‘No, I don’t know.’ I raised my eyebrows and took a sip of coffee. ‘Anywhere you can go, I can go too.’ I paused to see if he would buckle. ‘Or are there places that you go where you feel in your heart that you shouldn’t go, and seeing me with my headscarf with you would remind you of that and make you feel guilty?’
He changed the subject. ‘I just don’t feel comfortable with a woman in hijab.’
‘Really, I make you feel uncomfortable?’ I laughed at him.
‘No! No!’ More squirming.
I couldn’t contain my laughter any longer in response to his elusive answers.
‘I’ve just never met anyone like you. I don’t know any women who wear hijab. I just thought that’s why they would all be dull.’
Preconceptions: I had freed myself from one set to find myself up against another. I wondered how Hasan would respond to a tougher line of questioning. I decided to be blunt.
‘Is it that you want to show your wife off to your friends to point out how pretty she is? If I wear hijab then you can’t exhibit me.’
Some boys had brazenly admitted to me that they wanted a pretty wife to show off to their friends so they could compete to see who had the most luscious partner. A woman in hijab would never meet that expectation. A woman in hijab would never want to.
He looked at me, unsure of this turn in the conversation.
‘Or maybe you are worried that they will know that you are a Muslim? Or they will stop being your friends because your camouflage will be blown?’
As Muslim women who wore a headscarf, our faith was obvious to those around us. We were clearly marked out and we had to learn to establish our identities as Muslims who were confident in our faith. We took the brunt of recognition as Muslims. The way we appeared in public was used to epitomise Islam. Stories in newspapers to do with Muslims – even if Muslim women were not involved – invariably carried pictures of Muslim women wearing headscarves or veils. We had to align the way we looked on the outside with what we believed on the inside; we had no choice.
For some Muslim men, who did not want to wear their faith so openly or who did not want people to know that they were Muslim, it was easy for them to hide their faith. They did not have to carry any outward signs. There were some Muslim men who acted like this because they were embarrassed by their religion and did not want to be associated with it. For them, I knew that my headscarf was extremely conspicuous, as though a big sign was appearing over our heads flashing ‘Muslim! Muslim!’
I looked him straight in the eye. I was trying hard not to label him unfairly based on my experiences so far of men who did not want to marry a woman who wore hijab. I had to fight my own preconceptions.
‘You’re really nice, and I never knew that Muslim women went out or travelled or worked or could dress fashionably and still look attractive …’ He blushed, and then I did. ‘I didn’t realise. It’s just, just … I’m sorry, I just don’t feel comfortable.’
We talked further, and slowly Hasan’s real feelings were revealed. My hijab fully publicised my faith to the wider world, and Hasan’s conclusion was that I must therefore be totally consumed with instituting a highly visual public statement of religion, which would destroy his efforts to keep his own religion private. I explained that even though a woman may have taken the huge step to dress modestly and wear the headscarf, it didn’t mean that she was perfect or pious in every, or even in any, way. She was just as human as everyone else. However, his reflexive reaction was that I was forcing him to expose what he had consciously and subconsciously spent so much time hiding.
The different responses I received to my headscarf had revealed how these men felt inside themselves. I remembered my Funny Valentine card and thought about how different men react to women who wear hijab, and how a woman’s dress can change someone’s perception of who she is so dramatically. Hasan had an idea of himself that he kept very private. He was honest in describing that he had a seed of faith that lay in his heart but that he wasn’t ready to bring it out into the open and expose it yet.
He and I were at different stages in our journey through life. We were in such different places that we did not even have the language to talk to each other about what was important to us.
I liked the fact that he had his own ideas about the world but that he also understood there was space to learn and to grow. Most of all, I was impressed with his honesty and willingness to challenge his own preconceptions. He made me challenge my own ones and ensure that I saw each person with individuality and humanity.
I had started my search looking for a man who would abide by the choice I had made to wear the headscarf; after all, it was my own decision as a woman as to how I should dress. But the more I had to fight the preconceptions of what a Muslim woman who wore hijab should be like, the more I wanted a man who understood why I wore it and supported me. I wanted him to want me to wear hijab. I wanted him to have a vision of a better future for our society, and to understand that the reason that I had chosen to wear hijab was a small contribution to that future.
If someone was tied to literal or cultural ideas about Islam and being Muslim then we would never be able to improve the status quo. Instead, we had to create new possibilities, and to do that I needed someone who was magical enough to free himself of the preconceptions that held all of us back.
Wearing hijab was not a decision I had taken lightly. Hijab is an Arabic word that means ‘to cover’, which includes covering the whole body in loose clothing, but it was used commonly to refer to the headscarf itself.
When I first made the decision to ‘wear hijab’, I did it simply because it was ‘the thing to do’. I went often to the mosque, I read a lot of Islamic books, I read the Qur’an, I travelled to Muslim countries, I went on the umra, the lesser pilgrimage, to Mecca. I was immersed in wanting to live a fully Islamic lifestyle as part of who I was, and I decided that wearing hijab was a fundamental part of that desire.
Wearing modest clothing was described in the Qur’an as something that the believing men and women engaged in. I believed in God and I believed in the Qur’an, and I wanted to be considered one of the believing men and women. It was therefore quite simple: I believed in the concept of hijab and I wanted to wear it.
This decision meant a slow change in wardrobe, my dress sense growing with my hijab-sense. It meant taking care over long sleeves, long skirts, scarves that wrapped around the head covering hair, ears and neck, and pinned underneath the chin. I was conservative with my experimentation, as were many British Muslims. Hijab was still very new to Britain and to the Muslims who started to wear it here. It was not at this time about being fashionable, but about observing the parameters of modesty.
Many of the Aunties would titter half-embarrassed, half-proud at the ‘modern’ clothing they had worn before they had ‘understood’ Islam.
‘We had to move away from our homes, and away from Muslim countries in order for us to really understand our faith of Islam,’ said the Aunties. This sentiment became more and more prevalent amongst the generations that had arrived as immigrants. ‘Back home’ it was assumed that culture was ‘Islamic’. It was taken for granted. No questions were asked about whether what people really did was Islamic or not. In their new home each action had to be reassessed: there was no longer any assumption that any activity was de facto Islamic. When the new generation like me grew up in Britain, every action that was a remnant from other cultures had to be challenged and justified; it was no longer good enough for an action to be based on ‘how it is’. That is what parents found hardest – that they were being challenged. Many saw it as a sign of rebellion against them, when it was far from that. It wasn’t them as people who were being analysed, but whether the customs that were being practised were really as ‘Islamic’ as they claimed them to be.
When the Aunties explained this, it brought them to life as real human beings who had been through their own challenges. I started to understand the tribulations that they ha
d faced in moving geographies and cultures, and in the context of a slow but perceptible change in social values, immigration and the role of faith.
Some of my friends wanted to wear hijab but their families did not permit them to do so. They were actually prevented from making this choice for themselves. The families didn’t want their daughters turning into ‘fanatics’. They didn’t want to be seen in society with a ‘crazy’ or ‘fundamentalist’ child.
Both post-modernists and many traditional Muslims agreed on one thing: feminism was a dirty word. But I was fascinated by the struggles that European women had gone through to create a society where I was able to choose to wear hijab and establish it as a principle of my choice and empowerment. I read writings about throwing off corsets, burning bras and the revolution of the mini-skirt. The questions that women asked then were the same questions that Muslim women were asking now: who were men to tell women how to dress? Why were women being fobbed off with ideas that they had already been given their due, when in fact they hadn’t? Why did women not get their voices heard? I agreed wholeheartedly: women had to throw off their shackles, liberate themselves, enter the workplace and establish equality. I punched the air fervently and then asked myself meekly, was I a feminist?
I thought its aspiration was very attractive. I knew that as a child of the 1980s I had not suffered the inequality and oppression or the struggles and sacrifices of the women who came before. But I was indeed suffering at the hands of an Asian Muslim culture that interpreted Western feminism as misguided, and misguidedly interpreted Islam in order to subjugate women.
Feminism had explored one area that greatly intrigued me – how should women behave in the workplace? How should they interact in order to be taken seriously and gain maximum impact? In this area, surprisingly, it coincided with the general thrust of Islamic thinking – that women should dress modestly so that they would be taken seriously for who they were rather than what they looked like.
I wanted to contribute to the social discourse about gender and equality, but Muslim women who wore the veil by choice, and by extension who embraced Islam as a positive force, were not allowed to have a say. Only Muslim women who had openly rejected Islam were allowed to be part of the discussion. I was an inadmissible feminist.
The global discussion about equality for women referred to the veil as oppressing women, a sign of their second-class status. Where women were forced to wear it, I believed it was wrong. But the fact that they were forced to wear it was not the problem itself: it was the symptom of more serious underlying inequality. That inequality wasn’t part of the blueprint of Islam. Islam talks about equal value and worth for both genders, both equal as creations.
Each man and each woman will be judged on their own individual merits for each atom of good and each atom of evil that they have done. I was most moved by a verse in the Qur’an which says that God ‘created you from a single soul’. No left ribs, no second status. Men and women were from a single soul, equal in creation and worth. Everything else had to be interpreted in this context. That meant if there was inequality in interpretation or in practice, we had to go back to this very essence and rethink where we were. Everything in our understanding as Muslims had to be in the spirit of ‘created from a single soul’.
I felt that if the ideas of Islam about men, women and equality were scrutinised by Muslims and others, a whole plethora of ideas could be developed to improve the situation of women around the world. Having grown up and embraced my faith, my Asian culture and my British culture, I felt that this gave me and others like me a unique perspective. I wanted to make a difference.
In the gender blueprint that Islam offered, there was one thing I loved above all else – and that was the value that it placed on ‘womanly’ things. I felt that these needed more status and more recognition: being a wife, being a mum, being a carer, a nurturer. Even though feminism had gone a long way to rebalancing gender equality, it seemed that in many cases it was by opening doors for women to do traditionally masculine things. It needed now to put back value into the inherently feminine things. I watched game shows where women tagged along with their husbands to declare themselves to be ‘only a housewife’ or ‘just a mum’. I knew just how hard my mum had to work to look after me.
When I thought about my mother, and the status of all mothers, I reflected on the saying of the Prophet Muhammad: ‘Paradise lies beneath the feet of the mother.’ Everything that a believing Muslim dreamed of was there, waiting. The Qur’an talked about how a child should never even utter the sound ‘uf’ to her parents, in recognition of the pain, efforts and anguish that they have suffered to bring up that child. Most striking of all, when the Prophet Muhammad was asked which parent a child should obey, he responded, ‘The mother, the mother, the mother, then the father.’
My mother is the closest human being to me on earth, and I know that she loves me more than anyone else. She knows if I am sad, lonely or in pain without even asking. She always puts me before herself, and is constantly praying for my well-being and for my dreams to come true.
As I grew up, and as I embarked on the journey of looking for the One and learning about life and faith, she travelled with me and we grew together. I shared my experiences with her and she shared hers with me. She would sit on the sofa and I would lie with my head in her lap while she stroked my hair. No matter how old I am, that will always be the most comforting, safe and loving place for me. Even if I am married, the love between a mother and a daughter will always be different from and irreplaceable by the love of a partner. As mother and daughter, we have shared a journey through the joys and pains of living in this world as women and sharing in the most intimate moments of our lives.
My mother lives and breathes dedication and commitment to her husband and her family. I have not experienced anyone with as many smiles and as much patience and contentment in the face of adversity as my mother. She is a quiet hero, as most women are.
My mother calls me her ‘hiro’, a Gujarati word meaning ‘diamond’. She is my hero, my inspiration for all that I do. If I grow into half the woman that she is, my life as a woman will be a success.
Anti-repressant
I had issues just like everyone else. I still had to get my head straight about life, faith, men, spirituality, work-life balance, culture, love. All of that just made me a normal human being trying to make my way in the world. When it came to issues of boxes and labels, and people’s ideas of ‘this is how it’s always been’ and ‘this is how it should be, because this is how it should be’, one simple fact became clearer and clearer: the problem was not me.
‘Shelina should be more flexible,’ the Aunties and matchmakers told my mother.
‘What does “more flexible” mean?’ I asked my mother, perplexed. Hadn’t I already met a man who played a practical joke on me, one who turned up two hours late because he was watching the cricket, and one who claimed that a bolt of lightning had destroyed my contact details?
‘You’ve had an enquiry,’ she told me, ‘from a very suitable young man. He’s also been to Oxford and now has a very good job in the city. He is from a very good family and I remember his father used to be very handsome when he was young. His mother is beautiful too, so I’m expecting that he is probably very good looking. I’m told that he used not to be very religious but he’s becoming more and more interested in Islam and he says he would like to marry someone who is also religious.’
‘That all sounds very promising,’ I responded. ‘So we should meet him, no? Sounds like the best interest we’ve had in quite some time.’
My mother produced an encouraging frown face.
‘What is it this time?’ I asked, hesitant. After engaging with optimism and hope through numerous matches and introductions, I’d finally learnt to confront ‘the catch’ at the start. When I first noticed myself doing this, I had tried to put a stop to my increasing pessimism and stay positive. But with more and more introductions under my belt, and less and le
ss fantasy to cling onto, I concluded that it was better to face reality up front – that there was always something that wasn’t quite right. After all, wasn’t that the point of arrangements and introductions: to think with the head and make a reasoned decision about whether reality could support the feelings and emotions someone evoked inside you?
‘He doesn’t want someone who wears hijab,’ she continued. I’d heard this one before. Surely the simple answer was for him to be introduced only to women who did not wear the hijab? That seemed the obvious next step in this scenario. I said as much to my mum.
‘Perhaps you need to consider him, he is everything you need. He is intelligent and intellectual, he has a forward-looking outlook on life, he’s active and sociable, and his family are very open and easy-going, all of which you are having trouble finding elsewhere,’ she advised.
Her analysis was right. I was having difficulty finding these qualities. I sighed, ‘So what are you suggesting?’ We’d been through this before, this process of being introduced to men who had specifically stated that they wanted a non-hijab-wearing woman in the hope, or taking the calculated risk, that having seen me they would be overwhelmed with my good looks, charm and endearing personality and would immediately say ‘yes’ in a mesmerised trance of my brilliance and un-miss-ability. They always said ‘no’.
‘It’s not me suggesting this,’ said my mum with audible italics. ‘It’s just that Auntie has asked me to put this to you to consider. I have to give you the option to make your own decision.’
‘I don’t really want to be put up in front of another man for him to measure my looks on a ten-point scale and decide if I am pretty enough to be a trophy wife for him or to judge if my clothes are trendy and stylish enough to “compensate” for my hijab.’
There was a bittersweet irony in the suggestion that I should be told that I should not wear a headscarf. The request to not wear it was repressive.
Love in a Headscarf Page 17
