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I know it's from the wiki, but it's a nice piece of history of the hijab, which just shows that it's always been a way of diminishing women.

History
The term hijab is never used in the Qur'an to describe an article of clothing.[32] The only verses in the Qur'an that specifically reference women’s clothing, are those promoting modesty, instructing women to guard their private parts and throw a scarf over their bosoms in the presence of men.[32] The contemporary understanding of the hijab dates back to Hadith when the “verse of the hijab” descended upon the community in 627 CE.[33] Now documented in Sura 33: 53 the verse states, “And when you ask [his wives] for something, ask them from behind a partition. That is purer for your hearts and their hearts”.[34] This verse, however, was not addressed to women in general, but exclusively to Muhammad’s wives. As Muhammad’s influence increased, he entertained more and more visitors in the mosque, which was then his home. Often, these visitors stayed the night only feet away from his wives’ apartments. It is commonly understood that this verse was intended to protect his wives from these strangers.[35] During Muhammad’s lifetime no other women in the Ummah (Muslim community) observed the hijab. Instead, the term for donning the veil, darabat al-hijab, was used interchangeably with “becoming Muhammad’s wife”.[36] As stated by Reza Aslan, “The veil was neither compulsory nor widely adopted until generations after Muhammad’s death, when a large body of male scriptural and legal scholars began using their religious and political authority to regain the dominance they had lost in society as a result of the Prophet’s egalitarian reforms”.[35] Other scholars point out that the Qur'an does not require women to wear veils; rather, it was a social habit picked up with the expansion of Islam. In fact, since it was impractical for working women to wear veils, "A veiled woman silently announced that her husband was rich enough to keep her idle."[37]

Veiling, however, did not originate with the advent of Islam. Statuettes depicting veiled priestesses precede all three Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), dating back as far as 2500 BCE.[38] Some scholars postulate that the customs of veiling and seclusion of women in early Islam were assimilated from the conquered Persian and Byzantine societies and then later on they were viewed as appropriate expressions of Quranic norms and values. Elite women in ancient Mesopotamia and in the Byzantine, Greek, and Persian empires wore the veil as a sign of respectability and high status.[39] In ancient Mesopotamia, Assyria had explicit sumptuary laws detailing which women must veil and which women must not, depending upon the woman’s class, rank, and occupation in society. Veiling was meant to “differentiate between ‘respectable’ women and those who were publicly available”.[39] Female slaves and unchaste women were explicitly forbidden to veil and suffered harsh penalties if they did so. Veiling was thus a marker of rank and exclusive lifestyle, subtly illustrating upper-class women’s privilege over women in lower classes in the Assyrian community. During the period directly preceding the Muslim conquest in 640 CE, the Sassanids ruled in Mesopotamia. Customs of Persian royalty at the time of the first Persian conquest of Mesopotamia continued to be practiced and became even more elaborate under the Sassanids. In addition to acknowledging the monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism among the upper classes, such customs included large harems of women and, of most note for this article, veiling.

Strict seclusion and the veiling of matrons were in place in Roman and Byzantine society as well. Between 550 and 323 B.C.E, prior to Christianity, respectable women in classical Greek society were expected to seclude themselves and wear clothing that concealed them from the eyes of strange men.[40] These customs influenced the later Byzantine empire where proper conduct for girls entailed that they be neither seen nor heard outside their home. Like in Assyrian law, respectable women were expected to veil and low-class women were forbidden from partaking in the practice. By the 5th and 6th centuries, societies of the Mediterranean Middle East were dominated by Christian and some Jewish populations. At the inception of Christianity, Jewish women were veiling the head and face. Biblical evidence of veiling can be found in Genesis 24:65, “And Rebekah lifted up her eyes and when she saw Isaac ... she took her veil and covered herself’; in Isaiah 3:23, “In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets ... the headdresses ... and the veils”; and in 1 Corinthians 11:3–7, "Any woman who prays with her head unveiled dishonors her head—it is the same as if her head were shaven. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair, but if it is disgraceful for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her wear a veil. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man".[41] Others think that the word habarah [which consists of a long skirt, a head cover, and a burqa, a long rectangular cloth of white transparent muslin placed below the eyes, covering the lower nose and the mouth and falling to the chest] itself derives from early Christian and Judaic religious vocabulary.” [41] The Christian church’s attitude towards sex as shameful was focused most intensely on the shamefulness of the female body, which had to be totally concealed. As the prominent scholar, Leila Ahmed states, “Whatever the cultural source or sources, a fierce misogyny was a distinct ingredient of Mediterranean and eventually Christian thought in the centuries immediately preceding the rise of Islam.”[14]

Thus, successive invasions during the Muslim conquest led to some synthesis in the cultural practices of Greek, Persian, and Mesopotamian empires and the Semitic peoples of the regions.[41] Because Islam identified with the monotheistic religions of the conquered empires, the practice was adopted as an appropriate expression of Qur'anic ideals regarding modesty and piety.[42] Veiling gradually spread to upper-class Arab women, and eventually it became widespread among Muslim women in cities throughout the Middle East. It gradually spread among urban populations, becoming more pervasive under Ottoman rule as a mark of rank and exclusive lifestyle.[41] Women in rural areas were much slower to adopt veiling because the garments interfered with their work in the fields.[43]

The mid-twentieth century saw a resurgence of the hijab in Egypt after a long period of decline as a result of the westernization of Egypt under the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser. The hijab, veil, often taken to mean suppression of the Islamic woman, began to symbolize a commitment to "the service of the Islamic call [to help] devastated families."[44] The veil became a liberating symbol of being an Islamic woman with a cause for social justice.

Overall, the hijab is meant to highlight the individual’s relationship with Allah. Many scholars[who?] believe that the hijab was a source of separation, in which to allow Muhammad’s wives to find oneness with Allah.

So, while christians have worn the veil and managed to give it up (except for the sisters in convents and stuff like that).... jews and muslims are still enamored with it... kind of says a lot about the societal advance of these 3 great communities, doesn't it?

There are more covert methods used to subjugate people and in particular women. I'm going to guess that the use of veils as a measure of societal advance is probably not a reliable one.

MM