positioning the wearing of the hijab as a form of anti-colonial resistance, a rejection of Eurocentric tendencies and a reaffirming of cultural identity
words Zeynab Mohamed
I couldn’t quite make out the expression on her face. I was a young girl dizzy from the excitement of being away on a school trip to France. My head was in the clouds, and my hearing only tuned to the busy chatter among my peers. I listened lazily to my teacher, “sorry”…“hijab”…“we didn’t think”; unable to make out what she was trying to say, I continued fantasising about the week ahead.
“Zeynab, do you understand?” All the excitement sharply disappeared. I wouldn’t be able to wear my hijab at the French school.
I had previously given very little thought to what had become a natural extension of me and the role it would play in my stay abroad. My whole life, the hijab was synonymous with my identity and that of the women around me. I was both intrigued and comforted by the cloth that had visibly marked the women in my life.
Fascinated by the ritual of covering your hair, I remember watching my mother sculpt the long flowing material around her face, her hands moving elegantly until she was finally satisfied. I knew that one day, I too would partake in this ceremonious act. Although I had not yet comprehended the significance of this act, I understood that it was something bigger than me. Therefore, the transition to wearing the hijab felt like second nature.
When I was asked to take my hijab off, I think the people around me assumed it would be easy, as if it is only material. But by that time, my hijab had cemented its place in my life, so ingrained into me that I hadn’t known where it had started and I ended. All I remember is the humiliating act of undressing my head. France had quite literally torn my hijab off my head. Yet, another sort of unveiling occurred on that trip: the naive belief that my hijab only meant something to me, my god and maybe my mother. It had never occurred to me that I would not be allowed to wear the hijab in certain spaces, I had always believed the choice was with me. Apparently, others had a stake in it too and I pushed into relearning how to move in the world without a part of me.
Image: Still from Hala.
What I had failed to understand at that time was that it was not the cloth itself that some people took issue with but what they believed it represented: an unacceptable level of religiosity and blind faith, a barrier to modernity, a backwardness that is a source of nonsensical violence, a form of control over women’s bodies, an outdated tradition. Points not only projected onto religious individuals but used to fuel government agenda, to free and assimilate this particular group which also serves to erase and control the very people they are working to liberate.
Under the prescription of secularism, Muslim women are offered an unshackling of the oppression of their religion, their hijabs. They have the right to wear what they want, as long as it is not the hijab. The hypocrisy is not lost on Muslim women. At that moment, I did not feel free; there was no sigh of relief as this assumed shackle came off.
In 2004, France implemented a ban on all religious symbols, such as crosses, turbans, and the Islamic hijab, across state schools nationwide in a complete untethering of state and religion. In 2010, the French government banned all face-covering in public spaces, and in 2021 a ban on all young women under the age of 18 wearing the hijab was passed in the name of laïcité (French secularism). A secular state is offered up as a modern utopia, one in which equality and freedom for all is a prerequisite. French politicians have continually argued that restricting religious symbolism is a means to women’s empowerment and public safety—a double standard, no different to laws that force women to wear the hijab. How contradictory that the very mechanisms believed to liberate Muslim women are the ones that serve to discriminate and regulate them to the sidelines. For as long as the hijab is politicised and exploited, it becomes a means of control, with Muslim women bearing the brunt of targeted policies birthed out of systematic bigotry.
The hijab is more than a piece of cloth, if not it would not warrant as much discourse. In Islam, Europe and Empire, historian Norman Daniel writes, “there is no subject connected with Islam which Europeans have thought more important than the condition of Muslim women”. During the 1800s, colonisers set the tone for the hijab narrative. Across Egpyt and Algeria the veil was depicted as a symbol of oppression and imprisonment of Muslim women enforced by “brown men”, one that required Western intervention (Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, 1992). This narrative planted seeds to differentiate people and set hierarchies, those in which whiteness reigned supreme. In Egypt, thousands of step-by-step guides on unveiling were handed out to Egyptian women, while in Algeria, Muslim women were forced by French colonisiers to take part in public unveiling ceremonies as a symbol of emancipation—tools to facilitate colonial control.
Today, the hijab continues to be presented as a one-dimensional concept by the West, amplified by the negative portrayal of Muslim women across mainstream media, for example, the “passive” “submissive” Muslim female character in the BBC’s Bodyguard. The messaging is clear, Muslim women with hijabs are seen as regressive, docile and unintelligent. A 2011 study by the University of Leeds found that over a period of three months, 70% of news on Muslims were negative—stories of Muslim women as “lazy” or “uneducated” as the most popular stereotypes. These tropes are detrimental to the Mulsim female image from all angles, in how people view us and how we see ourselves. In reality, Muslim women are multidimensional, with no singular hijab identity, narrative or journey that we all fall neatly into. Sadly, we have not been afforded the luxury of exposure to this rich and nuanced perspective.
‘Wearing the hijab is an act of showing up as myself every day in a claustrophobic space where I am told that the problem lies with me and the hijab, not the rules, the legislations, the negative depictions and false narratives employed to subjugate women like me.’
For many Muslim women today, the hijab encompasses various meanings, whether liberation, devotion, rebellion or expression. In resistance to the negative and reductive portrayals of the hijab, we are taking control, carving out space for our own stories, breaking away from the mould that has been built for us. We are seeing an overdue shift towards more authentic storytelling led by Muslim creators, like the film Hala, a Muslim coming-of-age story, or the more considered and thoughtful portrayal of hijabis, such as Adena in The Bold Type. Recently, model Rawdah Mohamed’s ‘hands of my hijab’ social media campaign has been a way to reclaim the narrative in public space and give a voice to the Muslim woman, to not only humanise our stories but also shatter stereotypes. The internet for many marginalised communities has provided a safe space to facilitate more honest communication, one free of the constant need to perform and the pressure of representing a whole community. For Muslim women, these acts work to fortify and solidify our most authentic selves, both online and offline.
As a Muslim woman, wearing my hijab is like coming up for air in a sea of conformity and control. We live under the false illusion of a free society and the level of restrictiveness differs depending on who you are. Wearing the hijab is an act of showing up as myself every day in a claustrophobic space where I am told that the problem lies with me and the hijab, not the rules, the legislations, the negative depictions and false narratives employed to subjugate women like me. True authenticity is denying these forces, even when it is easier to give in. True liberation of women does not exclude Muslim women in hijabs.
PROFILE
Zeynab Mohamed is a freelance writer whose work explores the prism of culture, identity, beauty and religion as they relates to the voices often sidelined in society.