Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Juan Eduardo Campo, The Other Sides 

of Paradise: Explorations into the Religious Meanings of 

Domestic Space in Islam (Columbia: University of South 

Carolina Press, 1991); Arthur Jeffery, Reader on Islam

(The Hague: Mouton & Company, 1962).

Al-Buraq, the legendary mount of the prophets 

(printed 

poster)

K  118  

Buraq, al-

---

burial

  See 

cemetery

; 

funerary

 

rituals

.

burqa

 

(also burka)

From the Arabic term burqu, a burqa is a type of 

partial or complete face covering worn by some 

Women

 in various Muslim cultures, at least since 

the Abbasid period (c. ninth to 10th century) and 

varying by locale and time period. It is most often 

a “cloth covering the entire face below the eyes” 

(Stillman, 147), but because the term burqu is 

often used interchangeably with niqab and other 

local terms for face coverings, it may also involve 

different regional variations, such as a mesh cloth 

over the whole face or an opaque cloth with holes 

for the eyes.

No explicit religious injunction for the burqa 

is found in the q

Uran

 or 

hadith

, and the 

Ulama

generally agree that it is not required dress 

for women. In contemporary contexts, Muslim 

women wearing modest dress most often choose 

to cover the entire body except the face and 

hands. Therefore, it may be said that forms of face 

covering such as the burqa are less commonly 

worn by Muslim women than other types of mod-

est garments.

Reasons for wearing the burqa must be under-

stood within social contexts. Contrary to ste-

reotypical depictions, there exists no singular 

meaning to explain why women may wear the 

burqa. Rather, the burqa in its many forms may 

be worn for a multitude of reasons, varying from 

one context to another. Among countless other 

meanings, it might make specific statements 

about a woman’s piety, her values regarding sexual 

modesty, her resistance to Western notions of sex-

uality, her desire for privacy or mobility in male-

dominated environments, or her membership in a 

political or national movement.

Conservative and radical Islamist movements 

such as the t

aliban

 in a

Fghanistan

 have recently 

contributed to an increase in the numbers of 

women donning the burqa. In this regard, the 

Western mass media have helped make the term 

familiar throughout the world, and for many, it 

has come to symbolize the controversial Taliban 

regime’s abuse of Afghan women.

See also 

hijab

; 

veil

.

Aysha A. Hidayatullah