Nouha al Hejelan, wife of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to London, told Sally Quinn of The Washington Post, "If I wanted to take it all off [the abbayah and the veil], I would have long ago. It wouldn't mean as much to me as it does to you." Basima Berzigab, a contemporary Iraqi feminist, says, "Compared to the real issues that are involved between men and women in the Middle East today, the veil itself is unimportant." A Moroccan linguist, who buys her clothes in Paris, laughs when asked about the veil. "My mother wears a djellabah and veil. I have never worn them. But so what? I still cannot get divorced as easily as a man, and I am still a member of my family group and responsible to them for everything I do. What is a veil? A piece of cloth." However, early Middle Eastner feminists felt differently. Huda Sharawi, an early Egyptian activist who formed the first Women's Union, removed her veil in public in 1923,a dramatic gesture to demonstrate her dislike of society's attitude toward women and her defiance of the system".
Symboling Roles: Behind the Veil, de Elizabeth W. Fernea e Robert A. Fernea, publicado em 1986 (durante o governo do Aiatolá Khomeini) por Conformity and Coflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology
