Burqa

The Afghan burqa is routinely presented as the emblem of Islamic dress for women, and it is in fact regional clothing worn by a small minority of the Muslim women of the world.

Not a requirement of Islam

The garment, more precisely the chadaree in Afghanistan, is a full-body covering with a mesh screen over the eyes, and it covers more than the niqab, which leaves the eyes open; the two are constantly confused in English reporting and legislation. Its use in Afghanistan long predates the Taliban, though it was enforced by them from 1996 and again after 2021, and the great majority of Muslim women worldwide have never worn one. Treating it as the standard of Islamic dress mistakes a local custom for a doctrine.

Made the emblem of a foreign war

The burqa has also been used politically from outside. The argument that Western military intervention would liberate Afghan women was made prominently with reference to it, and organisations of Afghan women have objected both to the compulsion at home and to their clothing being turned into the symbol of a war that is not theirs. Both the enforcement and the instrumentalisation treat the women wearing the garment as illustrations of a point made by others rather than as its subjects.

The garment English speakers call the burqa is called the chadaree in Afghanistan, and the mismatch is not pedantry. In Arabic usage burqa often denotes a face veil of a quite different construction, and European legislation described in the press as a burqa ban almost always targets the niqab, which is a different garment worn by different populations. A word has been borrowed, misapplied and then legislated on.

The Afghan chadaree is a single pleated garment falling from a fitted cap over the whole body, with an embroidered mesh grille at the eyes. It is a regional and largely urban form, not a requirement of Islam as such, and its social history is the opposite of what is usually assumed. In the early twentieth century it was associated with respectable town families and with the ability to keep women out of agricultural labour, so it functioned partly as a marker of status; rural women, who worked, generally did not wear it.

The reform attempt is a set piece. King Amanullah and Queen Soraya travelled to Europe in 1928 and the queen appeared unveiled; photographs circulated at home, contributed to a religious and tribal revolt, and the king was overthrown the following year. Later governments, including the communist one, promoted unveiling with mixed and often counterproductive results.

Under Taliban rule from 1996 the covering of women was made compulsory and enforced by punishment, and comparable requirements were reimposed after 2021.

Between those periods many Afghan women continued to wear it and many did not, and treating the garment as simply imposed or simply chosen misdescribes both. What can be said plainly is that when its use has been compelled, by either direction of policy, women have paid for the decision.