Veil, Women And Warfare: Women's Agency In Complex Landscapes

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy.”

“There has to be some form of punishment [for abortion].”

“Women, you have to treat ’em like shit.”

These aren’t soundbites from an old imperial handbook—they’re the words of a United States president, before and after Donald Trump became one. And yet, from Tehran to Rafah, Washington still lectures the world on women’s rights. In the shadow of bombs and broken treaties, it doubles down on the language of liberation—but behind it lies a familiar playbook: colonial feminism dressed up in drone strikes and double standards.

In the long story of empire, fashion has never been just about fabric or style—it’s been a battlefield for power. For women, the question isn’t simply what you wear, but who gets to decide. For Muslim women in particular, clothing like the hijab or purdah has been a potent political symbol for long—first manipulated by colonial powers, now by modern states, the media and even armies.

After all, Western empires didn’t just conquer land—they policed culture. “In colonial Algeria, the French saw hijab and purdah as signifiers of Muslim regression, ‘uncivilisability’ and resistance … French efforts to unveil Muslim women were symbolic gestures: aggressive assertions of Western modernity and cultural ‘superiority’,” says Prof PK Yasser Arafath, who teaches history at Delhi University and co-edited, with G Arunima, The Hijab: Islam, Women and the Politics of Clothing, published by Simon & Schuster India in 2022.

Similarly, Arafath points out, in British-controlled Egypt, the veil was treated as visual proof that Islam oppressed women. And, therefore, that colonial intervention was posited as necessary, even salubrious. This logic helped birth what we now call imperial feminist rhetoric: using the language of women’s rights to advance empire.

Fast-forward to today, and the colonial pattern has stuck around, although in new packaging.

When the United States launched its War on Terror after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, it invoked an image of “oppressed Muslim woman”. That perception has endured despite openly echoing imperialist and missionary tropes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Then it legitimised the invasion of Afghanistan by spreading the rhetoric that rescuing veiled women morally justifies war—another instance of what Arafath poignantly calls “gender bombing”, or using feminist rhetoric to pave the way for armed intervention.

The logic is chillingly familiar: veil equals oppression and bombs equal liberation.

“The West often attempts to legitimise its interventionist policies by appealing to sensitive global concerns—human rights, gender issues, minority rights and so on. In India, they invoke these as well as caste-related issues. But the reality is that they are not genuinely concerned with these matters. When convenient, they align with any group or regime to promote their own vested interests,” says Prof Mohammad Sohrab, who teaches at the Academy of International Studies in Jamia Millia Islamia and specialises in West Asia, North Africa and Southwest Asia, with a focus on identity politics, religion, multiculturalism and public diplomacy.

But there’s a series of twists to this saga: while Western governments claim to stand for women’s rights, their own track records are far from spotless. In recent years, abortion rights have been rolled back in multiple states in the United States. So, the idea that a woman doesn’t have bodily autonomy isn’t just a West Asian problem—it’s happening in the world that calls itself developed. That hypocrisy isn’t missed by those watching from afar.

Besides, the status of women in countries after Western intervention has regressed. In pre-2003 Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, women had access to education (Iraq had the highest literacy rate among Muslim-majority countries and eradicated illiteracy in 1992), employment (women made up close to half the teachers in the 1980s) and political participation, especially in Baghdad and other urban regions.

In the post-invasion breakdown of law and order, sectarian violence against women rose alarmingly in Iraq, often targeting them over their dress or identity. Female literacy dipped to 75 per cent. Conservatism replaced Ba’athist policies, leading to attempts to roll back laws that sought equality in marriage, divorce and inheritance.

But then, under the banner of secularism, democracies like France police what Muslim women wear even in peacetime. Headscarves are banned in schools and government buildings—yet similar Catholic attire, like nuns’ habits, face no restriction. As Prof Sneha Banerjee, assistant professor at the Department of Political Science in the University of Hyderabad says: “We have to name it for what it is: the world is plagued by Islamophobia. Women’s bodies become pawns in larger ideological battles. Consider questions around Muslim women’s freedom—be it compulsory veiling in Afghanistan and Iran to forcing them to take the veil off in France or in Karnataka, India. In a world plagued by Islamophobia, nobody asks women what they want.”

In India, the Hindu right has also tried to “liberate” Muslim women by criminalising instant triple talaq (divorce through three pronouncements made in one sitting)—but only Muslim men face prison time for it. Such moves, though cloaked in feminist concern, have more to do with vilifying a minority than addressing patriarchy.

The trend towards conservatism in many democracies deploys women’s rights as a proxy to assert dominance over the “other”, whether by raising domestic phantoms or imagining inimical forces across one’s borders. This ignores how Muslim women have worked and struggled to reform personal laws through grassroots initiatives and international networks across Asia and Africa, which advocate against polygamy and for legal equality in marriage and divorce.

But such efforts rarely make headlines the way a French hijab-wearing woman does.

Take Iran. In the face of external threats from powers like the United States and Israel, many Iranians have at present united under a banner of national identity, or Iraniyat, rather than religion or ideology. According to Prof AK Mohapatra, who teaches at the Centre for West Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, that unity temporarily puts social issues like the hijab on the back burner—but only temporarily. “When things settle down, the issues will return,” he says.

Iranian women, he points out, have one of the highest literacy rates in the world. They work, study, and move freely—but often under male oversight. “It’s institutionalised,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean there’s no empowerment.” As educated women grow in number, they’re likely to demand more autonomy. The regime, already vulnerable, may eventually have to adapt or risk protests and uprisings.

It’s true that everywhere and anytime the hijab has been discouraged or encouraged, women have turned it into a symbol of resistance, claiming their choice to decide whether to wear it or not. But in both conditions, the woman wearing it is being spoken about—not spoken to. It’s a Catch-22 situation: Women are never seen as dressed just right—they’re always either too covered or not covered enough.

Talmiz Ahmad, former Indian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, speaks with sharp historical insight about how identity politics, tradition and modernity intersect—and how Western powers often weaponise these tensions, especially concerning women in Muslim societies. He reminds that in all of this, context gets erased. Take the Taliban: they are backward-looking, regressive, but who propped them up in the first place?

“Before the Cold War, Islam and the West were allies against communism,” Ahmad says. “But after 9/11, Islam was suddenly viewed as the enemy.”

This shift led to the demonisation of both Islam as a faith and Muslims as a people. Ahmad traces the genealogy of this thinking back to social Darwinism and 19th-century imperial racism, which still subtly animates Western attitudes today. “Non-white resistance,” he said, “is still met with dehumanisation and mass violence—whether in Afghanistan or Gaza.”

Reflecting on the evolution of global discourse since the 1990s, he says, “Globalisation was essentially about valuing professional achievement across borders—movement of talent, ideas and finance.” But this celebration of achievement obscured that fewer than 10 per cent of any population qualified under this metric. The vast majority were left behind.

“These excluded groups became an electoral force,” he says, “leading to the rise of populism, which challenged globalisation by emphasising identity—ethnic, racial, religious or gender-based.” He sees identity politics not as isolated conflicts, but as part of a larger historical shift.

The turning point came with 9/11, which “created a stark confrontation between the West and Islam”. While thinkers like Francis Fukuyama had declared the triumph of liberal democracy, Samuel P Huntington’s idea of a “Clash of Civilisations” was revived after 9/11.

In this context, cultural symbols like women’s clothing are often politicised—by both domestic actors and foreign powers. In Afghanistan, the Taliban’s imposition of strict dress codes stems from traditional tribal norms. In Iran, the hijab symbolised the Islamic Revolution, embodying national dignity and anti-Western defiance.

“In both cases,” Ahmad says, “women are not seen as individuals with agency but as bearers of cultural, religious or national honour.”

He sees similar tensions playing out within India today. As migration and education bring people from different backgrounds into shared spaces, longstanding norms—particularly around gender and caste—collide. “You have three centuries living side by side,” he says: the medieval, the 19th-century traditional, and the modern 21st-century. These frictions often play out through control over women, their dress, mobility, and autonomy.

Besides, fundamentalism, extremism, revivalism aren’t exclusive to Islam—they exist in Christianity, Hinduism and even secular cults in the United States and elsewhere. The problem isn’t religion, but how systems of power use it to dominate—and selectively deploy it for control.

Even dress codes that seem harmless can reveal this imbalance. Consider the way corporate India celebrates Women’s Day or Diwali—calling for “ethnic wear.” Men show up in jeans and a token kurta; women, meanwhile, are expected to pull out a full traditional ensemble. In Banerjee’s words, “It’s always women’s bodies that must perform tradition.”

And tradition, too, is far from fixed. The sari, now seen as a symbol of Indian heritage, was reconfigured through colonial influences—stitched with blouses, pleated in new ways. The idea that there’s a pure, timeless version of “our culture” is a myth. What we wear has always evolved, shaped by power, aspiration and necessity.

Indeed, women can often use codes that impose modest dressing strategically. A headscarf might allow a young girl or woman to attend school or college without family pushback or opposition. It may allow her to move more freely in conservative spaces. For women, clothing is very often a tool of negotiation—another terrain where women try to claim space in patriarchal settings. “Any educated Indian woman you talk to has had such negotiations,” Banerjee says. “You gain some, you lose some—but you keep an eye on the bigger picture.”

So, whether it is Iran enforcing the hijab or France banning it, the result is eerily similar: Muslim women’s autonomy is sidelined to serve a larger political narrative. And while the justifications keep changing—liberation, tradition, security, secularism—the effect is the same. The woman becomes a symbol, not an autonomous subject.

Perhaps it’s time to reframe the conversation. What if we stopped debating whether Muslim women should wear the veil and started asking what they want? What if we trusted that women are capable of making complex choices for themselves? That they don’t need saving. That they don’t face severe oppression when they rise in protest against veiling—like twenty-two-year-old Kurdish-Iranian Mahasa Amini, who died in 2022 after the morality police arrested her for not wearing the hijab as prescribed by the government. Because even if the veil is just fabric, the real question is, who’s holding the scissors?

Pragya Singh is senior assistant editor, Outlook. She is based in Delhi

This article is part of Outlook Magazine's July 11, 2025 issue, Making Bombing Great Again. It appeared in print as 'Veil, Women And Warfare'.