Hijab Practices: Everyday Life of Muslim Women in Surabaya

Berhijab (to wear a veil) is the custom of the majority of Muslim women in Indonesia. In the Qur’ān, Surah An-Nur verse 31 says women should cover their heads and their chests and Surah Al Ahzab verse 59 says women should drape their cloaks over themselves. However, the Qur’ān does not indicate exactly how the headscarf should be worn nor does it prescribe what colour or what form it should be, whether it should cover just the head or also the chest or even more of the body. Consequently, there are many variations in the way that women wear a hijab in Indonesia and elsewhere in the world for that matter. In my PhD research, carried out in the city of Surabaya, the second biggest city in Indonesia, I found various Muslim women’s groups uniting themselves into groups whose members have adopted the same hijab style. For instance, the Kemayu Academy members follow the developments in global fashion and therefore follow the trends in their hijab practices. They interpret the Quranic prescription liberally; they might even display their hijab preferences in fashion shows as their main economic activity. The members of another group, the Academic Muslim Women’s Group, follow a more literal interpretation of Qur’ān and translate the text directly into contemporary hijab styles, or they link their hijab style to certain Islamic political convictions. There is also the Hijabers Mom Community whose members combine global fashion trends with regard to hijab with strict Islamic rules. Members of Nurul Faizah combine hijab styles with local traditional dress (for example, Javanese traditional clothing). Together, I call these widely differing styles we come across in Indonesia, and there are more, ‘hijab practices’, which I define as the common denominator by which to denote the different ways in which Muslim women in Indonesia dress and give meaning to their hijab. To understand hijab practices properly, it is important to make the distinction between different styles, because they do actually communicate different things. Different styles communicate the ways in which women think about their religion and how they want to shape their religious practices and activities in everyday life in a variety of contexts. These activities include work, academic activities, social life in the public sphere, leisure, interpretation of religious beliefs and aspects of indoor, private life (Kloos, 2015). In this regard, I also include the issues of class, global fashion, consumerism and the use of social media as part and parcel of everyday activities, because they are all essential to a good understanding of the hijab practices I address. In short, the aim of my study is to describe and analyse the diversity of hijab practices in Indonesia, and in the city of Surabaya in particular, and to explain this diversity in terms of the various choices which women make. Muslim women’s opinions and activities and the position of women in society constitute an integral part of the general dynamics of Islam in contemporary Indonesia and are an important angle from which to study these dynamics. By choosing this perspective, I can explore various modes of agency of women and the situations in which this agency is revealed.