It’s 2022 and hijab is still the most misunderstood piece of cloth. This statement can be interpreted in two ways. One, why are so many women still inclined towards being oppressed by choosing to wear something that makes them look unsophisticated, old-world, unprepossessing and enslaved? Two, why are headscarves still eyed as a legacy of the archaic times?
We are living in an age wherein advices and suggestions are better kept unsaid, and following religions or customs is deemed something highly personal. The actual point to ponder over is why the lion’s share of our general public holds a strong opinion against women who choose to cover their hair, which is sadly also projected by our entertainment industry. A village girl, to illustrate, steps into an urban university on a scholarship and, as the days go by, she gets rid of her shawl followed by dupatta and later sleeves. Unfortunately, in this part of the world, showing skin is equated with confidence, independence, feminism, and being kicky. The more revealing your clothes are, the better you are an advocate of women’s rights and the better your voice will be heard.
A harsh reality that many hijabis, if not all, face in their everyday lives is the first impression people get of them. A girl with a headscarf can only be homely, behind the times, too primitive to understand contemporary happenings, or too suppressed to achieve anything in her life. A woman in abaya doesn’t befit corporate culture as well as one in office suit. Our capabilities and entire personalities are judged by our apparels and this sad truth is what has kept our thought process from evolving.
The list of highly qualified women doctors, engineers, teachers, bankers, pilots and corporate officers who willingly wear hijabs all around the world is endless. Eqbal Asa’d, Mona Shindy, Shahnaz Laghari and Melanie Elturk are just a few names to mention.
It would be wrong, however, to say that a mere piece of cloth cannot define you. Living in Australia for a few months has made me realise that yes it does. It is my choice to wear whatever I want and it is the society’s part to accept and respect my choice. The most unique aspect of wearing a hijab in such multi-cultural societies is easy identification. The only definition the women who choose to wear headscarves get in this part of the world is to be of a Muslim. Their potential abilities, credentials and persona are not gauged through the lens of religious and cultural symbols.
Jews with their hanging sidelocks and kippahs, Christians with their cross necklaces, or anything as areligious and cultural as tattooing one’s arms or whole body with whatever one wishes, these all are nothing but just symbols to identify your ‘type’. And that doesn’t make any one group the odd one out or clichéd. All religions and cultures are given as much respect and as many opportunities as the other and this is what makes this society more subsuming and rich.
Wearing clothes can be as liberating as taking them off. The core concept behind feminist struggle is to identify existing male privileges in societies and not let women get treated unfairly because of them, including the awarding of complete social, economic and political equality for women. Yes, in some parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, women are still forced into covering their bodies from head to toe in the name of religion and not doing so can earn them their men’s wrath, but is it fair enough to generalise the concept of adorning a hijab and making it synonymous to oppression? How would the world perceive the idea of necessitating prostitutes to wear bikinis or nothing at all in front of strangers in the name of breadwinning when, in today’s world, wearing fewer and fewer clothes is actually deemed liberating?
It is all about perspective and has everything to do with people’s restricted minds rather than the style and amount of clothes on one’s body. If ‘my clothes cannot define me’ is the new slogan for feminists these days, then let hijab be a part of it too.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 9th, 2022.
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