The concept of women’s wearing a veil has taken on one or another of three conceptually hierarchal forms in different cultures: covering the head, covering both the head and the face, and covering the entire body. Various styles of female veiling have been practiced since antiquity in patriarchal-patrilineal societies such as Assyria, Israel, Greece, and pre-Islamic Arabia, mainly as a means of exercising control, establishing a hierarchy, and imposing subordination by setting limitations and a div…