Revisiting The Tesettür Question In Muslim West Africa: Racial And Affective Topography Of The Veil In Turkish Discourses

Document Type

Journal Article

Role

Author

Journal Title

Culture and Religion

Volume

24

Issue

2

First Page

182

Last Page

204

Publication Date

2024

Abstract

This article studies the discourses about West African Muslim women’s veiling practices that do not conform to social expectations around tesettür (veil/veiling) in Turkey. It combines ethnographic research on the Islamic schools run by Turkish Naqshbandi communities in Dakar, Senegal in 2017 with the analysis of humanitarian discourses circulated by the members of the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH İnsani Yardım Vakfı) in the context of Muslim West Africa. The paper historicises the tesettür question by situating it within the broader women question of the late Ottoman and Turkish modernisation, and by unravelling its entanglements with the colonial library in West Africa. Genealogically, it traces the affects of male puzzlement stemming from West African Muslim women’s perceived non-conformity to tesettür to Ibn Battuta’s travel writings. Having mapped this complex discursive topography, the article explores the tailoring training program developed by a Konya-based Muslim NGO and the intimate technologies adopted by a Turkish female teacher for the transmission of the affect of shame to her Senegalese students. Despite their common gender politics, Sufi pedagogies differ from humanitarian and development projects in their approach to the tesettür question and strategies to address it. The difference lies in their affective registers and processes.

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