One Woman Experience With Hijab: My body is my own business

 

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.

By: Ms. Naheed Mustafa

Note: 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.

sources: http://islamic-world.net/sister/experience.htm