Wearing the Niqab

Reviews / Votes

Wearing the Niqab is marketed as the first in-depth examination of niqabi women in the USA, and to my knowledge this is true. It would work well in undergraduate courses on religion and media, showing students how to critically analyze media images and content. It also offers a good addition to the abundant scholarship on Islam and gender, making it well suited for a variety of religion courses. * Sociology of Religion * Anna Piela does what almost no one else has: she listens to the women who actually wear face veils (niqabis) in the West and takes what they tell her seriously. ... Scholars and students of Islamic studies, religion and secularism, and gender studies could all benefit from this text. * Journal of Contemporary Religion * In Islamophobic cultural settings, women who wear niqab are often construed as threats to be neutralized or problems to be solved. An act of religious or spiritual significance is overly politicized. Hostile observers erase entirely the spiritual and social experience of the niqab-wearer. With her excellent ethnographic research and her sympathetic analysis, Anna Piela has shed much-needed light on Muslim niqab-wearing women. Her book is of great value to a wide variety of scholarly and lay readers, and I strongly recommend it. * Shabana Mir, American Islamic College, USA * A landmark study, providing a rich and nuanced examination of Niqab-wearing women in the global north and their diverse, complex, and critical engagements with religious tradition and practice, secular society and liberal discourse, community and public life, racism, and the racialisation of Islam. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand women's niqab journeys. * Line Nyhagen, Loughborough University, UK * Piela uses interviews with British and American niqabis to address a lacuna in Islamic and fashion studies and in doing so finds important insights about the role of agency, authority, race, and identity in religious covering. * Liz Bucar, Northeastern University, USA * Women who wear the niqab are often spoken about...but rarely 'spoken to'. Amid the noise of ill-informed and opinionated media debate, at last we have a scholarly book that gives Muslim women an opportunity to articulate their own perspectives, written with intelligence and sensitivity. * Sophie Gilliat-Ray, Cardiff University, UK *