{"id":35548,"date":"2026-02-12T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/videos\/the-new-veils-articulating-ethics-and-aesthetics-in-tunisian-society\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T08:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T07:11:09","slug":"the-new-veils-articulating-ethics-and-aesthetics-in-tunisian-society","status":"publish","type":"videos","link":"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/the-new-veils-articulating-ethics-and-aesthetics-in-tunisian-society\/","title":{"rendered":"The “new veils”: articulating ethics and aesthetics in Tunisian society"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paper presented at the 5th international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel)<\/a>, held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. Henda Ghribi<\/strong> (Faculty of Human and Social Sciences of Tunis) spoke as part of Strand 2, Aesthetics, ethics and everyday life: prohibitions, representations and practices.<\/em><\/p>\n

Summary of the paper<\/h3>\n

The body has a double and contradictory reality, oscillating between the inner and the outer; it is at once subject and object of representations and imaginaries. Islam entails a particular culture of the body, manifested notably through dress: it sets out a variety of ethical norms whose aim is to discipline the body towards a higher spirituality. Dress thus communicates one’s relation to religion and highlights the negotiations between religious ethics on the one hand and modernity on the other.<\/p>\n

Appearance is an act underpinned by several demands and desires: on one side, the demand for conformity to the dress ethics of one’s society; on the other, the desire for personalisation and self-affirmation. It is in this sense that, from the 2000s onwards, the wearing of the hijab appeared in Tunisian society as a clothing trend that privileges modesty while valuing aesthetics. By claiming both their faith and their style, young Tunisian women seek to express their respect for the Islamic ethics of modesty without renouncing taste: to cover without hiding, to respect without going unnoticed. The “new veils” thus become a medium of artistic creation, between tradition and modernity, characterised by a diversity of models and colours, and by a “bricolage” that reconciles the prescriptions of the text with contemporary fashion and openness to other cultures. How, then, is this relation between ethics and aesthetics articulated through dress in Tunisian society?<\/p>\n

\nRead the panel synthesis by Abdulrahman Usama Mahmoud<\/summary>\n
\n

This synthesis was written in the aftermath of the congress by Abdulrahman Usama Mahmoud<\/strong>, under the Pluriel student-fellowship programme. It covers all three papers of the panel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ethics, Aesthetics and Religious Norms: Artistic and Bodily Practices in Contemporary Muslim Societies<\/h4>\n

On 12 February 2026 in Cordoba, the panel of the second theme of the congress convened under the chairmanship of Ali Mostfa. Three papers were presented: one on the “new veils” in Tunisia, another on the thought of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, and a third on the art galleries of Zamalek in Cairo. Drawing on sociology, Islamic studies, art history and philosophy, these contributions all began from the same question: how do artistic, sartorial and bodily practices allow individuals to negotiate their relationship to religious norms? This synthesis seeks to restore the exchanges of the day.<\/p>\n

The three speakers shared a common refusal: reducing Islam to a list of prohibitions. Such a reading, even when it claims to be critical, ends up missing what is actually happening in Muslim societies \u2014 namely a constant negotiation between what tradition prescribes and what individuals live, feel and choose. Egypt and Tunisia, the two contexts examined, are not alike. Their political and religious histories differ, as does their relationship to the body. Yet in both cases, something similar can be observed: individuals investing spaces \u2014 art galleries, sartorial choices, calligraphic practices \u2014 in order to inhabit their relationship to the religious norm differently, without rejecting it.<\/p>\n

Cl\u00e9mence Guinot (PISAI, Rome) worked on Abu Zayd. Her contribution offered one of the panel’s most fertile hypotheses: art, by its very nature, resists the fixation of meaning. Where politicised religious discourses seek to impose a single reading of the sacred text \u2014 what Abu Zayd called the “closure of meaning” \u2014 the work of art produces on the contrary a plurality of possible interpretations. This ambiguity is not a flaw to be corrected; it is precisely what makes art a space of resistance, discreet but real, against attempts at uniformisation. Emmanuel Pisani (IDEO, Cairo) illustrated this through the galleries of Zamalek. The artists of that Cairene neighbourhood play with the Islamic repertoire \u2014 calligraphy, Sufism, Qur’anic references \u2014 but submit it to a work of formal transformation. The case of “meta-calligraphy” is particularly telling: by rendering the sacred text visually illegible, these artists do not deny it \u2014 they transform it into a sensory experience. The divine word ceases to be a rule and becomes a vehicle of interiority. This is neither rupture nor submission; the stance resists any univocal categorisation. Henda Ghribi (Faculty of Human and Social Sciences of Tunis), for her part, worked on the veil in Tunisia. The women she interviewed recognise themselves neither in the feminist discourse that sees in it a submission, nor in the Islamist discourse that would make it the sign of a homogeneous collective identity. They insist on one thing: no text prescribes a precise sartorial model. It is in this space of indeterminacy that they improvise \u2014 to use a term that would probably suit them \u2014 a practice weaving together Islamic modesty, contemporary taste and self-affirmation.<\/p>\n

What links these three papers is, in the end, a single shift: from the normative to the sensible. The artists of Zamalek move away from canonical prayer towards Sufi figures. The Tunisian hijab becomes less the application of a rule than the expression of an “inner disposition”. This displacement speaks to something broader in the way individuals inhabit their religious belonging today.<\/p>\n

The discussion was lively. Several points of tension emerged, though none were resolved. The first concerned the nature of choice. Is wearing a “modern veil” truly a reflexive act? Or does one reproduce, in a new form, a conformity to an order that has not been genuinely interrogated? The room did not reach agreement, and the question remains open. A second point raised the social reach of these practices. Art galleries, academic discourse, international networks: all this circulates within milieus already endowed with cultural resources. What of elsewhere? The question of how these forms of expression resonate in popular classes or more conservative milieus remains entire. Several participants also mentioned an Anglo-Saxon cultural hegemony that sometimes imposes itself on connected elites without producing the effects of emancipation it promises. Post-2011 Tunisia was likewise at the heart of a debate. The appearance of the niqab after the revolution gave rise to opposing readings: a freedom regained after years of sartorial repression, or the installation of a politico-religious discourse dressed up as personal choice? The two interpretations coexist, and neither imposes itself clearly. Finally, a structural question was raised, perhaps the most unsettling of all: do these spaces of aesthetic freedom not produce their own norms? The Tunisian study shows it clearly: some women come to judge the sincerity of others’ modesty, creating new conflicts within the very communities they inhabit. Liberation through aesthetics does not abolish the boundaries of the norm \u2014 it displaces them.<\/p>\n

This panel will have contributed to shifting the gaze: rather than assessing whether these practices are “truly” free or “truly” compliant, it is a matter of understanding what they make possible and what they produce. Art, dress and bodily gesture do not stand opposed to religious norms \u2014 they work them from within, reinterpreting their margins.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/details>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"date_tournage":"","lieu":"","nature_evenement":"","vt_type":"Conf\u00e9rence","vt_yt_views":82},"video_collection":[854],"class_list":["post-35548","videos","type-videos","status-publish","hentry","video_collection-congres-de-cordoue-2026"],"date_tournage":"","yoast_head":"\nThe "new veils": articulating ethics and aesthetics in Tunisian society - Pluriel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pluriel.fuce.eu\/en\/videos\/the-new-veils-articulating-ethics-and-aesthetics-in-tunisian-society\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The "new veils": articulating ethics and aesthetics in Tunisian society - Pluriel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Paper presented at the 5th international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme “Ethics and Aesthetics in Islam”. 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