SECULAR FASHION, RELIGIOUS DRESS, AND MODEST AMBIGUITY The Visual Ethics of Indonesian Fashion-Veiling Elizabeth M. Bucar ABSTRACT This essay offers resources for the development of visual ethics by exploring Islamic fashion-veiling in one context: contemporary Indonesia. After provid- ing a methodological framework and historical background for the case study, the moral discourse of two aesthetic authorities is discussed via a fashion blog- ger and print advice literature. The essay identifies (1) how the practice of fashion-veiling generates norms, (2) what is defined as morally valuable in this practice and why, and (3) how this practice both offers opportunities for the critique and the reinforcement of gendered norms. KEY WORDS: Islam, Indonesia, veil, fashion, modesty, gender My contribution to this focus issue explores visual ethics as it relates to Islam, gender, and clothing in the Indonesian context. When the contem- porary Islamic headscarf is studied as visually important, it is most often as a sign of “something else”: a form of self-cultivation (Mahmood 2005), an expression of women’s double bind (MacLeod 1991), an instrument of women’s subordination (Lazreg 2011), or a result of the globalization of Islamic ideologies (Ahmed 2012). In contrast, I focus here on the actual material aspects of the Islamic headscarf and the modest outfit with which it is worn. My approach has the advantage of putting the aes- thetic dimension of veiling in the forefront and exploring its ethical import, rather than regarding the fashion and beauty preoccupations of women as incidental features of veiling unrelated to its politics or ethics. I argue that part of the ethical project of fashion-veiling is a sanctifica- tion of the material world by using secular fashion trends to achieve Elizabeth M. Bucar is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Northeastern Uni- versity where she writes and teaches about comparative religious ethics. Her books include Creative Conformity: The Feminist Politics of U.S. Catholic and Iranian Shi’i Women (Georgetown University Press, 2011) and The Islamic Veil (Oneworld Publications, 2012). Bucar is also co-editor of two collections: Does Human Rights Need God? with B. Barnett (Eerdmans, 2005) and Religious Ethics in a Time of Globalism: Shaping a Third Wave of Comparative Analysis with A. Stalnaker (Palgrave, 2012). Elizabeth Bucar, e.bucar@neu. edu. JRE 44.1:68–90. V C 2016 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc.