NEW YORK, Dec 16, 2001/ --- Not long ago, designer Miguel Adrover showed the fashion world a collection rife with Middle Eastern inspiration, which riffed on traditional garb of the people he observed in Egypt: sweeping caftans and layered tunics, traditional headwear and scarves, many even stained to reflect toil and poverty.

This display of dangerous exoticism showed the industry's occasional haughtiness (and perhaps our false sense of peace) - but it also suggested a new path for fashion. That moment feels ancient now as our gaze turns from fantasy to the frightening fact of the burka.

No article of clothing has garnered as much attention in the last few months as the shroud-like covering Afghan women were forced to wear under the Taliban regime.

But for all the attention the burka and its impact on Afghan society are often misinterpreted, says Farzaneh Milani, PhD, associate professor of Persian and women's studies at the University of Virginia.

"The burka-that some women wore before the Taliban took over the country in 1996-has been sensationalized," she says. "The most detrimental thing the Taliban did was to deny women access to the public arena and the burka is just one symbol of that ... What is significant about it is not how it looks but, more important, that it immobilized women and delineated public and private space, assigning public space to men and private space to women."

That private space was heavily restricted in itself, mandating that women (65 percent of the Afghan population) be banned from schools and businesses save a few exceptions; they could not leave the house without the presence of a male relative; they could not wear shoes with heels that clicked.

Still, "how it looks," as Dr. Milani says, is the touchstone for the Western understanding of how these women have suffered. It is also the trigger for so many misapprehensions and tensions between Western women and those who embrace any form of religious dress, particularly Muslims.

"Meaning doesn't reside in any garment, whether it's the burka or a mini-skirt," says Valerie Steele, acting director of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, commenting on the layered and often contradictory meanings woven into the burka. "It's how we interpret the garment. For most Westerners and for many Afghan women, the burka is seen as being part of a more general oppression of women because it was enforced. Women were flogged for not wearing it. But it also may be seen as something a woman should wear to appear modest and respectful." And in fact, the burka, when worn as such - and not as enforced by regime of religious fanaticism - is simply the manifestation of a basic Islamic tenet of religious purity.

"Islamic society has always divided men and women and historically; women always wore the veil," says Maya Chadda, PhD, a professor of political science at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. "[The burka] was originally a garment for modesty since women were considered temptations in Islamic religion. Women were forced to keep out of public places because they were seen as potential corruptors of the Islamic purity of men."

Afghanistan is not alone in its mandates on clothing. In Iran and Saudi Arabia, for instance, women are required to wear chadors, or veils. "Some Muslim women see veiling as being a symbol of modesty and can cite verses from the Koran of how women should speak 'behind the curtain' which could be interpreted as a veil or cloistering women in the home," adds FIT's Steele.

"Veiling had begun to disappear as part of modernization. Then things started to turn the other direction after the 1967 war in Israel. College-educated women were making a statement of Islamic solidarity by wearing the veil. It has been picked up by fundamentalist forces insisting this is a necessary part of Islamic propriety."

Whether worn by choice or by force, Afghan and other Muslim women have often found ways to retain a sense of themselves beneath the myriad folds and pleats of their dress. When Afghan women are home, Dr. Chadda points out, they might even wear a skirt under the burka. "The women of this region like the art of being feminine," she says. "Among women, they can shed the burka and admire each other's clothing. Arabic women are extremely fond of cosmetics and are very fond of gold."

"As a Muslim woman, what I find totally un-Islamic about what the Taliban did is that they denied women their choice," adds Dr. Milani. "Of course there is celebration now that women don't have to wear the burka. They don't have to cover themselves and they have the option of how they want to present themselves to the world. The beards and burkas are emblems of the Taliban society and their oppression."

But at other points in Muslim history the burka has stood for something quite different: subversion. During the Algerian war against the French in the 1960s, the liberated women of Algeria began to wear it as a symbol of their identity, says Dr. Chadda: "They were nationalists and not part of this Francophone culture. They carried guns under their burkas and they played an important role in carrying messages and doing spy work. They took on this identity as a matter of choice. And, in Sri Lanka, which has a very small minority of Muslims, the women never wore burkas until the recent civil war. Since they have come under attack, the women have taken to wearing burkas instead of the traditional saris, as a matter of choice."

Now, after five years of having no choice at all, the women of Afghanistan can step out of the shadow of their shroud and face their future - if they so choose. Still, there are many fears and restrictions that may keep them behind the veil.

"Whether a woman wears a burka depends on her class and her village," says Dr. Chadda. "It also depends on how modern her village is and whether she considers it disrespectful to return to Western clothes and a veil."

There is also the fear that the Taliban will return to power, re-institute the burka and punish those who have transgressed the regime's rules. "Before women shed their burkas," says Steele, "a lot are waiting to see what other women will do."

For now, it seems, Afghan women, who have traversed so much rough terrain before, are approaching this new horizon in an ironically parallel course as their Western sisters.