Author(s)

Gehad Abdelal

Department of Philosophy, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt.

The veil is one of the essential phenomena in the Islamic world. Many Islamic and western feminist studies analyzed the veil. The Islamic feminism considers the veil as a free choice and a representation of the Islamic identity. On the other hand, one group of the feminism of the West counts the veil as oppression and a threat to the western modernity. However, both studies tackle the veil issue from the framework of free choice and identity without enough analyzing to the epistemological framework that surrounds it. Therefore, this paper investigates the epistemic oppression of the veil in the Islamic world by examining the claim of “the veil is a free choice”. The study will result in three situations of re-situatedness to the right-wing, external re-situatedness and re-situatedness to contrary epistemic system. These outcomes could refute the claim that the veil could be analyzed through the free choice structure, whether it is oppression or a gift.

Veil, Epistemic Oppression, Situatedness, Free Choice, Islamic World, Fundamental Discourse

Abdelal, G. (2017) The Epistemic Oppression of the Veil. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 5, 1-12. doi: 10.4236/jss.2017.59001.