Who says you can’t be pious and fashionable? Throughout the Muslim world, women have found creative ways of expressing their personality through the way they dress. Headscarves can be modest or bold, while brand-name clothing and accessories are part of a multimillion-dollar ready-to-wear industry that caters to pious fashion from head to toe. In this lively snapshot, Elizabeth Bucar takes us to Iran, Turkey, and Indonesia and finds a dynamic world of fashion, faith, and style.
“Brings out both the sensuality and pleasure of sartorial experimentation.” ―Times Literary Supplement
“I defy anyone not to be beguiled by [Bucar’s] generous-hearted yet penetrating observation of pious fashion in Indonesia, Turkey and Iran… Bucar uses interviews with consumers, designers, retailers and journalists…to examine the presumptions that modest dressing can’t be fashionable, and fashion can’t be faithful.” ―Times Higher Education
“Bucar disabuses readers of any preconceived ideas that women who adhere to an aesthetic of modesty are unfashionable or frumpy.” ―Robin Givhan, Washington Post
“A smart, eye-opening guide to the creative sartorial practices of young Muslim women… Bucar’s lively narrative illuminates fashion choices, moral aspirations, and social struggles that will unsettle those who prefer to stereotype than inform themselves about women’s everyday lives in the fast-changing, diverse societies that constitute the Muslim world.” ―Lila Abu-Lughod, author of Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress

Bucar, Liz

Religion & Spirituality

Harvard University Press

Stealing My Religion: Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation

"Lively in style and backed by solid, unobtrusive scholarship In her call for responsibility in borrowing, Liz Bucar singles out for criticism forms of exploitation close to her own identity as privileged and religiously unaffiliated." -Jonathan Benthall, Times Literary Supplement "So finely written, so intelligent and fair, and laced with such surprising discoveries that it deserves a reader's full attention As the act of walking a religious pilgrimage does invite greater self-awareness Stealing My Religion is now an essential part of that worthy endeavor." -Kurt Caswell, Los Angeles Review of Books "With interpretive subtlety and ethical vision, Liz Bucar explores the moral risk of intercultural theft. Stealing My Religion is a powerful intervention by a leading scholar of religion into the illiberal results of everyday religious exploitation. Highly recommended." -Kathryn Lofton, author of Consuming Religion Liz Bucar unpacks the ethical dilemmas of a messy form of cultural appropriation: the borrowing of religious doctrines, rituals, and dress for political, economic, and therapeutic reasons. Does borrowing from another's religion harm believers? Who can consent to such borrowings? Bucar sees religion as an especially vexing arena for appropriation debates because faiths overlap and imitate each other and because diversity within religious groups scrambles our sense of who is an insider and who is not. Indeed, if we are to understand why some appropriations are insulting and others benign, we have to ask difficult philosophical questions about what religions really are. Stealing My Religion guides us through three revealing case studies-the hijab as a feminist signal of Muslim allyship, a study abroad "pilgrimage" on the Camino de Santiago, and the commodification of yoga in the West. We see why the Vatican can't grant Rihanna permission to dress up as the pope, yet it's still okay to roll out our yoga mats. Reflecting on her own missteps, Bucar comes to a surprising conclusion: the way to avoid religious appropriation isn't to borrow less but to borrow more-to become deeply invested in learning the roots and diverse meanings of our enthusiasms.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Alternative Medicine

For many Westerners, the Islamic veil is the ultimate sign of women’s oppression. But Elizabeth Bucar’s take on clothing worn by Muslim women is a far cry from this older feminist attitude toward veiling. She argues that modest clothing represents much more than social control or religious orthodoxy. Today, headscarves are styled to frame the head and face in interesting ways, while colors and textures express individual tastes and challenge aesthetic preconceptions. Brand-name clothing and accessories serve as conveyances of social distinction and are part of a multimillion-dollar ready-to-wear industry. Even mainstream international chains are offering lines especially for hijabis. More than just a veil, this is pious fashion from head to toe, which engages with a range of aesthetic values related to moral authority, consumption, and selfhood.
Writing in an appealing style based on first-hand accounts, Bucar invites readers to join her in three Muslim-majority nations as she surveys how women approach the question “What to wear?” By looking at fashion trends in the bustling cities of Tehran, Yogyakarta, and Istanbul―and at the many ways clerics, designers, politicians, and bloggers try to influence Muslim women’s choices―she concludes that pious fashion depends to a large extent on local aesthetic and moral values, rather than the dictates of religious doctrine.
Pious Fashion defines modesty in Islamic dress as an ever-changing social practice among Muslim women who―much like non-Muslim women―create from a range of available clothing items and accessories styles they think will look both appropriate and attractive.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bucar, Liz. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bucar, Liz

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bucar, Liz. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress

Stealing My Religion: Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation

Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress