Habitual veiling and custom-based veiling both miss its ethical-training function

Evidence

Hajja Nur’s statement above suggests that the attitude of those women who wear the veil out of habit is not dissimilar from those who regard the veil as a local custom (similar to regional styles of clothing, eating habits, and so on). In making this observation, she is referring to a widely known argument put forward by Egyptian intellectuals that veiling is not so much a divine injunction as it is a continuation of regional customs, practiced by women in Arabia at the advent of Islam, that has mistakenly become enshrined as a religious edict. Hajja Nur faults both of these attitudes (the one that regards veiling to be a regional custom, and the other that unthinkingly reproduces the tradition of veiling) for ignoring how the practice of veiling is an integral part of an entire manner of existence through which one learns to cultivate the virtue of modesty in all aspects of one’s life. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 371

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the customary-versus-religious acts distinction central to mosque participants’ self-understanding.
• XREF: Connects to the immodesty moral-panics article — the veil as contested site of meaning across eras. — connects to: Veiling an object produces sublimity while revealing it risks de-sublimation — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 459