| Popis: |
As Leila Ahmed pointed out, European colonial discourse on Islam and the Muslims adopted the language of feminism in the 19th century and came to include a clear thesis that Islam was primordially oppressive to women, and such customs as veiling or segregation of women were regarded as markers of backwardness of Islamic societies. Sharing this viewpoint, for the purpose of investigating the case of Imperial Russian discourse on Central Asia (Russian Turkestan), Russian colonial narratives on Sart women and their veil in the second half of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century are examined in this paper. One of the interesting findings here is that, according to A.P. Khoroshkhin, V.P. Nalivkin and M.V. Nalivkina, Sart women at that time had triple (or three layered) veils, i. e., firstly ro'mol, secondly durra, and finally paranji with chimmat. Ro'mol, which used to be put on even at home and obviously have Islamic meaning, survived until today as a part of neutral traditional Uzbek clothing (as "good veil" in the context of the official discourse of contemporary Uzbekistan), while in the Soviet period paranji with chimmat was the target of the harsh attack of unveiling campaign in 1920s and then almost disappeared from public everyday life. Russian colonizers were sometimes curious about Sart women's beauty and coquetry, as well as changes of their attitude influenced by the Russians in Central Asia, but generally they regarded that Sart women were the most oppressed, unhappy and miserable women, not only among Russian Muslims like Tatars or Kazakhs, but also among all Muslims in the world. For them the thick coat-like veil paranji with black net face cover chimmat was very visible symbol of Sart women's unhappiness which Sart men's traditional culture--Islam and patriarchy--enforced. |
