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ABSTRACT
A seller’s sincerity is important for the viability of his/her business. This claim is substantiated ethnographically through a study of the challenges fashionably veiled designer-entrepreneurs face in Turkey. Their fashionable veil raises suspicion. Their critics claim they are not as devout as they want to appear. The performance of their piety through public-facing social media further nourishes mistrust. Their critics think this is driven by pragmatic calculation rather than religiosity. They respond to this criticism, arguing for the sincerity of their piety and striving to make their businesses work. The ethical dimension in any act of selling, as either reality or expectation, is hence brought to the foreground. Simultaneously, by emphasising the importance of the digital in the proclamation or, on the contrary, trivialisation of faith, a line of thinking that connects sincerity, piety and the material in the discussion of Islam is updated through the addition of the (im)material.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Luke Heslop and Jamie Cross for organising the workshop ‘Anthropology of Sale’ at the University of Edinburgh and for offering much-appreciated feedback on this article. Different versions were also presented at University of Oxford and Babeş-Bolyai University and I am grateful for the useful comments I received on these occasions. Many thanks to Daniel Miller and Elisabetta Costa for helping me better understand social media. And finally, I would like to thank Ethnos’ editors and reviewers for their time and expertise.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The fieldwork on which this article is based was conducted between 2012 and 2014 in Istanbul.
2. This is a pseudonym. In accordance with this strategy of hiding the identity of my main interlocutor, I do not include in this paper photos of her social media postings.
3. Recent developments in fashionable veiling in Turkey are featured on popular platforms such as Yeşil Topuklar (Green Heels) (https://www.instagram.com/yesiltopuklar/) and Tesettür Giyim (Islamically appropriate clothing) (https://www.instagram.com/tesetturgiyimcom/; http://www.tesetturgiyim.com/). The following are the Instagram accounts of popular headscarf-wearing digital entrepreneurs: https://www.instagram.com/gonulkolatsusam/?hl=tr; https://www.instagram.com/aidaustun; https://www.instagram.com/studionishh/; https://www.instagram.com/hulyaslan/; https://www.instagram.com/explore/locations/266741361/hayalen-tasarim-ve-moda-moda-evi/; https://www.instagram.com/tuaykaraca/; https://www.instagram.com/kuaybegider/?hl=tr; https://www.instagram.com/susutown/?hl=tr; https://www.instagram.com/demetyildizcom/; https://www.instagram.com/aybikestil/?hl=tr).
4. This designer, and other headscarf-wearing women I encountered in Istanbul, distinguishes between being covered (kapalı) and being veiled (tesettürlü). Tesettür means veiling in Turkish. This difference can be explained with reference to the clothes these women wear. A covered woman covers her head and wears conservative dress, which conceals the flesh almost entirely, leaving open the face, hands and ankles. However, she may not wear a piece of outwear in the public space, donning during the summer, for example, a long tunic, without any extra-layer on top of it. She may tie her shawl in such a way that the neck is partially visible. She may prefer fashionable colourful garments and may wear make-up and high heels. In contrast, a veiled woman covers her head and wears different forms of outwear in the public space, the most common being pardösü, a full-length, loose-fitting overcoat. In general, the veiled woman’s form of covering is more austere, but not necessarily less stylish. Gonca describes herself as being covered, however without implying that she is less religious than a veiled woman. She points out that, when it comes to the religious duty of veiling, this is all she can do, which is better than not covering at all. This resonates with Fadil and Fernando’s point (Citation2015: 70) that ‘the fact that a commitment to a particular norm is often imperfectly achieved does not refute the importance attached to that norm.’ In this article, I use the category ‘headscarf-wearing woman’ to refer to both covered and veiled women, and the categories of ‘veiled woman’ and ‘covered woman’ if my interlocutors labelled themselves as such in our conversations.
5. In the 1980s, the Islamic revivalism movement promoted an understanding of veiling that marks trousers as religiously inappropriate, in reference to a hadith in which the Prophet curses the man who dresses like a woman and the woman who dresses like a man.
6. Ümraniye is a district on the Asian side of Istanbul and is considered to be conservative.
7. Bağdat Caddesi is a renowned commercial avenue on the Asian side of Istanbul. It is considered a secular area. Gonca opened her boutique in the spring of 2014, one of the few boutiques that offered clothes for the headscarf-wearing women in this part of the city.
8. Âlâ, the first Islamic fashion magazine that appeared in Turkey, was launched in the summer of 2011.
9. The core group is relatively small, somewhere between 15 and 20 designer-entrepreneurs, most of them living in Istanbul. My estimation is based on popularity on social media and regular presence at events organised by Islamic lifestyle and fashion magazines, major retailers and established clothing companies.
10. The older form of veiling, çarşaf, which today is worn by a small number of religious conservative women—many belonging to the Ismailağa community—is only occasionally referred to in these debates. It is considered either a non-modern form of veiling or the purest and the most devout form of veiling.
11. In the more conservative Sunni understanding, the all-enveloping çarşaf is the proper form of veiling.
12. The notion of nefis comes from Arabic (n-f-s) and refers to breath, the self or the soul. In Turkish, it also connotes carnal desires. Gonca uses the notion of nefis to introduce the agency of bodily and material desires. The struggle to resist these desires is in itself an ethical practice. Failure to resist these desires will be accounted for in the afterlife.