SIGNATURE WORK
CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION 2022

This paper examines the implications of a gendered middle-class consciousness amongst Pakistani women and how they understand the interrelated themes of modesty, piety, morality, and kinship ties. Using a mixed-methods approach, this project engages with in-depth interviews of college-educated middle-class Sunni Muslim women from Lahore to introduce the concept of modesty and how it shapes women’s dressing and veiling practices. In this article, I critically evaluate how veiling and unveiling women often modify their dressing etiquette in different social settings, changing their method of veiling or choosing to veil even if the headscarf is not part of their routine wear. By placing my research within contemporary scholarship on the new middle-class in South Asia and Muslim women’s piety, I consider how Muslim women negotiate and embody individual ethics of self-regulation through their distinct dressing and veiling choices. In addition, I also explore the ways in which the burqa and the niqāb, non-native methods of veiling, attain significance within the religious framework of present-day Pakistani society. Analyzing contemporary Sunni tafsīr as a source of authoritative religious knowledge, I demonstrate how exegetes from Pakistan construct a comprehensive hierarchy of modest dressing etiquette for Muslim women that values burqa, niqāb, and ʿabāya over older, traditional methods of veiling including the dupattā or a čāddar.