The Islamic hijab occupies a contested space at the intersection of gender, religion, identity, and sustainability. For some women, it is an expression of faith and spiritual discipline; for others, it represents cultural belonging, personal dignity, or resistance to the commodification of the female body. Yet in much of the Western public imagination, the hijab continues to be portrayed through a narrow vocabulary of oppression, and exclusion. This perception raises a fundamental question: who has the authority to define women’s liberation, and why are some forms of dress celebrated as individual choice while others are treated as evidence of subordination?
Reconsidering the hijab requires more than defending a religious garment. It requires a critical examination of the cultural assumptions through which women, especially Muslim women, are understood. It also invites us to connect Islamic ethical principles with contemporary debates about sustainable consumption and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Rather, it insists that Muslim women must be recognized as thinking, choosing, and diverse human beings.
Public controversies surrounding restrictions on religious dress, including debates and protests in Azerbaijan, illustrate how the hijab can become a battleground over national identity, secularism, religious freedom, and women’s rights. The deeper problem emerges when Western perceptions treat the Muslim woman as someone who must be rescued, while overlooking her own voice. Genuine emancipation means protecting women’s ability to make meaningful choices without intimidation and discrimination.
Edward Said’s Orientalism offers a powerful framework for understanding this imbalance. Said demonstrated how representations of the East have often been constructed through systems of knowledge that portray Eastern societies as irrational, static, and inferior to an allegedly rational and progressive West. Within this framework, the veiled Muslim woman becomes an easily recognizable image of cultural difference, while the value system and worldview shaping her life disappear from the context. Decolonizing this perception means questioning who produces dominant narratives, whose experiences are considered authoritative, and why the clothing of Muslim women attracts such disproportionate scrutiny. A genuinely emancipatory perspective begins by listening to women themselves.
The Abaya in Damascus and the reflection of a German female scientist
One of my most meaningful memories comes from Damascus, where I encountered a German female scientist who wore an Islamic abaya. Reflecting on the experience, she conveyed a striking idea: wearing the abaya made her feel liberated, as though she were no longer being treated as a commodity. She commented “It was a liberating experience”.
I remember the substance of her reflection because it challenged the assumptions that often dominate debates about women’s clothing. For her, the abaya was not simply a garment prescribed by a religious or cultural tradition. It offered a different relationship with her own body, appearance, and place in society. She could move through public space without feeling that her attractiveness had to be constantly displayed, evaluated, and marketed.
In consumer societies, women are frequently encouraged to understand empowerment through appearance: the perfect skin, the fashionable outfit, the youthful body, and the endless pursuit of beauty products. Advertising can transform insecurities into commercial opportunities, presenting consumption as a route to confidence and social acceptance. The paradox is that a woman may be told she is free because she can display her body yet feel pressured to conform to increasingly demanding beauty standards. The German scientist story also reminds us that the meaning of clothing cannot be understood through appearance alone. A garment that an outsider perceives as restrictive may be experienced by its wearer as a dignifying, spiritually meaningful, or liberating experience. Respecting women’s agency requires making room for these interpretations rather than imposing a predetermined narrative.
Modesty and the Ethics of Sustainable Living
Islamic modesty can also be understood through the lens of sustainability. The Qur’anic ethical tradition emphasizes moderation, dignity, and the avoidance of extravagance. These principles offer a useful starting point for questioning the culture of excessive consumption that characterizes parts of the contemporary fashion and beauty industries.
For some women, adopting hijab and modest dress simplifies daily decisions about clothing and appearance. A consistent style may reduce the pressure to follow every new trend, purchase multiple outfits for social approval, or spend considerable time preparing for public appearances. Some may also choose to reduce their use of cosmetics, saving money, time, packaging, and the resources associated with products. A sustainability-oriented interpretation of modesty therefore focuses on principles rather than appearances: buying fewer garments, choosing durable fabrics, repairing and reusing clothing, resisting short-lived trends, and valuing personal dignity over commercial status. Such practices can support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12, which calls for responsible consumption and production.
Edward Said’s critical legacy encourages us to examine how representations of cultural difference are produced and normalized. A useful way of expressing this critical method is to make the familiar unfamiliar and the unfamiliar familiar: to question what dominant society takes for granted, while approaching unfamiliar practices with curiosity rather than fear. Applied to the hijab, this means asking why some forms of female self-presentation are recognized as empowerment, while religious modesty is so often interpreted as submission. Why is the choice to invest in cosmetic procedures, designer clothing, or beauty products commonly framed as personal freedom, whereas choosing an abaya may be treated as evidence that a woman lacks autonomy?
Making the familiar unfamiliar also means examining Western beauty culture with the same critical attention sometimes directed toward Islamic traditions. Who benefits when women are persuaded that they must continually modify their appearance? What economic interests sustain these expectations? And why should liberation be measured by a woman’s willingness to participate in a particular market?
The ethical resources of Islam nevertheless offer a compelling basis for celebrating human diversity. The Qur’an states:
“O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another.” (Qur’an 49:13)
The verse presents human difference as an opportunity for mutual knowledge rather than a justification for hierarchy. Similarly, the Qur’anic principle that there is no compulsion in religion (2:256) provides an important foundation for reflecting on freedom of conscience.
Against this background, it is paradoxical when societies that celebrate individual liberty restrict Muslim women from wearing hijab in educational institutions or workplaces. Recent developments in Azerbaijan illustrate this tension: restrictions introduced through school clothing regulations have generated protests and concerns about access to education and freedom of religious expression.
The Fashion Industry, Women’s Commodification, and the SDGs
The contemporary fashion industry provides a revealing lens through which to examine the relationship between gender and sustainable development. Clothing is a legitimate human need and a powerful form of cultural expression. Yet the commercial system surrounding fashion can turn identity into a continuously expanding market, encouraging people to purchase new products to maintain social status or satisfy manufactured desires. However, the environmental consequences are substantial. The United Nations Environment Programme identifies unsustainable production and consumption as major drivers of pollution, resource depletion, and ecological damage. Research on textiles and apparel also highlights the industry’s connections with water use, waste, labor conditions, and multiple Sustainable Development Goals.
Women are positioned on both sides of this system. They may be targeted by advertising that links beauty to purchasing power, while many women workers experience insecure employment and poor working conditions within global garment supply chains. The OECD has emphasized that women can be disproportionately affected by unsustainable production and can also become important agents of change through more responsible consumption and decision-making.
Against this backdrop, Islamic modesty can contribute an alternative ethical perspective. The Qur’an warns against extravagance (7:31) and encourages moderation in human conduct. These principles resonate with sustainable development when translated into practical choices: purchasing fewer items, extending the life of garments, choosing responsibly produced fabrics, avoiding waste, and rejecting the idea that personal worth depends on constantly changing one’s appearance. It also invites businesses and policymakers to move beyond symbolic sustainability claims toward fair labor, transparent supply chains, circular textile systems, and responsible marketing.
The deeper question is whether economic progress should depend on continually manufacturing dissatisfaction—or whether prosperity can be built around human well-being, meaningful work, and respect for planetary limits.
The hijab debate ultimately concerns more than fabric, fashion, or religious identity. It exposes competing understandings of freedom and development. My memory of the German scientist in Damascus remains meaningful because it reveals a possibility too often overlooked: a woman may experience modest dress not as a denial of herself, but as a way of reclaiming herself from expectations she finds burdensome. Decolonizing perceptions of hijab means making space for these diverse experiences. It means examining the cultural authority behind our judgments, recognizing Muslim women’s voices, and refusing to confuse visible difference with the absence of freedom.
It also means asking a difficult question of consumer society: can we celebrate women’s empowerment while an enormous commercial apparatus profits from their insecurities and encourages the endless consumption of beauty products and fashion?
Islamic ethics of modesty, moderation, and human dignity offer resources for answering that question. Sustainable development, likewise, must protect women’s agency while challenging the economic and cultural structures that commodify their bodies. A truly inclusive future will not require every woman to dress alike, believe alike, or understand liberation in the same way.
