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CNN Saturday Morning News

Ask CNN: What is the Significance of Different Head Coverings?

Aired December 01, 2001 - 08:26   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: Liz Boyes from Bay City, Michigan, asks, "What is the significance in the different colors and styles of the head coverings used by the different religions? Do they indicate a different tribe, sect, religion or social class?"

JEAN ABINADER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, ARAB AMERICAN INSTITUTE: Liz, thanks for the question. It's a good one and I hear it often because people are confused when they look and see people who are members of the Northern Alliance and they all dress differently or they look at women in Afghanistan, they look at women in Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Egypt or Indonesia and they say well, why don't they all look the same if they're all members of the same religion?

Well, the religion, Islam, doesn't really tell them how to dress. It tells them how not to dress. It tells women they should be modest and it tells men not to be flamboyant in the way they dress. But it doesn't say specifically how to dress.

And so women and men generally evolved the way they dressed out of local traditions and culture. And so when you see the people in the Taliban, when you see the people in the Northern Alliance, when you see Arabs or when you see Indonesians or Malaysians, the way they dress is dictated by social convention, by the classes they belong to and by what they can afford to wear. But generally the local tastes are what determine how people dress and how they appear in public.

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