ABSTRACT
Veiling largely disappeared during the Soviet period, but after the Central Asian republics became independent in 1991, many Central Asian women began practicing new forms of veiling. This chapter explores both trends, asking what unveiling meant to Central Asian women in the 1920s and what veiling means to them in the 2000s. Women who belonged to Central Asia's urban and agricultural Uzbek and Tajik ethnic groups always wore headscarves to cover their hair, and when going outside their homes, covered themselves head-to-toe in a long veiling robe, paranji. In the mid-1920s, as the Soviet Union's Communist Party was spreading its plans for social and economic transformation across Central Asia, early twentieth-century critiques of hijab as an obstacle to progress expanded into politicized condemnations of veiling and seclusion. Central Asian Muslim women articulate many reasons for veiling, but their freedom to veil is often circumscribed by external factors, such as international concerns about terrorism and governing regimes' concerns about religious extremism.
