To Islam : My Hijab, my choice
DAMASCUS – Last week, the Syrian governmentunveiled the first of the promised reforms. So far, they’ve been … well, slight might be a kind way to refer to them. Citizenship was finally given to a large group of Kurds, a casino was closed and a ban on teachers wearing the niqab, the face veil, was rescinded. That last probably strikes many readers as hardly the sort of thing that should be greeted as a liberalizing reform. But, in my opinion, it is symbolic.
When westerners turn their eyes towards the Middle East and other Muslim societies, one of the first things that strikes them will often be the large number of women who cover. Often, in the west, the act of a woman covering her hair in public is seen as being indicative of oppression in general and even, as some westerners claim, ‘gender apartheid’. Is it?
I for one do not think so. I consciously considered myself as a feminist and as someone who believes in human rights and the equality of all. But I’m also an Arab and a Muslim. And I covered. Not once or twice but every time I was in public for well over a decade of my life. And no one made me do it; I chose it.
When I was a teenager, I found myself growing up between two cultures; that of the school year, when I attended a public high school in the American South, and that of home and the summer, when I would return to Damascus. I was a bit of a rebel, a bit headstrong and a bit confused. I struggled with issues many young women do: I battled with anorexia, severe depression, confusion and questioning my sexuality and gender identification, and the stress of moving between two worlds.
In Damascus during a particular hot summer day, I had climbed up to the roof of our house and was considering throwing myself from it. I was depressed over a lot of things, many that now seem silly in retrospect but, as I approached my 16th birthday, they seemed like insurmountable obstacles. Throwing myself down to the pavement far below seemed like a reasonable idea.
But I didn’t. Instead, I had a suddenly strong feeling that my life was worth more than that and that, no matter what happened, there was a power greater than myself, a God of the Universe who cared and was in charge of what ultimately happened. The world around me began to glow with a blue light coming from everywhere and all my troubles seemed to vanish. I didn’t kill myself … but instead found myself shouting “Eshaduwan la illaha illala wa Muhammadan rasool allah!” (I testify there is no God but God and Muhammad is the Messenger of God).
If I had been Christian, one would, I suppose, call what had happened to me as being ’born again.’ Certainly, though I had been raised as a Muslim in an observant household and had learned to pray years earlier, I was hardly what one could call pious; like many teenagers who dye their hair blue, listen to punkrock, and read to much, I was at most sort of agnostic. All that changed for me, though, at that time when I felt the presence of God.
And, very soon after, I wanted to show outwardly what I had accepted inwardly. While I had never eaten pork, from now on, I would strive only to eat ‘clean’ hallal meat. I would try to pray five times a day at the appointed hours. I would really fast Ramadan. And, in the most obvious way, I’d let the world know that I now considered myself a devout Muslim. I would begin covering, not just when I was at prayer (as I had always done and as my mother did) but any time that I was in public. They would know me as a Muslim at a glance.
So, that day, I tied a scarf around my hair when I left the house. With it, I felt myself empowered as I walked through the streets. No creepy stares from old men. Pleasant smiles and nods from strangers; other covered women seemed automatically to recognize me as one of their own. I felt instantly as though I belonged to an elite international sisterhood of women.
In the days and weeks that followed, my covering steadily improved as I became more skilled in tying up my hair and concealing it before I’d go out. And the scarf was like a passport to a new world; suddenly, I found myself recruited by an elite sisterhood of Muslim women, working on raising the standards of the society. There, I found fellowship, sisterhood and a best friend. And my faith and commitment steadily grew stronger.
I returned to the USA and my parents were startled by my new appearance; the gothed out girl who’d flown to Syria a few months earlier had come back as a Muslim woman (I’d also incidentally grown my last few inches that summer). I knew that they weren’t sure what to make of it; on the one hand, they were certainly happy that I was less ‘troubled’ and more devout (as any parents of a teen would be) and, on the other, they weren’t completely thrilled that I was marking myself out in America.
I started a new school and my cousin – who had also started covering – and I began trying to create the sort of Muslim Sisterhood we had known in Damascus. At first, it was just the two of us but quickly we built a circle of other teen-aged Muslim girls and promoted the religion and devotion within it. Meanwhile, our dress steadily got more conservative. At first, we were wearing jeans and long-sleeve shirts with our scarves; after another summer in Syria, we were dressing like full blown religious: long monochrome coats and scarves neatly knotted, ceasing to wear make up … my dearest friend from Damascus gave steady advice (she was older and more advanced) and, when she eventually visited us, we were already looking as true devotees.
Of course, being a severe Muslim young woman in a suburban American high school made for challenges. We took it as a point of pride that we did not date and had as little as possible to do with men. (Of course, that was easier for some of us than for others; I remember severely chastizing a young woman for holding hands with a boy) We harassed Muslim shopkeepers who sold alcohol and pornography. We moved as a group and built each other up. It was empowering.
And my hijab was, to me, the sign of my empowerment. I had been a scared little mouse before it; now I was bold and fearless, outspoken and forthright. I told off teachers and backsliding Muslims with equal ease.
I wasn’t the only one, of course; in those same years, the number of Muslim women who covered skyrocketed. When I was a small child in Syria, there were very few women who covered at all. Once, the political police had taken it into their heads to eliminate that as part of the effort to enforce French-style secularism; they starting stopping cars with covered women in them and pulled the women out, forcing them to strip in the road. That sort of attitude only fired defiance and memories of colonial rule; my own grandmother, during the French Mandate, had been walking alone when a French gendarme forcibly removed scarf and veil from her, demanding a kiss. That sort of behavior had inspired nationalist uprisings; when I was a child and the government did it, it inspired Syrian muslims to revolt,
But, by the end of the 1980’s, the government had stopped enforcing its views on women’s dress and more and more women had begun to dress in Islamic style. While the Islamic revival began spreading from one end of the countries to the other, it was slower in Syria due to the government’s hostility but it still occurred as more and more women began to choose to send a subtle message against the oppression of the state through their dress. When I started covering, we were style very much a minority but, in the years since then, dressing “Islamically” has become more and more common. What was once a bold political statement has become the ‘usual’ thing. And, of course, the severe fashions of the past are now mixed in with high fashion and ‘sexy’ hijab looks …
Some who wanted to send a clear religious message went further; where once a simple scarf marked a woman as religious, when it became mainstream, more severe fashions were called for. Some women who had lived in the Gulf States brought veiling back with them when they returned to Syria. And women who wanted to state boldly that they were religious sometimes picked up the new style. My cousin did …
Meanwhile, for myself, my own views changed over time. I went back and examined the verses of the Quran referring to covering. I asked myself what was the purpose in covering. Was it supposed to be a way of showing others how religious we were, the way that we had understood it? If that was so, how was one to show devotion in a Muslim society? And, whether in extreme secularist ruled Muslim countries or in the West, why was it that Muslim men saw the right for women to cover as a necessity? While there are male dress codes in Islam, they are not nearly as so obvious. The reality is that by asking young women to bear the emblem of the community we are asking a lot …
And it occurred to me that that wasn’t what the actual teaching was; the actual teaching was about modesty and not showing off. If I were making a display of my religiosity, I was hardly being modest. And, if I covered and were not the most devout and chaste woman, would I not be making a mockery of the modesty I was claiming?
So I took my hijab off and, nowadays, only cover when at prayer or when it’s cold or the situation requires.
Yet, looking back, I still see my decision to cover as a fundamentally feminist act. No man – not my father, not my brother, not my husband, not my imam – ever made me cover and no man made me uncover. I did both myself. It was an act between me and my God (a God who lies beyond and above gender). And when I hear men, whether far-right racist rabblerousers in Europe and America or far-right fundamentalist preachers in Iran and Saudi Arabia, saying that it is their choice what I can or cannot put on my head, I am angry. I am angry when either group of withered men try and tell women what to do. I am tired of both groups fighting over us, Muslim women, and our bodies while insisting we have no say in the matter.
For me and the women I know, though, no one made us cover, no one made us uncover. Our heads, our choice!
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