Why I Won't Let Everyday Bigotry Stop Me From Observing Hijab

By Tasmiha Khan


Every morning before I go out, my routine features the same ritual: I scan through my headscarf collection and coordinate which one could be best to wear with my outfit for the day. I’m cautious about the material I choose: cotton is routinely my go-to since it sits so well with little to no adjustment. The texture has to be just right. I'd like to make sure I get a smooth and round finish as I place it on my head, and I avoid any pretzel-like folds with a sole straight pin to hold the contents in place without poking me. Observing hijab like this for nearly two decades means I have a sea of options, and Once I never have a bad hair day, having a bad hijab day isn’t an alternative for me. During all of this, I mirror how hijab is a piece of me.


Hijab means more than a headscarf alone though. Though commonly understood by non-Muslims because the wearing of a headscarf by Muslim ladies, hijab is rather a decree; the term applies to both males and girls, and requires how one carries him or herself. The physical appearance is just one piece of it. Given the caustic times, it’s critical to understand the underpinnings of what hijab really is: not a form of oppression however a means of freedom for the soul for Muslims.


Hijab simplifies matters for me, as I’m reminded that my speech, behaviors, and the way I conduct myself should be under the guise of modesty as ordained by God. My own observation extends past the cloth several people co-worker with hijab, too: I plan to rarely ever wear heavy makeup in public; if I do, for a festive event where there will only be other females, I cover my face as well. During my observation of hijab, I’ve noticed the moralistic divine decree I comply with by way of the Quran — being able to determine what and any time others visualize of me physically — is liberating.


Currently, there are around 3.45 million Muslim people In the
U.S., Or an estimated 1.1 percent of the population. While not all Muslim girls observe hijab, those who do can typically be made to feel alienated by non-Muslims, generally without consideration of whether they were place on Earth and raised in the States.


Those outsiders to my religion often exhibit an everyday sort of hatred, one that has been normalized in a specifically terrifying way. An attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, where 49 Muslim people were killed while in prayer, may feel like an outlying, extraordinary event, yet the fact of the matter is, unfortunately it’s not. Muslim folks are targeted by anti-Muslim sentiment each and every day, and those of us who are visibly Muslim are that much more prone to overt xenophobia and normalized other-ization alike.


Yet in the event you were to ask someone who wasn’t Muslim to describe hijab, there's a good chance they may not think of the word “freeing.” And it’s not a misperception specific to the alt-right, who have a long and storied history of expressing bigoted, anti-Muslim beliefs and sentiments openly and to much applause. (Look no further than Jeanine Pirro’s willfully obtuse remarks about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s hijab, which were so myopic, Fox News actually took a stance against them.) There really are several left-leaning spaces that also breed negativity; non-observant Democrats, independent liberals, and progressives alike have also shown that they have little understanding about what hijab means. A recent study shows that there's no significant difference between the misperception among liberals and conservatives that Muslims have "outdated views of women," a stereotype that obviously finds its target in visibly Muslim ladies — women who wear hijab.


Tarmim, a recent college graduate, tells MTV News that observing hijab has impacted her job search in ways she did not previously anticipate. “I can’t apply to every field, and as I go via job search process, I have to be careful,” she says. “And Once I get interviews for jobs that face customers, I have to be realistic. People will visualize me with my hijab and automatically make assumptions and so they won’t come back.” She feels frustrated with how she is perceived simply because she wears a headscarf, and she isn’t alone.


in the event you observe hijab, you’re more likely to find yourself on the obtaining end of vitriol from bigoted people. And it’s clear that people don’t desire to learn: After a Muslim call center in Dallas promoted on a billboard earlier this month, people with Islamophobic views flooded the lines with hate. A Canadian politician even claimed that hijab is a “symbol of oppression;” corresponding legislature by the Coalition Avenir Quebec wants to push people who wear religious symbols out of public-facing jobs. And in the U.S., Rep. Ilhan Omar had to work to overturn a ban on headwear in the Chamber of Congress so that she may wear her hijab while she was sworn into office.


Omar also been open about correcting the misconceptions people have about hijab. In November 2018, she tweeted, “No one puts a scarf on my head however me. It’s my choice – one protected by The opening Amendment. And this isn't the last ban I’m going to work to lift.” For several people, yet, the misunderstanding of hijab boils down to the belief that it is a form of oppression, in spite of the fact that coercion goes against the teachings of Islam to start with. This stereotype is further rooted in the fact that several non-Muslims don’t make the task to get to know Muslims, and is reinforced by the lack of representation of hijabi females in major professional circles — and the misperceptions that others in those circles carry.


Munzareen, a hijabi pediatrician from New York, recounts being on the procuring end of comments from colleagues about how she “looked foreign, or how religious people didn't go into medicine.” Once she worked for a month in a rural area in Maine, the nurses admitted that Munzareen was one of the few people of color that they had ever worked with. As job possibilities came up in areas without a lot of diversity, she tended to not apply, though she feels that having “many visually identifiable Muslim women” is an asset to her profession because it not only brings comfort and understanding nevertheless permits for enhanced cultural and religious competency.


"I wish I might do my job the way I was taught how to without assumptions about my intentions or constant surprise that I as a Muslim hijabi woman [needing] to have damaged a nonexistent societal norm by being wise adds Rabia, a hijabi doctor who lives in Michigan.


The supply isn’t, obviously, relegated to the medical field alone. Aneesa, a hijabi executive who works in manufacturing, noticed that people started to treat her differently right after she started wearing a head covering in her late twenties. “I initially did not wear the scarf up until age 29,” she tells MTV News. Immediately after she wore the headscarf, she remembers that “employees were afraid that they weren’t going to get more work. At times, there could be clientele who would meet with me in person, [and soon after seeing me in hijab] there could be crickets.”


All three girls stay in relatively progressive locations next to major metropolitan areas and the discrimination they face has the same throughline. The fact that they proudly wear their hijab means they are visibly appearing as Muslim females, which opens them up to being misunderstood by acquaintances and strangers alike.


According to the Council on American-Islam Relations, the assortment of hate crimes against Muslim people rose by 67 percent in 2015, and the Southern Poverty Law Center tracked at least 100 anti-Muslim hate groups that were mobile in the U.S. In 2018. Although someone does not necessarily need to actively identify as a member of these groups to espouse anti-Muslim rhetoric. Immediately following the mosque attacks in New Zealand, President Donald Trump tweeted his “warmest sympathies” to the Muslim community, even soon after he tried to enforce three separate iterations of a travel ban against several countries with a majority Muslim population.


The hatred against visibly Muslim girls has become so frequent that several don’t report incidents right after they happen, as The Guardian noted soon following the British and pro-Brexit politician Boris Johnson issued several ignorant comments about Muslim coverings in August 2018. And we can't analyse Western discrimination against hijabi ladies without acknowledging that such prejudice takes place in a society that broadly privileges whiteness, perceived American-ness, and Christianity — and often demonizes anything that generally seems to oppose those ideas.


The fear of the “other” is real, and the lack of representation of Muslim females wearing hijab inherently casts hijabi females as a false “other,” which is xenophobic on its face. That a bill specifically condemning bigotry and violence towards Muslim people died in Congress in 2015 is telling about where we are as a society. (A 2017 resolution later broadly condemned hate crimes, including those against Muslim people, as well as a 2019 resolution condemned both anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim rhetoric.) The small fact that it has taken more than 181 years to permit for head coverings on the Home floor is alarming. That the ban was overturned is a sign of progress, although it begs the question: Why did it take almost two hundred years for that progress to be made to start with?


While there have been significant strides in representation of Muslim American ladies observing hijab in different spaces, the presence of one person that fits the bill isn’t necessarily a sign that the problem is “fixed,” and the immediate denunciation of an extremist attack by white nationalists doesn’t eradicate the everyday supremacy that allowed that hatred to fester in the initial place.


For that to happen, we need to have dialogue and push for policy changes that could be both welcoming and cooperative for Muslims specifically, not least of all as the hate that targets us is specific in nature, too.


Tasmiha Khan is a M.A. Candidate in Social Impact at Claremont Lincoln University a 2018-2019 AAUW Career Development Awardee. Follow Khan @CraftOurStory to learn more.