Abstract

The material reality of the veil in Islam provides an opportunity for examining the metaphoric veil first described by W.E.B. Dubois. Wearing a veil opens a cultural dialogue in the U.S. by bridging both common misconceptions concerning gender stereotypes that Westerners impose on Islam and misunderstandings of U.S. conflation of Muslim and Arab culture. In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Dubois describes a veil between blacks and whites, an idea that Langston Hughes also discusses in his poetry. Dubois expresses the idea of “two-ness” in an individual, in which two souls and two generators of ideas live in one body. “Two-ness”, the veil, and double consciousness suggest deeper symptoms of Western intolerance that divide culture from within. U.S. culture wears 'veils' unconsciously by keeping itself largely ignorant of the distinction between the meanings of ‘Arab’ and ‘Islamic,’ and imposing “veils” on Muslim practices, separating Muslim from American. By unpacking how conscious use of the veil relates to human struggle within the world to identify and separate specific cultures, I will sketch the Arab American experience of “two-ness” in the U.S and compare it to a poem on the veil that I wrote describing my experience with this “two-ness” here in America.