One Woman Experience With Hijab
By: Ms. Naheed Mustafa
My body is my own business
This is my "story" of how I started wearing hijaab. Even
though I was born into a Muslim family, I was very ignorant about my religion. I
didn't really know that women ever had to wear hijaab. After I started practicing
the religion and studying more about Islam I soon found out about the obligation
of hijaab. At first, I was very worried about what people would think if I
suddenly started wearing a scarf on my head. I kept on making du'aa for Allah to
help me to wear the hijaab. Then slowly I realized that what other people thought
didn't matter, and what really mattered was what Allah thought of me. At the age
of 20, I started wearing the head scarf. At first people were a little shocked,
but that soon died down. After wearing hijaab, I felt more comfortable with the
other Muslim women in the community, masha'Allah. I quickly began making more
friends and adjusting into a community of righteous Allah-fearing women masha'Allah.
At first, I started with just wearing a head scarf. I thought that I would get
major respect from men because of it, but I soon realized the head scarf alone
was not enough to deter men. I was sitting down somewhere with the scarf on and
a guy started talking to me. I was a little shocked and puzzled. I thought,
doesn't he see I'm wearing a head scarf and that I don't want to be bothered by
him. It was obvious that the head scarf had no effect on him.
As I learned more about Islam, I found out that women should also wear a
jilbaab (an outer covering that is larger than the khimar that flows down from
the head). I soon started wearing the jilbaab over my khimar (head scarf). This
is the point when I started to feel like a beautiful protected gem enclosed in
my covering. I guess you could think of it like a pearl enclosed in its oyster
shell. I was no longer amongst the crowds of women who are subject to the lustful
glances of men and are thus stationed at a very demeaning position. On the
contrary, I had become a woman of respect, masha'Allah. Covering yourself
properly makes you feel so good masha'Allah (by Allah's permission). Alhamdulilah
(all praise is due to Allah), Allah is the Most Wise. There is so much benefit
in following His commands masha'Allah. Allahu Akbar! (Allah is the Most Great).
Multicultural Voices
A Canadian-born Muslim woman has taken to wearing the traditional hijab scarf.
It tends to make people see her as either a terrorist or a symbol of oppressed
womanhood, but she finds the experience liberating. I often wonder whether people
see me as a radical, fundamentalist Muslim terrorist packing an AK-47 assault
rifle inside my jean jacket. Or may be they see me as the poster girl for
oppressed womanhood everywhere. I'm not sure which it is.
I get the whole gamut of strange looks, stares, and covert glances. You see, I
wear the hijab, a scarf that covers my head, neck, and throat. I do this because
I am a Muslim woman who believes her body is her own private concern.
Young Muslim women are reclaiming the hijab, reinterpreting it in light of its
original purpose -- to give back to women ultimate control of their own bodies.
The Qur'an teaches us that men and women are equal, that individuals should not
be judged according to gender, beauty, wealth, or privilege. The only thing that
makes one person better than another is her or his character.
Nonetheless, people have a difficult time relating to me. After all, I'm young,
Canadian born and raised, university-educated -- why would I do this to myself,
they ask.
Strangers speak to me in loud, slow English and often appear to be playing
charades. They politely inquire how I like living in Canada and whether or not
the cold bothers me. If I'm in the right mood, it can be very amusing.
But, why would I, a woman with all the advantages of a North American upbringing,
suddenly, at 21, want to cover myself so that with the hijab and the other
clothes I choose to wear, only my face and hands show?
Because It Gives Me Freedom.
WOMEN are taught from early childhood that their worth is proportional to their
attractiveness. We feel compelled to pursue abstract notions of beauty, half
realizing that such a pursuit is futile.
When women reject this form of oppression, they face ridicule and contempt.
Whether it's women who refuse to wear makeup or to shave their legs, or to expose
their bodies, society, both men and women, have trouble dealing with them.
In the Western world, the hijab has come to symbolize either forced silence or
radical, unconscionable militancy. Actually, it's neither. It is simply a woman's
assertion that judgment of her physical person is to play no role whatsoever in
social interaction.
Wearing the hijab has given me freedom from constant attention to my physical
self. Because my appearance is not subjected to public scrutiny, my beauty, or
perhaps lack of it, has been removed from the realm of what can legitimately be
discussed.
No one knows whether my hair looks as if I just stepped out of a salon, whether
or not I can pinch an inch, or even if I have unsightly stretch marks. And
because no one knows, no one cares.
Feeling that one has to meet the impossible male standards of beauty is tiring
and often humiliating. I should know, I spent my entire teen-age years trying to
do it. It was a borderline bulimic and spent a lot of money I didn't have on
potions and lotions in hopes of becoming the next Cindy Crawford.
The definition of beauty is ever-changing; waifish is good, waifish is bad,
athletic is good -- sorry, athletic is bad. Narrow hips? Great. Narrow hips? Too
bad.
Women are not going to achieve equality with the right to bear their breasts in
public, as some people would like to have you believe. That would only make us
party to our own objectification. True equality will be had only when women don't
need to display themselves to get attention and won't need to defend their
decision to keep their bodies to themselves.
Note: Naheed Mustafa graduated from the University of
Toronto in 1992 with an honours degree in political and history. She iscurrently
studying journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic University.
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