This study examines the significance of the movement for the veil in Turkey by means of a multilevel analysis of power relations that range from the most private relations between the sexes to the conflict between civilizations. Women’s veiling is used as an analytical tool that draws together power relations hidden in the action of “the civilizing process” between “East and West” and weaves the fabric of political Islam and casts lights on the models of Western modernity through the prism of political Islam. It is therefore a study of “incorporating social gender” in the formulation of political Islam and of modernity. The paper argues that contemporary political Islam cannot be appropriately understood at a remove from the local concepts about Western modernity where women have an enlightenment role.