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A North American Hijab Experience
By Ms. Naheed Mustafa*
"My body is my own business."
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 jeans jacket. Or maybe 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
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*Naheed Mustafa graduated from the
University of Toronto in 1992 with an honours degree in
political and history. She is currently studying journalism
at Ryerson
Polytechnic
University |
