The Tales of a Modern Muslimah

My husband sent me an article about a Saudi woman who is divorcing her husband after 30 years of marriage because he saw her face.

A 50-year-old Saudi woman asked for divorce after her husband lifted her face veil while she was sleeping, local press reported.

For 30 years, the wife said she never showed her face to her husband in conformity with the tradition of her native village near the south western Saudi city of Khamis Mushayt.

“After all these years, he tries to commit such a big mistake,” the wife told Saudi newspaper Al-Riyadh, after she left the house in total disbelief.

She said the husband apologized and promised never to do it again.

Another woman in the article didn’t show her face to her husband or children. I didn’t even know that there were women who did this. The niqabis I have encountered usually reveal their faces around their husbands and other women. I’m not quite sure what to say. I’m not going to give my knee jerk reaction to the article. I’m trying to remain a cultural relativist about this. I mean the practice doesn’t actually harm the woman, she wants her face to remain covered and who am I to find this practice wrong? I could say that this practice could be a way of controlling women’s sexuality but people say that about hijab as well. So I’m torn. I have to be honest and say that I find this repulsive in a way, especially when children can’t see their mother’s face. At the same time, I felt that the article focused mostly on what the husbands “lost”. There was more of a focus on men not being able to see their wives faces than on the autonomy of women to choose to cover their faces. There wasn’t any discussion about how beneficial this was to women and very little discussion on why they chose to do it besides “tradition”. While I was glad that the article pointed out that this practice isn’t obligatory among Muslim women I didn’t like the way it was done: “The practice of always remaining veiled, even in front of your husband, is not an Islamic practice but a very old tradition practiced by a minority of people in Gulf countries.” All veiling, including hijab, predates Islam. All veiling is an “old tradition”. This is not to negate what the Qur’an says about veiling. However, if we’re honest, the Qur’an is reinforcing a tradition that already existed in the Middle East for centuries. Why is this historical bit mentioned in this article? Is it because this practice denies husbands the opportunity to see their wives? Maybe I’m over analyzing but I did find it curious.