http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/the-freedom-of-the-hijab.html?src=recg#h
Op-Ed Contributor
The Freedom of the Hijab
By AYESHA NUSRAT
Published: July 13, 2012
Prior to becoming a hijabi, I did not expect myself to go down this
road. Although I knew modesty was encouraged in my culture and by my
faith, I never saw the need nor had the opportunity to explore the
reasons behind it.
My experience working as a Faiths Act Fellow for the Tony Blair Faith
Foundation and dealing with interfaith action for social action brought
me more understanding and appreciation of various faiths. I found that
engaging in numerous interfaith endeavors strengthened my personal
understanding about my own faith. The questions and challenges I
encountered increased my inquisitiveness and drive to explore and learn
for myself various fundamental aspects of Islam. Thus began my journey
to hijab-dom.
I am abundantly aware of the rising concerns and controversies over how a
few yards of cloth covering a woman’s head is written off as a global
threat to women’s education, public security, rights and even religion. I
am also conscious of the media’s preferred mode of portraying all
hijabi women as downtrodden and dominated by misogynist mullahs or male
relatives who enforce them into sweltering pieces of oppressive
clothing. But I believe my hijab liberates me. I know many who portray
the hijab as the placard for either forced silence or fundamentalist
regimes; but personally I found it to be neither.
For someone who passionately studied and works for human rights and
women’s empowerment, I realized that working for these causes while
wearing the hijab can only contribute to breaking the misconception that
Muslim women lack the strength, passion and power to strive for their
own rights. This realization was the final push I needed to declare to
the world on my birthday this year that henceforth I am a hijabi.
In a society that embraces uncovering, how can it be oppressive if I
decided to cover up? I see hijab as the freedom to regard my body as my
own concern and as a way to secure personal liberty in a world that
objectifies women. I refuse to see how a woman’s significance is rated
according to her looks and the clothes she wears. I am also absolutely
certain that the skewed perception of women’s equality as the right to
bare our breasts in public only contributes to our own objectification. I
look forward to a whole new day when true equality will be had with
women not needing to display themselves to get attention nor needing to
defend their decision to keep their bodies to themselves.
In a world besotted with the looks, body and sexuality of women, the
hijab can be an assertive mode of individual feministic expression and
rights. I regard my hijab to be a commanding question of “I control what
you see, how is that not empowering” mixed with a munificent amount of
authority emanating from the “My body is my own concern” clause. I
believe my hijab gives me the right to assert my body, femininity and
spirituality as my own and under my authority alone.
I know many would agree with me when I say that the hijab is basically
an expression of spirituality and a personal bond with one’s creator, a
tangible spiritual reminder that guides everyday life.
Yes, my hijab is a visual religious marker that makes it very easy for
anyone to spot me in a crowd as a separate entity representing or
adhering to a particular religion. This is all the more reason why,
being a hijabi in the public arena is an escalating force that drives me
to work in ways that would help break the undignified stereotypes,
barriers and prejudices that my Islamic faith is relentlessly and
irrationally associated with. As an extension of my personality and
identity, it instigates me to challenge the misconception that Muslim
women lack the bravery, intellect and resilience to challenge authority
and fight for their own rights.
Every time I see my reflection in the mirror, I see a woman who has
chosen to be a rights activist, who happens to be a Muslim and covers
her hair incidentally. My reflection reminds me of the convictions that
made me take up the hijab in first place — to work for a world where a
woman isn’t judged by how she looks or what she wears, a world in which
she needn’t defend the right to make decisions about her own body, in
which she can be whoever she wants to be without ever having to choose
between her religion and her rights.
Ayesha Nusrat is a 23-year-old Muslim Indian from New Delhi.
