PRINTFabric of faith
Muslim women reveal their motivations for wearing the hijab
AMANDA LUCIER
Arooj Mohsin learned about the religious reasons for the hijab in Columbia.
October 25, 2007 | 12:00 a.m. CST
On her way out of Starbucks, Maneeza Iqbal puts on her sunglasses and adjusts her long-sleeved shirt before she steps out into the summer sun. On the street the heat is scathing, and though a palpable radiation rises from the cement, Iqbal, who is clad in jeans, crosses Ninth Street with an unspoken resolve.
Iqbal is a junior at the MU School of Journalism, and like many other MU students of Pakistani ethnicity, she is a Muslim. She spent her childhood in Chicago, Detroit and Kansas City, and her first language is technically Urdu though she says she has forgotten a good deal of it since her early childhood. Also like many other Muslim women her age, Iqbal says she feels the need to be a good Muslim. This mandate, however, is perhaps less understood in mid-Missouri, a region, like much of America, characterized by Judeo-Christian values and a limited if not blurred exposure to Islam in the years following Sept. 11 and during the war in Iraq.
Nureen Syed, an MU freshman, says wearing the hijab was her own choice.
Maneeza Iqbal, a junior at MU, says she doesn’t feel ready to wear a hijab ...
One of the more obvious sources of misunderstanding among non-Muslims is the role of women in Islam. According to the Quran, all Muslims, regardless of gender, are required to live modest lives. For women, modesty extends to the way they dress. Many Muslim women refrain from wearing shorts and mini-skirts and opt instead for long pants or jeans. Some also don a hijab, or head scarf, which can be any color fabric wrapped around a woman’s head to cover her hair and neck.
In Columbia, female followers of Islam reflect a variety of backgrounds and beliefs. Some choose to wear a hijab, but the head scarf is not what defines their faith. Rather, their faith lies in the individual way in which they choose to practice it.
According to Ahmed Habib, who chairs the board of trustees at the Islamic Center of Central Missouri in Columbia, the hijab is an important symbol of modesty and is to be worn at all times unless the woman is only in the company of immediate family. Habib says the head scarf’s purpose is to minimize the chance for unnecessary attention between the genders, but he also says donning the hijab can be a special challenge for women who did not grow up with the practice.
“It is very clear in the Quran that you have to cover your head, but it’s a big change,” he says. “Especially if you have not been doing it from your childhood days, it is even harder. So it’s a lifestyle change, but there is no question that it’s a requirement.”
Typically, he says, the scarf is required when a young woman reaches 12, but in the U.S., some Muslims do not adhere to the practice as closely as in other parts of the world. Many women choose not to wear the hijab or don’t start until later in life because they are worried about how non-Muslims will look at them. Although Habib acknowledges the importance of personal choice, he says it should be the goal of all Muslims to live according to the Quran.
“Some people who have stronger faith do it,” Habib says. “Some that don’t have as strong a faith hope and pray that their faith will become stronger so that they are able to adapt to that command from Allah.”
But in mid-Missouri, and perhaps most of the U.S., non-Muslims might form inaccurate assumptions about Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab, and it is this scrutiny that is part of the reason Iqbal holds off on wearing the hijab for the time being.
“Women automatically become a symbol for being Muslims because in the summer we’re covered up a bit more,” she says. “But hijab is huge ... and I don’t think I’ve reached that maturity to represent (Islam).”
In non-Muslim countries, fear is often a part of the equation when a woman decides to wear the hijab, Iqbal says. She remembers when her younger sister decided to start covering her head. “We were scared because there was a small group of Muslims in the entire school,” she says. “My middle sister and I told her we had her back if anyone tried anything.”
Social and religious meaning
Arooj Mohsin, a pre-med sophomore at MU, is a bubbly young woman. Now that fall has arrived, the wind is crisp and vaguely cold, but Mohsin is dressed for the season in jeans, a pink zip-up fleece, large sunglasses and a black hijab. At first glance this small, energetic woman’s appearance might simply resemble a style-conscious woman, rather than a follower of Islam. Mohsin’s black head scarf and large sunglasses somewhat lend her the appearance of a celebrity anxious to conceal her identity. She walks across the red bricks of Lowry Mall in open-toed shoes and greets many friends and acquaintances.
Later, she sits at the Bookmark Café at Ellis Library and waits for her friend so they can study together. At 2 p.m. her energy seems to be waning a bit, but then this is expected. She is observing Ramadan, an important Islamic holiday in which followers can’t eat or drink anything from sunrise to sunset. Mohsin hasn’t eaten all day, and she says the conditions in Columbia in the fall often dry her throat, so she gargles water.
Mohsin is studying for three upcoming tests and says her busy schedule will limit her ability to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday signaling the end of Ramadan. But Ramadan can sometimes make school more difficult.
“It’s hard sometimes to fast and study,” she says. “Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate.”
Mohsin was born in Pakistan and spent her early childhood and adolescence traveling back and forth between Lubbock, Texas, and Pakistan because of her father’s studies.
According to Mohsin, most non-Muslims in the U.S. don’t understand the difference between culture and religion. She says Pakistani culture and customs vary according to region. In Pakistan, Mohsin went to a private school a few hours from Kabul, Afghanistan, and she says not wearing the hijab is a big deal in that part of the country. But in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, the hijab is not part of social protocol.
In the end, Columbia proved to be a better location than Pakistan for Mohsin to learn about her faith. In Pakistan, religious and social rules are blurred, she says.
“There they force you to do things,” she says, “and, you know, you rebel. But here you can make the choice to really learn about your religion and decide.”
While in Pakistan, Mohsin never felt compelled to consider the religious reasons behind the hijab. It wasn’t until she came back to Missouri and attended high school that she started to understand that the hijab was more than just a social custom.
In Columbia, Mohsin met other young Muslim women who were enthusiastic about wearing the hijab. These high school classmates urged her to learn more about Islam, so she started to read the Quran and spend time with these other young women. Mohsin says this time of religious study changed her way of thinking; she came to see the hijab as an integral part of her life as a Muslim woman and not as something that inhibits her independence.
Nureen Syed, an MU freshman, says that her life is just like everyone else’s and she feels no pressure to make certain decisions.
“No one forced me to cover my head,” she says. “No one forced me to wear the hijab. No one forced me to do anything. I’m just like anybody else. But I still go on the Muslim path. I know what I’m supposed to do and what I’m not supposed to do. It’s just something that came out of our own will.”
Similarly, Habib says that uncertainty and struggle can serve as productive forces within a person’s life. Habib says young Muslims in the U.S. face many social pressures that might not exist in predominantly Muslim countries, but he believes such challenges lead many Muslim Americans to develop their faith more fully.
“I find the young men and women growing up in this country have stronger faith than those who were growing up back home in India and Pakistan,” he says, “because there is not the peer pressure or the cultural problems that we face in this country. It is a challenge, but I think that our younger generation is up to it.”
But dealing with misconceptions is one of the most common challenges for many women who wear the hijab. Living in Columbia, Mohsin says she notices that people treat her differently. She says people often stare or assume she is a quiet, strict person.
Syed also has found herself in situations where she feels the need to dispel misunderstandings about her religion, but she noticed a difference when she started college. She felt it was easier to fit in on campus because there were more people who had been exposed to different cultures and religions.
Mohsin says one of her best friends, whom she met in chemistry class, had some distorted ideas about her because she was Muslim. Her friend grew up in Hermann and had never seen a woman wearing the hijab before meeting Mohsin.
“She told me that she thought that Muslims were only like Osama bin Laden, but when I started talking to her she was like, ‘You’re just like me,’” Mohsin says. “We like the same stuff. We watch the same movies. We listen to the same music, go to the same school.”
Gender roles and the family dynamic
Hina Syed sits in her kitchen. Her tan complexion stands in striking contrast to her light-blue eyes. Her husband, dressed in his hospital scrubs, stands behind the kitchen counter and spoons rice and meat on a plate. The couple’s four children, three girls and one boy, sit at the dinner table. Their two oldest daughters, Hiba and Nureen, wear the hijab.
Hina Syed was born in Pakistan and immigrated to the U.S. when she was in sixth grade. She grew up in Dundee, Ill., a small suburb of Chicago. She says her parents were religious people who prayed five times a day and fasted, but she grew up without wearing a hijab.
Six years ago she decided to begin wearing one. The decision, she says, was a combination of religious study and inspiration from her two oldest daughters.
“My girls were doing it at Islamic school, and my kids used to always tell me, ‘Mom, why don’t you do it, too? It’s not that hard,’” she says. “You feel like, ‘I can’t because I’m not used to it.’ You just kind of feel that you haven’t done it all your life and people are going to start looking at you different. But I think my kids gave me a lot of courage, and they said, ‘No, no, you’ll be fine.’ So I went to a couple of lectures, and I decided I’m going to do it.”
Syed says she felt a positive difference when she started wearing a hijab. She says men treated her with more respect and that she never felt judged or discriminated against because of her head covering.When her family visited Branson, they were noticed because of the way they dressed, but wearing the hijab never interfered with her or her daughters’ vacation.
“I think we were the only people in Branson who were covering,” Hina says. “We went out to dinner two nights, and we could see people staring, but it wasn’t anything hurtful or anything like that. And I think the people there might have felt differently because my daughters did everything. They went to the water park. They got soaked and were still dressed as they should be as Muslims.”
Late on a Sunday night at the mosque in Columbia, Ahmed Habib’s voice takes on a note of intensity as he speaks about gender roles. His tone is that of a man who wants to explain a long misunderstanding as he adamantly describes what he feels is Islam’s equal treatment of men and women.
“The concept that women are not treated equally is totally wrong,” he says. “There is nothing in the religion that says a woman can’t go out to work, but of course there are requirements where they have to dress modestly. You know they can’t wear a mini-skirt and expose themselves to the outside world, but as far as going out, doing work, it is highly recommended to get an education.”
Habib also emphasizes the importance of women’s roles as mothers and says their first responsibility is as the “crux of the home.” Likewise, in his estimation, men should act as the breadwinner within the family, but he also says that in a Muslim home the husband and wife should make the majority of their decisions together.
Like Habib, Syed says Islam treats both genders equally. She says her role in the family is equal to that of her husband’s, and she does not feel limited by her faith. She works outside of the home as an office manager at a doctor’s office and also plays an active role in her home.
“Both my husband and I here share equal responsibility in the home,” she says. “Whoever gets home first cooks. It’s not my job to cook. He gets up in the middle of night to take care of the kids. So it’s not like because I’m the woman I have to cook, I have to clean. I basically do more outside things
than he does.”
Syed’s sense of equality also extends to her daughters. She says she never stops her daughters from doing anything. Her second daughter, Hiba, played soccer while also wearing pants and a hijab.
Coming to the forefront
Hina and Kaleem Syed sit in their living room. A framed picture of Arabic calligraphy hangs on one of the walls. Their three daughters sit on a sofa in the middle of the room, and their 6-year-old son reclines on the floor. Hina’s face is pensive as the topic of conversation shifts to the media’s portrayal of Muslims.
“You know the Muslim name comes up, and everybody thinks you’re a terrorist,” Hina says. “We didn’t agree with what happened on 9/11. Personally I wouldn’t want people to judge me because of that.”
Kaleem, who sits on the opposite side of the room, shakes his head when he discusses the topic. He says people should question many of the sources the media uses. He adds that many people don’t realize that another aspect of being a good Muslim is being faithful to the country where you live, that being a good American is synonymous with being a good Muslim.
“What I teach my kids is, of course you’re Muslim, but you’re American, too, and you have the same American dream like anyone one else,” Kaleem says. “I have the same American dream. I want to contribute to society.”
A strong faith might not be the only byproduct of a Muslim-American life. Both Iqbal and Hina Syed recognize the importance of having a political and social voice within the younger generation of American Muslims. Syed says she is interested in going into law, and Iqbal is studying to be a journalist. Iqbal believes young Muslims need to come to the forefront and be advocates for their faith and values.
“Muslims in this country were very secluded,” she says, “but after 9/11 we were just kind of pushed into it in a very negative way. I think what came to be really important was people our age and especially our generation. We can’t really hide anymore because our kids are going to be affected by this.”
Jordan this is one of the best peices I have ever read on hijab, the info is very accurate and reflects the true sentiments of our faith wrotten so accurately and explicitly. Thxs for getting out the message. If I could be of any assistance in the future pl let me know.
Dr Habib
Posted by ahmed habib on Oct 25, 2007 at 10:31 p.m. (Report Comment)