruption. The small subversive organizations that have grown in the past 13 years played only a peripheral role compared to the new political parties created after 1998. It is the political party that shapes policies and the direction of Indonesian politics. The small organizations mostly survive as NGOs while the new Muslim organizations survive as CSOs (Civil Social Organization). Neither has promoted a distinct ideology, let alone a coherent one. These organizations choose their own paths concerning the implementation of Shariah-influenced legislation. The CSO-like Muhammadiyah, NU and other small yet important Islamic CSOs promote a more rigid enforcement of the jilbab obligation for Muslim women, particularly in their own affiliated offices and at community gatherings. Such organizations are weak due to the longstanding dearth across Indonesia of autonomous nongovernmental associations serving as intermediaries between individuals and the state. This chronic weakness of civil society suggests that viable democracy or capable leaders for women’s rights in Indonesia will not emerge anytime soon (Linz and Stephan, 1996). The more likely immediate outcome of the current silence surrounding the enforcement of religious-based informal law — which to certain degree is much more powerful than formal law — is a new set of dictators or a single-party regime. Meanwhile the woman’s body remains a battlefield. Some districts, such as Aceh and Padang, imposed rigid enforcement, while other districts are still hesitating whether to join the club or not.

11The creative energy unleashed by frenetic development in the post-1998 years is evident. In 1998, women who donned the jilbab of their own accord were a tiny minority; today almost 80 per cent of veiled women do so in the name of religion, compelled by parents and schools, as well as formal law. Islamic culture mixed with popular culture has created a buzz that makes its rounds through new media such as Twitter and Facebook. At the many Islamic-based universities, Muhammadiyah-based, NU-based or UIN (formerly IAIN), I spent days on end watching the students and talking to them, marvelling above all at the confidence, competence and poise of these girls wearing beautiful, vibrant veils. I had taught at one of these universities for close to 11 years, since I was 24 years old. I knew a lot about the world of these girls’ grandmothers: a slow-moving world where traffic went on by foot along the paddy fields. Girls from the wealthy and aristocratic families rarely went to school. They were closeted at home upon reaching puberty, cut off from the outside world, then married off to other wealthy or aristocratic families. Girls from poor families, on the other hand, enjoyed more freedom compared to their well-off counterparts in luxurious palaces. In any traditional household, girls were forbidden from speaking out to their husbands.

12During the Soeharto era, it was compulsory to send girls to school whether or not their parents agreed, and their numbers rose steeply. Elementary school photos showed boys in red pants and white cotton shirts, and pigtailed girls in a similar uniform of a short red skirt and a white cotton shirt. This applied to both state-owned schools and religious ones such as the Muhammadiyah elementary schools. Only on Friday did the girls have to wear a long blue skirt with a long white shirt and a small kerudung, which were also donned during the national parades commemorating Indonesian Independence. The kerudung represented the Islamic schools, and it was a case of Islamic schools versus state-owned ones. Years later, it has become Muslim girls versus non-Muslim girls in any school, state-owned, Christian or Catholic. The jilbab has become the symbol of Muslim girls, who are supposed to look different from girls of other religions.

13I’ve always been fascinated by the short red skirt, of which I have two pieces. I knew and sang “Indonesia Raya” by heart as a child, probably because it was drummed into our young brains. As a girl I must have recognized, at any rate subconsciously, male superiority. I forced myself to get out of the pengajian, the religious congregation. Like me, girls were only too familiar with the realities of a world where discrimination, gender bias and inequity were commonplace.