Welcome back to ‘Eyb, my newsletter where I speak frankly about topics that I was often told were shameful, or 'eyb, growing up as a young Middle Eastern woman. Some weeks I share life anecdotes, and in others I share what I’ve been writing and working on. If you have just subscribed, welcome!
I recently wrote a piece for a publication exploring my experience with wearing the hijab vs. not wearing the hijab, as well as faith, societal, and cultural expectations around beauty vs. modesty. The piece focuses on my love for makeup and fashion, and how I went about trying to prove to people in my family, and in my faith community, that I could be beautiful and fashionable while wearing the hijab and dressing modestly.
It got me reflecting on the three years in my life in which I chose not to wear the hijab and how others perceived me. In addition, last week’s conversation on social media around the continual blaming of women when they get sexually harassed (which arose in the aftermath of the devastating murder of Sarah Everard) also got me reflecting on my own #metoo experiences.
Family members had always explained the necessity of the hijab to my sister and I firstly, in how it related to the opposite gender, and secondly, in how it offered protection. Promises of protection were given in return for my sister and I wearing the hijab. However, the hijab did not protect my sister from being sexually assaulted in broad daylight at the age of twelve, (yes, twelve), by a grown man, nor did the hijab and a black abaya stop me from being groped by a male doctor when I was in my early twenties.
After my sister’s horrific ordeal, she decided to remove her hijab and told my father, “you said it would protect me.” He was speechless and did not put up a fight.
I found that the more I covered up while living in the Gulf, the more that men actually flirted with me, and in some cases, harassed me. I have lost count of the number of times I walked home from the supermarket during the middle of the day and had men stalk me in their cars. I once had a full bottle of water thrown at me by a man from his car because I ignored him and would not take down his phone number. Once, I was on a family outing to the mall, and a middle aged man pressed his penis against my back while I stood in line at KFC. I was seventeen at the time.
The issue was that male family members kept insisting that the hijab would protect my sister and I from such incidents and time and time again they were proven wrong.
In the three years in which I did not wear the hijab (between the ages of 25 and 28) the people I came into contact with, mostly at work, had this perception that because I did not wear the hijab, and because I was not practicing modest dressing at the time, I could not have possibly known anything about my religion.
The thing is, the hijab is not a measure of a woman’s knowledge of Islam, nor her level of piety and spirituality.
I might have stopped wearing it, but I continued to pray five times a day, still did my morning and evening dhikr or remembrance of God, I fasted every Ramadan, continued to read the Qur’an, and paid my dues in charity. I was not an angel, but I was still worshipping and maintaining my relationship with God.
It felt as if people made their judgments based on what was superficial.
When I worked as a personal trainer and fitness instructor at a well-known ladies gym, many of the members would see me put on my prayer outfit and pray, and they would make remarks such as, “we didn’t think you would pray! You’re a good Muslim, but the missing piece is just your hijab.”
There was this constant implication that I was an incomplete Muslim because I was not wearing the hijab.
So why do I wear it today? I’ve spent years reading into its history and origins, and I found that whenever I tried to put it into a socio-economic context, its need is redundant. In addition, whenever I’ve put it in the context of how it relates to the opposite gender, again, I find myself grappling with the idea of it. I categorically don’t believe that it is there to protect me.
Right now, I wear it simply because historically it has been an item of clothing that women of Abrahamic faiths have worn through the millennia, an identity marker if you will. In addition, the covering of one’s head is something that people from Abrahamic faiths (and other religions too) do as a form of humbling one’s self before God, and I believe it helps keep me in a state of constant worship and remembrance of God. Those are my reasons, and other hijab-wearing women’s reasons may be different to mine.
I have never stopped being a Muslim, whether I was wearing the hijab, or wasn’t.
I wasn’t aware that there was an actual term for how abusers weaponize religion, and/or use it as a justification for verbal, emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse, until I came across Marryum Mehmood’s new series, an A-Z of Spiritual Abuse, on her Instagram account @shiftwithmarryum.
Leading on from this, Marryum has launched SAVE, which stands for Spiritual Abuse and Violence Eradication. I’ll be chatting to her in my next newsletter about this campaign.
This past week has been absolutely exhausting, particularity for womxn. I hope you are taking care of your mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical health.