Muslim dress a form of liberation, not imprisonment

Why do you wear those things? Aren’t you hot all the time?
Don’t you realize that you’re in America, and
you’re free to take it all off?

Alina Varona’s recent column, “Impossible ideals
plague women,” (Feb. 6) is precisely the answer to many of
these questions ““ often posed to Muslim women around the
United States who choose to wear the hijab, or religious head
scarf. Since Sept. 11, 2001, various media outlets and individual
critics have been slamming down on the rights and security of
Muslim women all over the world, treating the hijab as the first
item that has got to go in order for “them” to be
liberated like “us.”

Ask most Muslim women in the United States why they choose to
dress the way they do, and in the range of answers you receive, you
will probably learn that it’s considered the ultimate form of
liberation. In a world where impossibly beautiful and sexualized
women bare it all for their version of “respect,” a
growing number of females are slowly beginning to realize that
respect does not come from wearing a miniskirt and a
spaghetti-strap top but rather from wearing clothes that demand
respect by forcing others to judge women by their faces and
intellect.

I have been wearing the hijab since my 13th birthday, and
entirely by my choice. I woke up one day and called my mother into
my room stating, “Mom, I want to wear the hijab.” And
that was the end of it. Of course, my mother, afraid that I was too
young or that this was just a passing trend, warned me against
stepping into commitments too quickly, but my mind was made up.
That same day I threw out all my shorts and T-shirts and went out
and bought a whole new wardrobe of pants, long skirts and
long-sleeved shirts. Oh, and I raided my mother’s drawer for
her coolest-looking hijabs until I learned where I could find my
own. I have never regretted my decision.

But of course there are stereotypes to be dispelled. Look around
the UCLA campus ““ I’m sure at one point you have
noticed a “hijabi,” or someone who wears the hijab,
around. Have you ever really seen two Muslim students with the
exact same style? That’s because there is no such thing as
Muslim women conforming to the hijab, but rather the hijab conforms
to the woman. And I’m also sure that the image of Muslim
women in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, wearing all black and
covering their whole body, has also been seen by many. However, one
has to keep in mind that often, culture or individual
interpretation get in the way of the true religion, which does not
state specifics.

In fact, how does Islam recommend wearing the hijab? The
Qur’anic verse is not entirely clear in terms of color,
shape, style and so on; it only tells the believing women not to
display their beauty and ornaments, but to be modest in dress and
behavior.

Other sources begin to add specifics to this verse, saying that
all should be covered except the hands and feet, and that the
clothing should not be tight enough where one can see the shape and
attractiveness of the woman’s body.

In other words, I have never found a verse or source that says,
“You can only wear black, and you can’t have your own
opinion, and it must be chosen for you, and you must remain in your
house and be beaten by your husband.” Again, culture and
individual interpretations have skewed the true meaning of the
hijab, which is to guard one’s modesty.

Furthermore, I’ll bet no one knows that there’s a
form of hijab for Muslim men as well. Men, like women, are advised
with their own particular set of standards in dress, such as not
wearing shorts that rest above the knee and not baring the
upper-half of their body in public. Muslim men are also not
permitted to wear pure silk or gold, for reasons stemming from the
belief that such items are too feminine for a man. Of course,
I’m belittling centuries of interpretation and standards; I
can spend 50 pages on the rules of modesty for both Muslim men and
Muslim women.

My point is that beauty varies from country to country all over
the world and should not be on our list of priorities. Clothes are
not made to identify who we are as people. Rather, our opinions,
minds and intellects will save us in the real world. That’s
my ideal form of liberation, and in wearing the hijab, I feel like
I am one step closer to reaching that ideal.