Love in a Headscarf

by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed

  As the hours and days progressed, the investigations into what had happened continued. We learnt that there were nineteen men involved. We also found out that in the last hours before embarking on their plans, these men were busy getting drunk and having intimate relationships with unknown women. It didn’t make sense. If they were the dedicated puritans that the media described, they would not have engaged in these activities which were outside the bounds of Islamic behaviour. And if their acts were not motivated by religion, why would they blow themselves up along with thousands of other people?

  The shock that America experienced brought the world to an emotional standstill. On their home soil this huge and powerful nation had been attacked, and its citizens had never experienced such a thing before. They were in deep turmoil and anguish, and the world was with them. All other countries put their own devastation and pain into second place to share America’s moment of bereavement. Innocent people had been killed and this was intolerable. Islamic – human – etiquette demands that even a single innocent death must be mourned, irrespective of who that person is. The value of a lost person is not dependent on what else is happening in the world. One human life lost, wherever or whoever, is the loss of the whole of humanity.

  Muslims from around the world sent heartfelt messages of condolence and denunciation, but it was never enough. No matter how much we condemned the atrocious acts, we were informed that we were actually supporting them. We were told that we ought to condemn them more fervently and more passionately. So we condemned them some more, and then we were told we were insincere. When we tried to explain the peaceful humanitarian principles of Islam, we were told that we were being false – otherwise how could these men have carried out their atrocious activities saying that they were ‘Islamic’? We also explained that their interpretation of the teachings of Islam was erroneous and they were criminals trying to justify their disgusting actions any way they could. Speaking out just attracted more attention, more vitriol, more hatred. But keeping quiet was not an option. Keeping quiet would allow others to suffer and the War on Terror to spiral out of control. I felt frightened – as though I had been identified and badged as ‘evil’ and a ‘terrorist’. I was fearful of what lay ahead for me as a Muslim.

  This was the first time that I was encouraged to say ‘not in my name’. It was demanded of me as a Muslim to denounce what had happened, distancing myself from something that was not my responsibility. I wholeheartedly rejected the outrageous attacks, and it came from my very soul to state my horror at the deaths. I denounced the actions as a human being, as a citizen of the world who abhorred violence and the killing of innocent people, and the wilful destruction of people, property and symbols.

  ‘Not in my name’ as a human being was a universal statement. But I felt angry that it was expected of me to say ‘not in my name’ as a Muslim. Even though I was a Muslim, I had no connections to the evil men who had done this, so why should I have to say ‘not in my Muslim name’? Why should I create a link that didn’t exist? I was as little involved as anyone else. I had been taught only peace and harmony. That was the very fundamental basis of faith – to be at peace with the Creator, at peace with one’s self and at peace with others.

  ‘Not in my name’ still echoes, after 7 July in London, and is still demanded whenever a Muslim is linked to violence. I am asked to become an apologist for the actions of others, connected to me only as much as anyone else in the six degrees of separation. But I should only be held responsible for my own actions: that is a human principle, an Islamic principle.

  After 11 September 2001, and again after the events of July 2005 in London, my colour, my name and my headscarf marked me out and tagged me with the label ‘terrorist’. It was 11 September that marked the date of the very first time that I felt subhuman in Britain, and the first day that I felt scared to live in my own country.

  Many days before the awful events in New York, I had arranged to meet with a group of Muslim women to build a Muslim women’s social network. This was to have been our first meeting. Our purpose was to drink tea, eat muffins and make new friends. It was 12 September and the girls felt nervous.

  ‘Not sure we should be out,’ said Sara.

  ‘I’m feeling scared,’ said Noreen. ‘We’ll be exposed and in danger. People will be watching us, wondering what a group of Muslim women is talking about.’

  I was worried too: we could be targets. Would we be attacked verbally or even physically? My uncle had two fingers aggressively thrown up at him; my father had been jostled by two men in the supermarket that morning.

  Everyone was frightened to be out in public – what if London was next? The streets stank of fear, people were eyed suspiciously and footsteps rattled swiftly across pavements to take their owners quickly home to safety and the never-ending stream of news analysis on which we were now all fixated.

  We were the same as everyone, just as worried, just as fearful. But we carried a double burden: targets for the terrorists and targets for those who were now boiling with anger and fear because of the attacks on the Twin Towers.

  We took a decision to meet anyway, in a small coffee shop. There were five of us who refused to be cowed by the fear that the terrorists had invoked in all those around us, five of us who refused to be targeted by those who stereotyped us as terrorists, too. Five of us who needed a strong cappuccino and some marshmallows. We were just as shocked as the rest of London, just as horrified and just as opposed to the violence. But we had to get on with life.

  My faith had been quiet and broadly unknown, but suddenly Islam was discussed constantly. Some commentators reiterated our vehement arguments about Islam’s opposition to violence and the killing of innocent civilians. Politicians outlined new policies under the mantle of the War on Terror. Afghanistan was the first casualty, and would be bombed to evict Bin Laden. We despaired for the innocent civilians who would be killed there as collateral damage to find him. Their deaths would not bring back the innocent Americans who had died. It was awful to contemplate that one attack on the US meant thousands and thousands of innocent civilians being killed in Afghanistan. Soon Iraq was to follow.

  It became difficult to engage in ordinary activities if you were a Muslim. If you were boarding an aeroplane, you would be subjected to extraordinary and unwarranted checks if you had a Muslim name, even if you didn’t fit the simplistic descriptions of what a Muslim was supposed to look like. My friend Shahnaz was stopped ten times in one multi-destination trip ‘for no reason’. She was told it was ‘just routine’. Another friend was detained on his way to an interview ‘for no reason’. He told them his interview time, and was then held back and released deliberately a few minutes after his appointment. My friends who worked in banks were told to freeze accounts of people with ‘Muslim-sounding names’. As I disembarked from a flight returning to London after a work trip, a woman from immigration was waiting with intent at the exit of the plane. She barked at me to step aside, uninterested in any of the other passengers. She insisted on looking at my passport, and I asked why I was the only one being checked, as hundreds of others walked past me. She repeated her demand. I asked her again why she wanted to see my British passport but she ignored me. ‘If you don’t show me, we’ll have to take you for questioning. Who knows how long that might take,’ she whispered ominously.

  One morning later that winter, Emma pulled me to one side as I arrived in the office. I was wearing a black headscarf to co-ordinate with a smart black suit that I had just bought. Since it was an icy November morning, I had pulled on my long black winter coat to keep out the cold, as most of the other men and women in the city had also done. I hadn’t thought twice about the combination of black headscarf and black coat. It was cold midwinter and black was the order of the day.

  ‘I really don’t think you should dress all in black,’ Emma whispered.

  I was baffled. Was wearing black now a fashion faux-pas?

  Her eyes crinkled with concern. ‘People m
ight get the wrong impression, you know, with all the stuff going on in the news. You might get hurt.’

  Emma meant well, of this I was certain. She was someone who cared about the fact that I was a Muslim. She cared about whether I got hurt. She saw what other people perhaps didn’t see: I was a person like everyone else underneath. I loved her for this.

  ‘Thank you, Emma, I really appreciate your concern.’ I smiled warmly at her and gave her a gentle hug. ‘Consider the all-black French spy look gone and forgotten.’

  ‘You don’t mind me saying anything?’

  ‘Of course not. I like it that you are concerned for me.’

  Emma’s comments reassured me that things could get better, that we could aspire to a society where we treated individuals on their own merits and cared for their well-being. I was hopeful that there were other good-hearted Emmas out there. The world needed more people who looked out for each other.

  Her comments made me worry, too: would it be enough to avoid wearing black? Those who ignorantly held me responsible would seek out vengeance, whether their target was marked clearly and stereotypically in black or not. If I removed my headscarf, that would make me less noticeable. There was discussion about whether women who wore the headscarf would be advised to remove it for their own safety. I was adamant that this was not something I would consider. I was firm in my belief and I would stand up for it. I refused to change the way I practised my faith or to let fear stop me from carrying out what I believed in. If I did that, I would have failed in my duty as a citizen.

  I worried about the stereotypes of Muslims that were being perpetuated. Emma’s idea that those who wore black coats and black headscarves would be seen as terrorists was one of those stereotypes. I was deeply touched that she was worried on behalf of my safety. And I understood her dilemma about whether to convey the stereotypes that other people might have of me. But by conveying those stereotypes, she was in small part accepting them and even reinforcing them. How was I to change the world if even the good people who were concerned about me couldn’t help me reject the prejudice that was out there? Accepting the inherent prejudices that people had would make me live my life in fear, constantly worried about how people were seeing me. I needed to be brave and shatter those ideas.

  It wasn’t easy. Fear and violence were affecting all of us. One of my headscarf-wearing friends was punched and her nose broken as she sat quietly on the train home. Her aggressor muttered profanities about her faith and her ‘terrorist activities’ as he went on to terrorise her himself. He inflicted shattering pain on her face and then walked off at the next station. Even when he was gone, the other passengers left her to bleed.

  As a Muslim who believed in peace and dialogue, I had to face fear and aggression from several quarters. Those who had conducted the attacks on the Twin Towers had attacked the very core of Islamic belief that we should be working towards peace. They claimed aggressively that people like me were weak ‘moderate’ Muslims. Paradoxically, as had been my experience over the previous weeks and months, I was associated with those who had perpetrated the acts, and labels like ‘violent’ and ‘extremist’ were applied.

  In amongst all of these stark opinions were the ongoing discussions about the position and treatment of Muslim women. The views that I had seen on television as a young child, painting Muslim women as oppressed and abused, had changed very little in the intervening years. Islam was held almost entirely responsible for all the violence conducted in non-Western countries against Muslim women, even though such horrible acts were usually driven by culture, the cycle of under-development and a lack of education. The suffering that women in these areas had endured was compounded by wars that left them in poverty, barely able to survive. As for me, even though I had chosen to wear the headscarf, the public discussions about Muslim women – which rarely included the voices of Muslim women themselves – identified me as too repressed to know my own mind; so repressed, in fact, that I wasn’t allowed to speak for myself in these debates. By wearing the headscarf, I was said to be participating in my own oppression.

  So many labels were stuck onto me without me having a voice:

  Oppressed, repressed, subjugated, backwards, ignorant

  Violent, extremist, hateful, terrorist, jihadist, evil, radical

  Weakling, moderate, sell-out, self-hating, apologist

  Labels and boxes, I hated all of them. I was none of the above.

  My search for love offered me no escape from the boxes either.

  Nice Asian girl

  Overly pious, sour-faced Muslim hijabi

  Smarty-pants bossy-boots

  Boring, always praying, stay-at-home dullard

  Non-traditional, modern rule-breaker, independent, unsuitable, unmouldable

  I was weighed down by expectations and labels from so many cultures and narratives, each trying to tell me what I should or should not be, each pretending to speak on my behalf. As just one person, how many stereotypes could I shatter?

  I resolved to create a voice – my own voice – that would stop people speaking on my behalf, and that would be dedicated to answering the questions: Where does the truth lie? What is the right thing to do?

  I broke all the boxes that people wanted to put me into with one simple statement:

  I am me.

  The different cultures, histories, religions and heritages of being a British Asian Muslim woman had made me who I was. Those different strands were not burdens, but instead gave me a unique perspective so that I could see things from many different angles. I could bring together my cultures, my faith and the clear vision that Islam offered to start building a more hopeful future.

  I felt abandoned trying to deal with these huge questions on my own. My heart was disintegrating in the solitude, in my increasingly lonely, empty inner world. Would I be able to find a man to share these questions with? Where was the one who could empathise with me on this journey, who was also determined to throw over the stereotypes and live his own path?

  I am me, I reflected again, but who is he?

  SIX

  Semiotic Headscarf

  What Is It Like Under There?

  The events of 11 September 2001 put Muslims under a global spotlight. The Qur’an shot to the top of the bestseller list for books, with more people reading it than ever before. To find out who Muslims were, they said. I could sense that people at work wanted to know what I thought, and whether what they heard about Islam was true or not, but they seemed afraid to ask. I heard their whispers, trying to unravel the different ideas that were portrayed about Muslims on television and then trying to reconcile them with their experiences of me, the resident office Muslim.

  As the days passed I was surprised that they did not approach me with their questions. I wondered if it was fear of breaking the jovial façade we had created between us. Did they feel that they would be invading my privacy? I wanted to talk to them, I wanted to explain the context of what was happening in the news and share information I thought would be useful to know about Islam and Muslims, but I didn’t know how to do it without appearing to preach. What should have been an easy conversation discussing the news coverage and what it was like to be a Muslim turned into a wariness on my colleagues’ part of bringing the personal into the workplace, and a disappointment on my part that no-one seemed to want to discuss the huge world issues that affected all of us – but very visibly affected me. The violent acts of 11 September, then 7 July 2005 and other attacks, injected fear into the most critical of activities: we were frightened to talk to each other.

  Despite the fact that all the terrorist acts were carried out by men, it was the Muslim woman’s headscarf that turned into one of the targets for attack, both verbal and physical. Suddenly, this scrap of material on our heads was the focus of attention. Many Muslim women wore the headscarf like me and went about their daily lives quietly and peacefully. We considered it a matter of faith and personal choice to dress this way. For me, wearing a headscarf was n
ot a political decision, nor a form of public statement, it was just one part of my everyday clothing. ‘It’s just a little piece of cloth,’ I mused. ‘It’s not the end of civilisation as we know it.’ I underestimated how upsetting my headscarf could be.

  ‘WHAT IS YOUR HAIR LIKE?’

  All eyes were on my hair. ‘It’s my hair,’ I thought. ‘I can do what I like with it. It’s not any of your business to look at my hair if I don’t want you to.’ Again, it seemed I was wrong. The public demanded the right to see my hair. My lovely hair, that was part of me, that was part of my physical being as a woman, was now public property. Whatever happened to a woman’s right to control her own body?

  It was the men who were curious about my hair; the women never asked. I wondered if this was because the men found it hard to comprehend my femininity without my hair. I had withdrawn one of the visual cues by which they could define and categorise me. I didn’t find their questioning offensive, in fact I found their curiosity both innocent and amusing. I could tease them and they would never really be able to define me on their terms. They would have to accept what I wanted to tell them about me. I could tell by the feigned reluctance to ask the question that they had probably been thinking about it for quite some time.

  ‘It’s a blonde Mohican,’ I told them, straight-faced. They nodded, acceptingly.

  ‘Doesn’t it get squashed?’ they asked innocently, avoiding looking at the top of my head. Then they realised that I was Asian with brown skin and dark brown eyebrows and eyelashes.

  A grin spread across my lips, but I kept looking them straight in the eye with seriousness. ‘I actually don’t have any hair.’