Invading Privacy II

The Post reprinted this article from the Chicago Tribune | They've got game--and hijab " discussing Muslim girls playing basketball in the Chicago area.

"Duaa Hamoud holds a basketball to her hip. She is standing in a long blue gown in a gym at Bridgeview's Universal School. Her head is covered in a white scarf pulled tightly around her neck. Not a wisp of hair is showing.

Around her, other high school girls dressed in similar flowing robes shoot a few casual baskets while they wait for practice to begin. There are no men in the gym--no male coaches, no boys from school, no dads or brothers in the bleachers.

So when the coach arrives and the real training starts, they can peel off their Islamic dress, exposing their sweat pants and short-sleeved T-shirts underneath."

What interested me was the accompanying picture, taken by a woman, which showed some of the girls on the court, most of whom were in the robes, but one of whom was in sweat pants and shirt. It's not clear whether that was a mistake, whether the particular girl was less particular about the rules, or what. Anyhow it raises the subject of Islamic privacy and the rules of the various bodies within Islam as to what is appropriate dress in which contexts. I take it as saying that Islam wants its adherents to control their privacy, to be able to say how much of their body/face is revealed to which others. This seems to me to be an attractive metaphor for overall issues of data privacy. We as citizens want the ability to control how much data is visible to different groups.