The Confessional Body and the Colonial Eye: A Review of The Political Psychology of the Veil

A Book Review of The Political Psychology of the Veil: The Impossible Body by Dr. Sahar Ghumkor

As a Muslim woman who wears the hijab, I approached Dr. Sahar Ghumkhor’s The Political Psychology of the Veil not from the perspective of a to-be academic or professional, but as someone who inhabits the very subject position being dissected. That vantage point sharpened my appreciation for the book’s insights, despite its intended audience and engagement for other academics, because it begins a discussion of the hijab by not addressing the question of “Why?” at all.

Rather, Ghumkor takes on the West’s preoccupation with the Muslim woman’s body in tracing how the “veiled” and “unveiled” have been constructed and circulated as symbols of freedom, oppression, and modernity in post-9/11 political discourse. Her work sits at the crossroads of postcolonial studies, critical theory, political theory and psychoanalysis, yet its themes spill over into everyday Muslim life, whether or not we’ve set foot in an academic seminar room.

Her central thesis is that the West’s fascination with the Muslim woman is, rather than primarily about Muslim women themselves, the West’s own self-image. The veiled woman is made a ‘master signifier’ that “stands in for the fullness of the meaning of the Muslim woman” in the Western imagination. She is a recurring figure through which Western liberalism reaffirms its own ideals of freedom, modernity, and individual autonomy, where the unveiled woman is cast as liberated, natural, and fully knowable. Paradoxically, this veil is precisely what fuels the Western gaze: it marks an unknown that promises some tantalising “truth” if only it could be removed.

This framework, Ghumkhor argues, is not limited to overtly Islamophobic actors. It pervades liberal and feminist discourses, as well as the interventions of Muslim-background critics who position themselves as “native informants” by unveiling, literally or figuratively, the supposed repressions of their cultures for Western understanding:

“The native informant’s insider accounts confirm conclusions that are already presupposed by the west—a west that incessantly demands to have its knowledge reaffirmed. She provides the ideological fodder to sustain the fantasy of a west as the source of, and impetus for, all knowledge.”

One of the book’s most striking contributions is its concept of the ‘confessional body.’ Here, Ghumkhor examines how certain women of Muslim background, whether activists or media figures, stage their own bodies as sites of revelation where they offer personal testimonies, nudity, or intimate details as proof of authenticity. These confessions operate within a “phallic fantasy” (“in the psychoanalytic sense, as a totality of knowledge where there is no lack”) of unveiling: the body is the ultimate evidence of truth, and liberation is visually confirmed by its exposure. For the native informant:

“…the unveiled operates as a natural condition of being free, of being a woman, beyond cultural constraint into the realm of the secular as a truth-making practice of self discovery. The new native informant performs a desire for this unveiled condition through the masquerade of repetitive confession of the other’s lack and “natural” desire in the evidencing of cultural constraints, which continue to veil her. In her refusal to veil—that is, rejecting the normative demands of her community—she positions herself as an unveiled neutral rational critic, not subject to indoctrination, bias, false consciousness. Rather, she is one who embodies a secular normativity.”

For an orthodox Muslim audience, this section raises an important question: what happens when the Muslim woman’s worth, whether in defence of or opposition to the veil, is evaluated in terms of visibility, self-display (tabarruj), and alignment with confessional ideals? Even the “empowerment” narratives that defend hijab do so by translating it into the same logics of confession and psychoanalytic unveiling, where the hijab becomes a surface that must reveal inner truth. As Buthainah Hamdah argues, this liberalization of hijab reframes it as an expression of self-expression, not one that transcends the gaze and its demands.

Ghumkhor gives attention to phenomena such as World Hijab Day, which invites non-Muslim women to try the veil for a day in solidarity. She notes how these initiatives are framed in the canonical liberal truths of of personal choice and self-expression. The religious obligation itself, along with the idea of submitting to divine command, is downplayed.

This is a familiar tension of couching defences of hijab (or any other religious injunction) in the language of choice concedes to a framework in which religious obligations must justify themselves on secular terms or be dismissed as coercive or invalid.

“One must wonder if [World Hijab] day would have the same resonance if the reasons for wearing the veil are emphasised as fundamentally a religious obligation. Erased from the consumerist narrative is a belief in submitting oneself to the transcendental that could potentially destabilise the liberal defenses surrounding the sovereign individual. If the unveiled-veiled Muslim woman signals a body that is normalised, relatable and consumable, what is the difference that is being celebrated? Are we witnessing the sinking of the religious body into secularism’s tenacious mandate on bodily integrity?”

The book’s psychoanalytic dimension focuses on the West’s “desire to know” the Other. The veil frustrates this desire, hinting at something withheld. The unveiled body, in this schema, promises to satisfy that desire but never fully does, thus perpetuating the cycle of unveiling. Ghumkhor connects this to historical colonial narratives, such as French accounts of unveiling Algerian women, which framed the act as a civilising mission while revealing deeper anxieties about cultural boundaries and bodily control. Post-9/11, the Muslim woman has reappeared in Western politics as the embodiment of security concerns and human rights campaigns. This cycle of unveiling illustrates how the Muslim woman is less a subject in her own right than a stage on which the West rehearses its anxieties about modernity and civilization. Fears of terrorism and hopes of liberal salvation are simultaneously projected.

For readers not steeped in Lacan, Fanon, or Foucault, certain passages feel like a labyrinth. This is not insurmountable, but it means, as is its purpose, the book speaks more fluently to academics than to community organisers, imams, or ordinary Muslim women navigating hijab in daily life.

Despite its theoretical density, Ghumkhor’s work offers valuable takeaways for our communities. The first is vigilance: when we answer the question “why do you veil?” we must be alert to the frameworks we are operating in. How and why do we choose certain language to couch our defenses in?

The second is refusing the false neutrality of the “default.” If the starting assumption is that hair-covering must be justified, then the conversation is already skewed. Our tradition understands hijab as a baseline of modesty. To debate hijab only in the realm of personal preference is to implicitly accept that the baseline as unveiled. Challenging that is not simply a matter of defending a practice; it is a matter of affirming a worldview in which divine command, not the Western gaze, sets the terms of normalcy.

Ghumkhor’s book is not light reading, but it is a serious and often incisive engagement with how the Muslimah’s body is politicised and narrated.

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