THE REVOLT OF THE VEILED WOMEN

Hokitika Guardian, 7 September 1928, Page 4

THE REVOLT OF THE VEILED WOMEN

Oty A MOSLEM TRAVELLER, «lio recently. toured the East).

During a journey of over 20,(50 mijcs in the Moslem East from which I have just returned the one great fact that I, noticed was the revolt of the entire womanhood of Islam against seclusion.

In Turkey this agitation appeared first some fifteen years ago. Lifting the veil was then a penal offence. To-day in the streets of Constantinople or Angora the women of New Turkey not only have no pfirdah hut dress in the most up-to-date Paris styles. But for the heavy darkening of eyelids and a thin scarf wrapped on their heads the Turkish woman and the English woman are as like as two peas.

In Syria, too, the wave is coming, and only a few months ago the Women’s Party, at Damascus decided to march through the streets without any, veils. The police interfered.

The doctors of Moslem law in Palestine had a similar experience, when two women of a respectable household, having discarded their facial covering, openly defied the Mufti of Haifa and challenged the theologians to show them the verse in the Koran wherein the covering of faces was enjoined upon the faithful. In that town public opinion was so hostile that a mob attacked these women and they had to run for safety.

The position in Arabia is totally different. There tribal customs do not favour any agitation of this sort. But in Iraq, for instance, women of the hqtter classes have hut nominal purdah. In the streets of Teheran, the Persian capital, between 5 and 7 p.m. you may seo Hu? 'Persian women onvelop'nl in their long black relies, - wii’the face only partly covered—or 'he' l I r.nv shaded—by a sort of thin straw bund. This is, constantly lifted as occasion demands in shopping or sneakin'* to the tramway-car comli" t'.r. Recently in India women have sc’ up a definite ole"m to appear unveilo . in public. The -‘w-Pr-eum of Hbr I in her presidential address ie the Women’s Conference, spoke on nothin'' but the evils of purdah, and proved beyond doubt that the. time had come to remove that impediment to the regeneration of Indian womanhood. An additional impulse is given to this by the appearance of Queen Suriya without a veil during her European tour.