Headgear, not weaponry, marked the deepest cultural boundary for Muslim armies

Evidence

That Muslim armies use modern equipment and weaponry may be ascribed to necessity, and there are ancient traditions declaring it lawful to imitate the infidel enemy in order to defeat him. But that the officers of these armies wear uniforms and, more remarkably, visored and peaked caps cannot be so justified, and has a significance at once cultural and symbolic. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1142

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Connects to the motif in the earlier immodesty/complaints article and to general work on how dress marks cultural identity boundaries.
• SEED: A possible angle: why hats, more than guns or uniforms, became the flashpoint of cultural modernization — dress as the last symbolic redoubt.

Related

• Military uniforms carried symbolic weight that weapons did not (similarity 0.88)
• Turkey’s hat reform ended the last non-Western element of military dress (similarity 0.79)