**5. The sacrifice of goods and vanity**

Both Afra, Shi'a Iraqi and Nura, Sunni Somali, spoke of certain kinds of sacrifices connected to their veiling. These were both more material sacrifices – involving giving away one's garments, contributing to charity through the giving of garment gifts – and also more personal sacrifices, involving the sacrificing of certain worldly desires.

She wears trousers, tops and tunics with a scarf. Yet the mother, Afra and Afra's sister all agreed that the sister is also appropriately covered, and the family seemed to exercise no

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This was unlike Nura, who admitted to openly criticising her sister's less conservative dress style. For Nura, religious duty is the most important aspect of dress, and it is the religious

*In my opinion the clothes aren't the thing, but that you obey God. If a garment serves that purpose it becomes important. Not so that you're attached to material, but you wear certain [clothes] because you're a Muslim and you obey God and that's it. Nothing else. In my opinion Muslims shouldn't cling to anything worldly. You wear what you wear because Allah has told you to and you obey God, and* 

Through duty to God, Nura's garments become both symbols of that duty and tools that help her to fulfil and meet it. At the same time, she recognised that 'people have favourite clothes', although she considered such preferences as worldly desires that should be discarded, along with the garments themselves. Here we see the opposite of the religiously approved gift, namely the cast-off, the garment deemed to have failed to meet certain religious standards. But while Nura states that clothing is important only insofar as it represents religious conviction and 'nothing else', she also, as we saw above, feels fondness of certain garments and needs a significant religious motivation finally to give them up. Indeed she sacrificed more

*[The garment] was very dear to me… But… in my opinion it was useless to leave it in the closet; I got a migraine and I couldn't [wear it]. Someone else wanted to start [wearing] the [khimar], which is a great* 

Nura describes how she had a khimar in her wardrobe, which she was not wearing but her sentimental attachment to it meant that she did not want just to throw it away. But when she found out that another woman was in need of such a garment, she was enthusiastic about giving it away as a gift. By gifting it, the object was treated with the respect she felt it was due, while it could function as a means of extending Muslim piety, by allowing another woman to have a style of dress which met the criteria of a pious look and behaviour. Turning the garment into a gift therefore solved a personal problem while extending the reach of the norms

Charity is one of Islam's five pillars. Giving clothes to charity – whether Islamic or not – is also a way of controlling the number of garments one owns at any particular moment, while managing the guilt that the contradiction between consumerism and religion may well provoke.

*I've also learned to recycle the clothes I don't wear anymore so that my closets won't be stuffed. So that* 

Charity is a particular kind of gift [16]. While the act of charitable giving can create bonds and debts of gratitude between individuals, it is also the case that Muslims recognise charitable giving as a religious duty, while the Muslim receiver of the charity is also aware of this. So when another young Somali woman, Zaynab, elaborately spoke of her charitable acts of

direct pressure on her dress style.

*there's no greater reason.*

of Islam onto another person.

Nura explained in this vein:

duty ascribed to her garments that makes them dear to her:

than just a mere garment in the moment she described this way:

*thing if another Muslim wants to cover herself more.*

*I won't feel guilty for having closets full of clothes.*

On one occasion, Afra was interviewed together with her mother and her 19-year old sister. Afra's mother spoke limited Finnish, so her daughters interpreted her statements. It was clear that this Shi'a Iraqi family interprets religious dress as involving not just the wearing of certain garments thought to indicate piety, but also the intentions and motivations of the wearer herself. Afra explained how her mother interpreted Afra's attire:

*The more you make an effort for the religion, the more you work, the better level of paradise you achieve… Mother makes a comparison that I who wear the long robe get more, because I'm young after all, want to dress fashionably, want to look pretty but I still cover myself for God. Because I fear God and put the long robe on, I get more virtues, I get more points. But [a woman who] dresses according to fashion, she gets less.*

The sacrifice for her faith is framed as neither material nor directly social. It is rather a question of a sacrifice of one's supposed desires and vanity. A young woman who is expected to be vain and have a desire to dress fashionably, gains more religiously through her sacrifice of donning non-fashionable attire. It is not directly a question of covering the body to greater or lesser degrees, but more a question of embracing more sober styles of dress for the sake of enhancing one's religious credentials. Afra's sacrifice of being fashionable in order to win religious credibility is a kind of gift – she gives up to her community and to Islam in general her vanity, in the expectation that the counter-gift of religious approval will come her way in time. Moreover, she gives away her fashionable clothes. By redefining them as castoffs, she can disentangle her personality from those now unwanted and un-loved objects. This in turn opens up a symbolic space in her life, and a literal, physical space in her wardrobe, for more religiously suitable garments.

This is where her mother-in-law's gift garments came directly into play. These gifts that Afra was given were donated partly for the benefit of family reputation. The family into which Afra married dresses more conservatively than does Afra's family, and therefore the garment gifts powerfully socialised Afra into the norms of her new family, thereby ensuring in their eyes the maintenance of familial honour and perceived piety. Yet the garments were also given as gifts for the perceived religious benefit of Afra herself. Her in-laws gave her covering forms of dress in the belief that they would endow Afra with greater personal religiosity. Thus the gifts were at the same time acts of kindness and forms of spiritual care, while also acting in some ways as subtle acts of aggression, making demands as to how an individual now belonging to a high status family should dress, look and behave [3].

As mentioned above, the religious status a woman gains through wearing more obviously religious forms of dress is not only valid for herself but also for her family. Afra's mother, who herself wears the jubbah, throughout the interview stressed the fact that Afra dresses in a more covering manner, while she seldomly referred to her younger daughter's dress style. She wears trousers, tops and tunics with a scarf. Yet the mother, Afra and Afra's sister all agreed that the sister is also appropriately covered, and the family seemed to exercise no direct pressure on her dress style.

**5. The sacrifice of goods and vanity**

166 Socialization - A Multidimensional Perspective

*to fashion, she gets less.*

sacrifices, involving the sacrificing of certain worldly desires.

herself. Afra explained how her mother interpreted Afra's attire:

Both Afra, Shi'a Iraqi and Nura, Sunni Somali, spoke of certain kinds of sacrifices connected to their veiling. These were both more material sacrifices – involving giving away one's garments, contributing to charity through the giving of garment gifts – and also more personal

On one occasion, Afra was interviewed together with her mother and her 19-year old sister. Afra's mother spoke limited Finnish, so her daughters interpreted her statements. It was clear that this Shi'a Iraqi family interprets religious dress as involving not just the wearing of certain garments thought to indicate piety, but also the intentions and motivations of the wearer

*The more you make an effort for the religion, the more you work, the better level of paradise you achieve… Mother makes a comparison that I who wear the long robe get more, because I'm young after all, want to dress fashionably, want to look pretty but I still cover myself for God. Because I fear God and put the long robe on, I get more virtues, I get more points. But [a woman who] dresses according* 

The sacrifice for her faith is framed as neither material nor directly social. It is rather a question of a sacrifice of one's supposed desires and vanity. A young woman who is expected to be vain and have a desire to dress fashionably, gains more religiously through her sacrifice of donning non-fashionable attire. It is not directly a question of covering the body to greater or lesser degrees, but more a question of embracing more sober styles of dress for the sake of enhancing one's religious credentials. Afra's sacrifice of being fashionable in order to win religious credibility is a kind of gift – she gives up to her community and to Islam in general her vanity, in the expectation that the counter-gift of religious approval will come her way in time. Moreover, she gives away her fashionable clothes. By redefining them as castoffs, she can disentangle her personality from those now unwanted and un-loved objects. This in turn opens up a symbolic space in her life, and a literal, physical space in her wardrobe, for more religiously suitable garments.

This is where her mother-in-law's gift garments came directly into play. These gifts that Afra was given were donated partly for the benefit of family reputation. The family into which Afra married dresses more conservatively than does Afra's family, and therefore the garment gifts powerfully socialised Afra into the norms of her new family, thereby ensuring in their eyes the maintenance of familial honour and perceived piety. Yet the garments were also given as gifts for the perceived religious benefit of Afra herself. Her in-laws gave her covering forms of dress in the belief that they would endow Afra with greater personal religiosity. Thus the gifts were at the same time acts of kindness and forms of spiritual care, while also acting in some ways as subtle acts of aggression, making demands as to how an individual

As mentioned above, the religious status a woman gains through wearing more obviously religious forms of dress is not only valid for herself but also for her family. Afra's mother, who herself wears the jubbah, throughout the interview stressed the fact that Afra dresses in a more covering manner, while she seldomly referred to her younger daughter's dress style.

now belonging to a high status family should dress, look and behave [3].

This was unlike Nura, who admitted to openly criticising her sister's less conservative dress style. For Nura, religious duty is the most important aspect of dress, and it is the religious duty ascribed to her garments that makes them dear to her:

*In my opinion the clothes aren't the thing, but that you obey God. If a garment serves that purpose it becomes important. Not so that you're attached to material, but you wear certain [clothes] because you're a Muslim and you obey God and that's it. Nothing else. In my opinion Muslims shouldn't cling to anything worldly. You wear what you wear because Allah has told you to and you obey God, and there's no greater reason.*

Through duty to God, Nura's garments become both symbols of that duty and tools that help her to fulfil and meet it. At the same time, she recognised that 'people have favourite clothes', although she considered such preferences as worldly desires that should be discarded, along with the garments themselves. Here we see the opposite of the religiously approved gift, namely the cast-off, the garment deemed to have failed to meet certain religious standards. But while Nura states that clothing is important only insofar as it represents religious conviction and 'nothing else', she also, as we saw above, feels fondness of certain garments and needs a significant religious motivation finally to give them up. Indeed she sacrificed more than just a mere garment in the moment she described this way:

*[The garment] was very dear to me… But… in my opinion it was useless to leave it in the closet; I got a migraine and I couldn't [wear it]. Someone else wanted to start [wearing] the [khimar], which is a great thing if another Muslim wants to cover herself more.*

Nura describes how she had a khimar in her wardrobe, which she was not wearing but her sentimental attachment to it meant that she did not want just to throw it away. But when she found out that another woman was in need of such a garment, she was enthusiastic about giving it away as a gift. By gifting it, the object was treated with the respect she felt it was due, while it could function as a means of extending Muslim piety, by allowing another woman to have a style of dress which met the criteria of a pious look and behaviour. Turning the garment into a gift therefore solved a personal problem while extending the reach of the norms of Islam onto another person.

Charity is one of Islam's five pillars. Giving clothes to charity – whether Islamic or not – is also a way of controlling the number of garments one owns at any particular moment, while managing the guilt that the contradiction between consumerism and religion may well provoke. Nura explained in this vein:

*I've also learned to recycle the clothes I don't wear anymore so that my closets won't be stuffed. So that I won't feel guilty for having closets full of clothes.*

Charity is a particular kind of gift [16]. While the act of charitable giving can create bonds and debts of gratitude between individuals, it is also the case that Muslims recognise charitable giving as a religious duty, while the Muslim receiver of the charity is also aware of this. So when another young Somali woman, Zaynab, elaborately spoke of her charitable acts of sending old garments to her home country, she was engaging in a different kind of act from what her community would consider a 'proper' gift (i.e. the giving of a new garment, not the donation of second-hand clothes).

which will uphold community bonds and religious practices. To receive such a gift is an honour; but to refuse them risks causing great offence, in terms of rejecting not only a personal overture but also the behavioural norms of the religious community which stands behind the donor. To refuse a garment-gift from a community member or family member risks certain sorts of social catastrophe. To fail to participate in expected ways in the community after receiving a garment gift can mean a severe loss of face. In such ways, garments given as gifts

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These are particularly female and 'Islamic' forms of gift-giving, yet they involve similar kinds of patterns of obligation, belonging, transmission of values and socialisation into expected behaviours as other types of gift-giving practices among other groups in different situations. Our empirical data here demonstrate that some of the original insights of Mauss as to pre-modern gifting practices are still compelling today, even when the nature of the physical objects being gifted is profoundly shaped by globalised garment industries and the conditions of ethnic diaspora. The gift remains today a powerful means of pulling individu-

[1] Sandikci Ö, Rice G, editors. The Handbook of Islamic Marketing. Cheltenham: Edward

[2] Almila A. Introduction: The veil across the globe in politics, everyday life, and fashion. In: Almila A, Inglis D, editors. The Routledge Handbook to Veils and Veiling Practices.

[3] Mauss M. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London:

[4] Gökarıksel B, Secor A. Transnational networks of veiling-fashion between Turkey and Western Europe. In: Tarlo E, Moors A, editors. Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion.

[5] Lewis R. Muslim Fashion. Durham: Duke University Press; 2015 [6] Almila A. Veiling in Fashion. London: IB Tauris; 2018 in press

work as powerful means of socialisation and norm enforcement.

als into dense webs of community connections.

and David Inglis2

\*Address all correspondence to: david.inglis@helsinki.fi

1 University of the Arts London, United Kingdom

2 University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

Elgar Publishing; 2011

London: Routledge; 2017

Cohen and West; 1970

London: Bloomsbury; 2013

\*

**Author details**

Anna-Mari Almila1

**References**

This became evident when the interviewer discussed garment gifts with Khadija, an elderly Finnish convert who had a long history of being acquittanced with Finland's Somali community before her conversion. Khadija had befriended many Somali families through her work for the City Council of Helsinki, and the community had learned to appreciate her efforts for their well-being. A group of women wanted to gift her a garment7 to show their appreciation. Before making the garment, the women came to show the fabric to Khadija, to demonstrate that the garment she was to receive was new and made specially for her. According to Khadija, this is crucial for Somali gift-giving: it would be unacceptable to give a second-hand gift. This is why it is so fundamentally different to engage in charitable giving (of used garments) as opposed to personal gift-giving (of new and bespoke clothes) within this community. This garment gift had all those women who participated in the selection, making and presenting of it embedded in the object itself. A 'proper' gift must come with personality, with spiritual charging, and thus it carries with it connotations of the whole Finnish-Somali diaspora community, which Khadija, as a Muslim, holds especially dear. It is important to stress how this kind of gift differs from the garment gifts described above. Those are cheap, industrially produced garments that gain their spiritual value from the purpose they are meant to fulfil. They are far from the personal, carefully selected and prepared gift that Khadija received. Yet both kind of gifts come with sets of social connections and expectations, and effectively enforce and strengthen links and connections between individuals and the ethnic-religious groups of which they are part or which they have joined.
