Shelina Janmohamed

by Love in a Headscarf

  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 traveled 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 among 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 analyzed, but whether the customs that were being practiced 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 had 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 postmodernists 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 miniskirt. 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 deceived 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 that 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. 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 scrutinized 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.

  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 does. 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 traveled 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 alw
ays 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.

  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 cricket, and one who claimed that a bolt of lightning had destroyed my contact details?

  “You’ve had an inquiry,” 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 to be not 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 frowned.

  “What is it this time?” I asked, hesitant. After engaging with optimism and hope through numerous matches and introductions, I’d finally learned 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 less 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. 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.

  “Auntie is saying that he doesn’t mind you wearing hijab in the long term; in fact he says that he would probably want you to wear it. He says he likes the idea that you are interested in religion and he thinks he could learn a lot from you.”

  “So then I don’t understand what the problem is.”

  “Before he gets to that point, he is asking if you would stop wearing hijab …”

  My eyeballs pinged straight out, then off the wall, and bounced on the floor. I picked them up, put them back in, and let her conclude.

  “… for a year,” finished my mother.

  “Wow.” I was astonished. Was this a gracious compromise on the prince’s part?

  “So let me get this straight, he wants me to stop doing something for a year, which he thinks is probably the right thing to do anyway? And which he agrees is part of our faith.”

  “Yes.”

  This was puzzling indeed. And what was most puzzling was that his parents would have discussed this with him, and then with the Auntie, all of whom would have agreed that they thought there was sense in this proposition. In the interest of getting the boy married, they were willing to ask someone to not do something which they all agreed was the right thing to do and to make it seem that I, the poor passive, accepting woman, was inflexible and lacking in kindness and understanding, and unwilling to show a commitment to the ideal of getting married if I didn’t do it. If I sounded cross, it was because I felt cross.

  I had made a choice about my faith and the way that I wanted to live my life. I had based these decisions on careful thought and what I believed was right. I realized that I didn’t have to shape my faith in order to subsume it to this false god of social and cultural acceptability. I didn’t have to accede to the trump card of the boy’s superior cultural position and the marriage-at-all-costs attitude.

  Marriage was important, but it was supposed to complete my faith, not destroy it.

  I had changed my own world, and that meant I was ready to push back and change the world itself. I grinned at my mother. And at that, my mother’s worried frown turned into a small, conspiratorial smirk and then into a wide, proud grin at the daughter she had raised who had finally learned to call things as they were. She didn’t want her daughter—and by extension herself—to be bullied by an age-old custom where the boy’s family held all the cards and where they would insist on incomprehensible requests, even when they knew that they contravened all faith standards.

  I blamed the gatekeepers—the mothers-in-law, the Aunties, the matchmakers. They were supposed to be upholding the sanctity of marriage. They had told the girls that it was important to look beyond the superficial, that love would grow with time, that marriage was about more give than take. They told us to be religious and uphold our faith, and yet here they were promoting and encouraging young men to ask Muslim women to stop practicing their faith so that they could get married.

  “If they really want me to stop wearing hijab, which they agree is something that a Muslim woman should do, then I think you should tell them that I will be happy to do so if they will take the responsibility of me giving up my prayers and my fasting in Ramadan for a year as well.”

  SEVEN

  Love

  From a Single Soul, Created in Pairs

  Late in the summer I traveled with Sara and Noreen on a tour of Jordan and Egypt. I was excited. Egypt straddled Arabia and North Africa, at the center of Muslim dynasties that had spanned hundreds of years. I couldn’t wait to see the architecture or to wander through its bustling and famous bazaars. Its history stretched back to the great civilization of Ancient Egypt, which included the Bible and Qur’an stories of Joseph and Moses. Ever since I was a child I had wanted to see the Pyramids, walk on the sands that had witnessed the pharaohs, El-Alamein, and the building of the Suez Canal. It was not just its history that I wanted to experience, but also its natural beauty: to travel through its wildly beautiful desert, to take a sunset boat ride along the Nile, the artery of thi
s great nation. I felt a connection to Egypt through the river Nile, as it originates on the borders of Tanzania, my parents’ place of birth. I had seen with my own eyes out of the window of the airplane on my travels to East Africa the way that the water transformed the desert, winding through it like a thick verdant snake.

  We spent several days in Cairo, the capital of Egypt. Despite the incredible whirlwind of activity in the city and the utter majesty of the Nile that dominates its center, there was one thing that constantly surprised us: the number of marriage proposals we received. We compared notes at the end of each day to tally up our offers. We notched up several proposals from taxi drivers—they had car journeys in which to make and explain the value of their offers; two from shopkeepers and a handful from the owners of the horses that took us for rides around the monuments.

  Sulaiman owned a tour company that provided horses and guides for tourists to ride around the Pyramids. All three of us took a horse each, and Sulaiman elected to accompany my horse on foot. I had never ridden a horse before and wondered what the risks were if the horse broke into a gallop. Sulaiman laughed at my feeble urban nerves, chuckling at these soft female tourists who couldn’t do a basic thing like ride a horse. The hooves padded rhythmically in the sand and the small dots in the distance turned into high-rise Pyramids. We continued past them and the swarming tourists, and circled around to the other side as the sun slowly dropped toward the horizon. The hot red streaks in the sky reflected on the sand.

  We stopped directly in line with the Pyramids and waited for sunset, admiring the ancient vista before us. Sulaiman was diligent in exercising his guide duties by allowing us to fully enjoy the sights.