Re'jabing

There's hijabing. Meaning, putting on hijab; becoming a "hijabi." Did that over twenty years ago.

Then, there's "de'jabing." Meaning, going through the process of taking off one's hijab, after years of wearing it full-time. This is something that several of my friends are going through.

And then, there's "re'jabing." Rethinking hijab. Looking at hijab critically, and asking how it has shaped my body image, and produced me as a gendered being who is ostensibly a member of a community which has fairly clear ideas of who is rightly guided and who is astray, who is "in" and who is "out." Which is what I'm doing right now.

The whole hijab/de'jab debate is so polarized in my community. I wonder if it's possible to re'jab--instead of arguing whether or not it is obligatory, or why women should or should not wear it, can we not look critically at the impact that this debate is having on people's lives?

Talking to a "de'jabi"

A week ago, I had a long conversation with Nafisa, who (unlike me) has managed to finish grad school, and land a tenured academic position. Maa'sh'Allah.

As a student, Nafisa wore hijab, even in the face of opposition from several feminist professors in her department (one of whom was from a Muslim background). She also taught courses while wearing hijab.

Last year, I noticed that she was wearing her scarf more and more loosely around her head. Several months later, a mutual friend asked me whether or not I believed hijab is obligatory or not, and confided to me that she and Nafisa had been researching this question for a while. A couple of months ago, I heard that Nafisa had taken it off. A week ago, we finally had a chance to get together and talk at length. While we hadn't planned it that way, hijab ended up becoming the main topic of conversation.

"...Aside from all the legal stuff--that not all scholars agree that hijab is an obligation--I got very tired of having to always go out of my way to make it clear that I'm not right-wing, that I'm a feminist, that I'm not homophobic," Nafisa explained.

"Yes," I agreed. "I'm sick and tired of people talking to my scarf and not to me. It's as though they can't hear a thing I'm saying, because my scarf speaks so loudly--'conservative,' 'dogmatic,' 'pre-critical.' All these things are the kiss of death in academia... And what's more, they're not me. But it's as though the real "me" is veiled..."

"I went to some job interviews wearing a scarf," Nafisa went on. "For one, it was made clear that I was refused because a search committee member doubted that I was able to be objective enough about the Muslim community in my teaching or research. I went for the interview that led to this job without a scarf."

"Another thing I have a lot of problems with," I interjected, "is the reactions of a lot of Muslims to me. You know... Muslims also tend to expect that any woman who wears hijab has conservative views. Muslim students often expect me to teach material in a way that won't ask them to think too critically about anything remotely related to their faith. I often get the feeling that they think that I have betrayed them... But if I teach the way they expect, I would have betrayed my own beliefs about the importance of thinking critically..."

"Yes, I know the feeling. I'd have to teach certain things as part of the course material, and they'd look at me as if I had sold out..."

"Nafisa, wasn't it hard taking off your hijab? How do people react?"

"Yes, it's often been hard. There's a tremendous amount of guilt that's put on you---some sisters even said to me: "Oh, so you've left Islam." Of course I haven't left Islam..."

"How did people react when they saw you without hijab for the first time?"

"Some people didn't recognize me. Most of them didn't say anything. Some people asked why I had taken it off. But I have to admit..." Nafisa paused. "There are some Muslims that I still do wear hijab in front of. Because I don't want them to know that I have taken it off. I don't think they can handle it."

 

Talking to a long-time hijabi

"You've been worrying me a lot lately," said Sharifa bluntly. "You are questioning everything about Islam nowadays. Like hijab... you say you don't care if your daughter wears hijab or not, and that you'd rather she didn't..."

"How interesting that you seem to identify hijab with Islam," I commented. "I thought there were five pillars in Islam--do women have six?"

"Are you denying that hijab is an important part of Islam?"

"I don't deny that hijab is central to the understanding of Islam that we were taught," I replied carefully, aware that I was about to blunder into a hornet's nest. "But really! We've discussed a lot of really controversial things lately. But it's hijab that is really bothering you, more than anything else. Hijab! What is it, the prospect of my daughter's uncovered hair? Does it conjure up visions of an undisciplined female body, a body which is somehow beyond male control..."

"Here you go, intellectualizing everything, while I'm trying to talk to you about something which I think is really serious!" Sharifa said. "Listen, do you remember why I wore hijab in the first place, all those eighteen years ago? It was basically because of your influence..."

Guiltily, I recalled how I'd been eighteen years ago. I had been a fundamentalist. If I'd had a slogan to live by back then, aside from "la ilaha ill'Allah," it was "Hejab sangereh-ma; Khomeini rahbar-e ma" (Hijab is our fortress; Khomeini is our leader). For me at that time, hijab has been fundamental. I had had no use for Muslim women who didn't wear hijab.

While most feminists--both eastern and western--had seen the dramatic images of chador-clad women in the massive post-Iranian revolution street demonstrations as representations of the oppression of women, I hadn't seen them that way.

I, and a number of other converts, had seen such images as an escape-hatch out of what was otherwise an unbearably patriarchal interpretation of Islam. While the "mainstream" views to which we were accustomed said that women belonged at home, that their voices shouldn't be heard, and that women had no right to get involved in political or social activities, here were women out in the streets, shouting slogans and carrying guns. While we were made to feel that as converts we could never be properly "feminine" enough in our mannerisms and personas to cut it as "true" Muslim women, the images of these chadored women made us feel vindicated. We, too, had a chance at attaining heaven. And, being political actors here on earth.

"You know," Sharifa went on. "I am committed to raising my daughters with hijab. What should I tell them now--that it's not important, just because Amina now thinks that it's not important?"

"Sharifa, there's a huge debate that's been going on for some time in North America about whether or not hijab is obligatory or not," I pointed out. "Sooner or later, your daughters are going to realise this..."

"So, they're going to realise that most Muslim women here don't wear it, and that that means that they should take it off...?"

"Sharifa, just because they know that most Muslims don't do X doesn't mean that they have to feel obligated to follow them," I pointed out. "I mean, when we first started wearing it, almost nobody in this city wore it. We knew that. And that only made us more convinced that we should wear it, didn't it? We didn't want to be like most of those women we knew, immigrant women in their 100% polyester, skin-tight shalwar kameez, with nothing much to say other than how much diapers cost nowadays, or how much gold they brought back from Pakistan last trip they made..."

"It feels like you are insulting me," Sharifa stated. "You are insulting my choice to raise my daughters with hijab."

"Well, can't we just agree to disagree?" I asked.

"Amina, why don't you want your daughter to wear hijab?"

"It's not just the question of covering her head," I said. "You know that. It's all the stuff that goes along with it. I think that education should be a process of opening the mind, of discovering what you can do, not discovering all the things you can't do. She loves to play on school teams, sing in the choir, dance... Who am I to deprive her of this, in the name of hijab? Who am I to make her feel guilty about developing her talents, and just having fun? Who am I to make her feel different from all the others, or ashamed of her body? To inculcate the view that everything she does is a potential turn-on for some boy? She's so confident now, so comfortable in her skin..."

And I'm not, I finished silently. I'm not. I haven't been for as long as I can remember.

I can do all sorts of things to myself. I have done all sorts of inhuman things to myself. But I can't in all conscience do to an innocent child what has been done to me.

I can't give her a guilt complex about being female. I can't teach her that she belongs at the back of the mosque. I can't teach her to shrivel up, to bury parts of herself alive.

 

A Talking-to from an Islamist

"I want to talk to you."

It's the Islamist I live with. But even when he's away, he's in my mind. Whispering in my ear. Under my skin.

"You must fear God," he began. "I am shocked! Horrified! That you would tie your scarf behind your head, displaying your neck for men to see! Some Muslim women do this who are ignorant, illiterate. But you aren't illiterate! You must know, your neck is even more attractive to men than your hair!"

My goodness, I wasn't aware that I have such a sexy neck. But anyway...

"Does Islam have six pillars for women?" I inquired.

"What are you trying to say, that hijab is not an obligation?" he thundered. "ALL scholars agree that hijab is an obligation for ALL Muslim women!"

"Are you sure that all scholars say that?" I asked.

"Of course! The Quran is very, very clear!"

"Isn't the Quran also clear about the permissibility of slavery?" I said.

"Stop changing the subject! Now listen," he went on. "Our daughter is now almost a teenager. She is becoming pretty."

She's always been pretty, I thought to myself. What you really mean is, she's developing a figure. She's now on her way to becoming sexually attractive. And you're scared.

"You must teach her about hijab!" he almost shouted. "She should be wearing hijab, especially to school! If she wears hijab, then she will identify as a Muslim! She will have Muslim friends! She will be with good girls, girls who are serious in their studies, girls who don't date, who don't chase boys. But I know the kind of girl she'll be, if she goes on like this! She'll be like these lost Iranian girls, with their tight jeans and their tank tops, taking boyfriend after boyfriend..."

"Do you really think that you can tell what sort of a person a girl is by what she wears?" I asked.

"Yes, of course!" he answered impatiently.

I thought about some of the hijabi students I had met at university. Some were dating, often under "Islamic" pretexts. But, dating or not, so many of them were so identified as Muslims that they could not bring themselves to ask critical questions which might have the potential to cause them to rethink the conservative interpretations of Islam that they had been taught.

I thought about the Muslim students, male and female, who refuse to do group-work with students of the other sex, citing religious reasons.

I thought about MSA-run Friday prayers, with the women squashed at the very back of the hall, behind make-shift barriers of furniture.

I thought about how, when I first came to university, I would automatically head for the back of any lecture hall to find a seat. I was so accustomed to the back. I thought that, as a modest woman, that was my proper place. It was actually hard at first to make an effort to sit closer to the front, where I could see and hear better.

What hasn't been done to us, in the name of hijab?

What haven't we done to ourselves? To others?

Is a Muslim female body which is unashamed conceivable?