Concealing to reveal: The informational role of Islamic dress

After the resurgence of headscarves throughout the Muslim world, some women adopted ‘more fundamentalist’ clothing styles, such as full-face veils, or began pietistic social movements. What explains this escalation and increasing diversity of Islamic dress and behavior? This paper analyzes how the spread of headscarves and Islamic dress since the 1970s undermined it as a signal of piety, which is a valuable yet hidden characteristic in many social interactions. As less pious women adopted the headscarf for myriad reasons, pious women adopted increasingly conservative dress and behavior to credibly signal their piety to uninformed observers and improve their marriage prospects. The spread of ‘fundamentalist’ behaviors does not necessarily imply a societal shift in piety, ideology, or support for political Islamists.