When Is a Scarf Just a Scarf?

Nancy Pelosi donned a beautiful headscarf as she visited a mosque during a visit to Syria, signaling her respect for Islamic culture. In so doing, she also kicked off a debate here at home about whether the House Speaker did the right thing in bowing to a custom that to Western women symbolizes oppression.

And it wasn't just the scarf that stirred controversy. Conservatives, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, assailed Pelosi for overstepping her role at a time of war by meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is no friend of the Bush administration. A Wall Street Journal editorial suggested she might have broken the law, ignoring the fact that three Republican members of Congress had just been in Syria the previous weekend. The media coverage of her trip suggested she was more at home with designer head coverings than with the nuances of Middle East diplomacy, especially where Israel is concerned. It surely won't be long before the Republican National Committee incorporates Pelosi's new look into a commercial.   

I happened to be at a small liberal-arts college in a suburb of Chicago when Pelosi's trip was in the news. The television images of her headscarf enlivened the conversation at a luncheon with faculty members. Elmhurst College has a fair number of Muslim students and is actively recruiting in the Muslim neighborhoods of Chicago. In an effort to expand understanding, last November the Muslim Students Association invited female students and faculty to put on a headscarf for a day. It was called A Day in the Life of a Muslim Woman, and it proved so popular that the event's sponsors had to scrimp on the material they used to fashion the traditional head covering, which is called a hijab.

One professor said she didn't realize how much of her identity was tied up in the bangs she'd worn for years. She felt naked, not covered up. Lynn Hill, an art professor, recalled the stares she got when she left the campus and went about her normal routine. "Was it like being black in the South in the wrong neighborhood?" another faculty member asked. For Pelosi, the scarf was intended as an instrument of belonging. But for Muslim women in America and around the world, it's a more complicated matter. The female faculty members gathered around a table in the president's dining room generally agreed that Pelosi had done the right thing in adapting to the culture she found. But there was at least one vigorous dissent from an English professor emeritus who found Pelosi's behavior an affront to feminism on a par with bowing before the queen. Clearly taken aback by the strong negative reaction, the chairman of the English Department, Ann Frank Wake, who normally teaches Victorian literature, sputtered, "Whatever happened to, 'When in Rome, do as the Romans do'?"

Having the top-ranking woman in the U.S. government bow to Muslim custom was perhaps a shock to some Americans. There may even have been some puzzlement in Syria, where hijabs are not ubiquitous on the streets, and the country's president is a secular Baathist. But the practice is broadly accepted, and everybody from Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton to Condi Rice and Madeleine Albright have donned a headscarf at one time or another—despite Western concerns that it is not a symbol consistent with women's rights.

In Iraq, radical Islamic sheiks demand women cover themselves, and men are punished if they look at a woman who is not veiled. "Once everything is stable, we will take it off," says Huda Ahmed, an Iraqi journalist who is in the United States on a fellowship with the International Media Women's Foundation. But for now, it's a matter of self-protection, and there's fear about what restrictions might be next. "There are fliers from Al Qaeda and other groups asking people not to drive cars," says Ahmed. "Iraqi women have driven cars since ever."