Hijab and Female Identity

I rarely delve into matters of my faith on my blog, mainly because this blog isn’t a resource for matters of religion. Instead, it is simply for me to share with you the things that interest me, inspire me and motivate me (except for my faith).

Interestingly, my faith does all three of these things and I find the process of learning about Islam absolutely fascinating both from an academic and lived perspective. Its history is rich and it has so much to offer. However, it is also deeply personal; I am not in any way trained or practiced specifically in religious matters (it may be easier to describe myself as a “bog standard” Muslim female who tries and sometimes succeeds but sometimes fails).

As it stands the comments I want to make regarding hijab are driven not by the legalistic aspects of religion, but rather as the lived experience of a Muslim female in the UK, who happens to wear a hijab. I don’t for one moment, claim to speak for any other woman who does or does not wear a hijab; my comments and views are my own alone.

The Qur’an

To touch on the legal perspective for one second, modern and traditional interpretations of khimar (the word used in the Qur’an to denote covering/concealment) range from classical conservative to almost fully liberal interpretations depending on who you speak to, what you read and where you look. My personal thinking has always geared to the traditional and classical understanding of the Qur’an, simply because one would expect translations more accurate in meaning, from a time period closest to when the Qur’an was revealed, although of course, Islamic scholarship allows room to reason and interpret according to every age of human existence until the end of time.

Regardless of where one stands on this spectrum, there is still the matter of today and where things stand nowadays. In modern times, the word hijab has come to mean “head covering” whilst niqab means “face covering.” (For the sake of understanding, I will use these words to discuss my points below).

The “Influencer” Question

I watched a video on Youtube yesterday from the popular Muslim influencer, AmenaOfficial. Amena made a recent decision to no longer wear the hijab - something she was visibly known for since her start on the video sharing website around 10 years ago. This comes as one more in a long list of female Muslim influencers doing the same thing e.g. Annam Ahmed, Masuma Khan and Dina Tokio to name but a few.

There are a few brief points I wanted to make; the first is that as trite as it sounds, it is extremely difficult for those of us on the other side of this to judge these women for making their decisions. I happen to wear a hijab, these women do not. I know the state of my own Iman, I do not know theirs.

I find it strange that many of the social media comments about Amena’s decision (largely from young Muslim women) have centred on disappointment, shock, insults and many along the lines of “you inspired me to wear hijab. I looked up to you.” The reason I find it so strange is that it seems odd to me that these women would declare that Amena was their reason for wearing hijab - surely if anyone would be your reason to wear hijab, it would be Allah?

As a Muslim your commands come from Allah, not Amena. In the most basic sense of the phrase, take responsibility for your own actions - if you are doing what you are doing, with a genuine belief as a Muslim woman, that you are following the commands of Allah, then whether Amena removes her hijab, wears a niqab or dances naked in the street, is entirely irrelevant to your own practice. I do understand that for a young audience, particularly one that has grown up with Youtube, there will be an element of disappointment - but I must say that as a Muslim, it is rather unbecoming to let this cause you to swear, to insult or to cast aspersions against someone in such a way.

And on the flipside, we will never truly know why a woman removes her hijab for the same reason that we will never truly know why she wears it. We can assume that a hijab wearing woman is doing so as a religious duty, or that she removed her hijab because of social media influence (for example), but we will never truly know. My point is that it doesn’t matter if we never know; our only concern as a Muslim should be to pray for the betterment of others and for us all to be increased in our Iman and our ability to practice our faith.

For some reason, this flexibility only ever seems to be afforded to Muslim men. We are all aware that some Muslim men haven’t stepped foot in the masjid for Jum’uah in years and out of the blue, they do. No-one spends their time condemning them for the time they didn’t attend, instead they are graciously welcomed back into the fold like a long lost sibling. This does not exist equally for woman at all; if a woman, for any reason and in any form, goes through a period of weakened Iman (as we all do, being human), she is relegated to a sub-status in which nothing she does is good enough, she simply isn’t "Muslim enough” for us. She slipped once, twice, three times and Muslim society decides the world has ended. The only difference is that where this concerns the hijab, as the hijab is an outward expression of faith, every man and his dog feels they have a stake in making a comment about it. Somehow it turns into something that happened “to others” as passive spectators rather than something a person did of their own, for their own self.

There is also an assumption that just because a woman has this experience and removes her hijab, that somehow she is doomed forever. We are all taught the story of the prostitute who was granted Jannah for giving water to a thirsty dog, but for some reason our belief in Al-Ghaffar is out of the window as soon as a Muslim woman does something that we don’t approve of. Instead of doing what we should do, and praying that her life is made easier so she can come back to hijab or that her Iman is strengthened etc. it turns into a showdown in which human beings condemn her as though they have any idea what their own Iman will look like at the time of death.

Parting Words

It truly sounds a little facetious, but quite simply, by nature of being a human being and not the Divine, you do not possess the knowledge of anyone else’s Iman. You simply do not. Whilst yes, you can advise someone when you truly feel they are doing something wrong, giving advice has an adab and one which most Muslims today, sorely lack. If you are unable to say a kind word or a good word, and you feel they have genuinely committed a sin, then condemn it in your heart if you do not possess the correct adab, and make du’a for their betterment. That is the best way you can help.