hijab

The nation has heard plenty of debate over racial profiling. But there’s a form of religious profiling that some young Muslim women in America say they endure whenever they voluntarily wear the hijab. The hijab, also known as the veil, is the headscarf worn by Muslim women around the globe. It’s a simple piece of cloth, but it can place young Muslim women in Western countries in difficult situations.
She doesn’t want your frosty public stares; the whispers behind her back; the lament that she’s been degraded by her father. What the Muslim high school senior wants you to understand is that she doesn’t wear the hijab, the head scarf worn by Muslim women, because she is submissive.
“It represents beauty to me,” says Abdelaziz, the 17-year-old daughter of two Egyptian parents living in Old Bridge, New Jersey. “My mom says a girl is like a jewel,” Abdelaziz says. “When you have something precious, you usually hide it. You want to make sure you keep it safe until that treasure is ready to be found.”
Some hijab-wearers say that strangers treat them as if they’re terrorists. Others ask them if they’re a nun — or even allergic to the sun. In some cases, their worst critics are not Americans, but fellow Muslim Americans. The pressure on Muslim teenagers in the U.S. who wear the hijab may be even more acute. Their challenge: How do I fit in when I wear something that makes me stand out?
Randa Abdel-Fattah, who has written two novels about this question, says wearing the hijab can “exhaust” some young Muslim women in the West. “You can sometimes feel like you’re in a zoo: locked in the cage of other people’s stereotypes, prejudices and judgments, on parade to be analyzed, deconstructed and reconstructed,” says Abdel-Fattah, a Muslim who has Palestinian and Egyptian parents but was born in Australia. Abdel-Fattah says people should not assume that Muslim women who wear the hijab are being controlled by men. She, too, struggled with the choice of wearing a hijab when she was a teenager.
“When it comes to the hijab — why to wear it, whether to wear it, how to wear it — there is theology and then there is practice and there is huge diversity in both,” says Abdel-Fattah, author of “Does My Head Look Big in This?”
The surprising history behind the hijab
Some women say the hijab makes them feel like they’re locked in a cage. But others say it leads to personal freedom.
Sarah Hekmati first wore the hijab at age 15 growing up in Detroit, Michigan. She is the daughter of Iranian parents who left Iran in 1979 during the Islamic revolution. Hekmati says the hijab liberated her from some teenage angst: Does my hair look good? Am I cute enough? Should I lose weight? “It gave me a sense of identity,” she says. “I really liked the purpose behind the hijab — a woman covering herself so that a man should know her for her mind, not her body.”
That purpose can be traced back to the Quran, Islam’s holy text, which encourages women to dress modestly, says Faegheh Shirazi, author of “The Veil Unveiled.” Some Muslims take the Quran’s advice as a command for women to wear the hijab, while others disagree, she says. “The Quran is very ambiguous about whether you have to wear the veil or not,” Shirazi says.
The hijab, however, actually predates Islam, Shirazi explains. The first known reference to veiling (Shirazi uses the term hijab and veil interchangeably) was made in an Assyrian legal text in the 13th century B.C., Shirazi says.
In the Assyrian, and later, the Roman and Byzantine empires, the veil was a symbol of prestige and status, she says. By the 12th century, the veil had been imposed on women in the Muslim world to exclude them from public life, Shirazi says. “A sign of distinction had been transformed into a sign of exclusion,” she writes in her book. People are still debating the meaning of the hijab today.
In 2007, British Muslim groups protested when schools were given the right to ban students from wearing full-face veils. In 2008, Turkey’s top court upheld a ban on wearing Muslim headscarves at the country’s universities. That same year, a Muslim woman was briefly jailed at a suburban Atlanta, Georgia, courthouse after refusing to remove her hijab in court.
Some moms against hijab wearing
The debate over the hijab can literally hit home for some young Muslim women. Those that wear the hijab in the United States can befuddle their mothers, who often immigrated to the West so they could be free from wearing the hijab and other rules imposed on women.
That’s what happened to Hekmati, the Muslim-American from Detroit. Her mother, Behnaz, was puzzled by her daughter’s decision to wear the hijab. Behnaz Hekmati grew up in Iran, where she did not wear the hijab. Young women who attended college in Iran like she did generally didn’t wear the hijab, she says.
Behnaz Hekmati warned her daughter that wearing the hijab would arouse the suspicion of Americans. “I said Sarah, when you cover your head here the people think you are political — they see you differently,” Behnaz Hekmati says. Most of the trouble, though, came from Iranian-Americans, who came to the United States to escape the Islamic fundamentalists who seized power in 1979, she says.
“The Iranians here bother her more than Americans,” Behnaz Hekmati says. “They say, ‘We got rid of you guys. We came here because we didn’t want to see you guys anymore.’” Hekmati was more concerned as a teenager about more personal issues, like her relations with boys. The hijab made it more difficult, she says. Few asked her on dates. Guys always seemed to put her in the “friend category.” She wondered if she was attractive.
“I wondered at times: Am I always going to be a guy’s friend and nothing more.” Strangers in public saw her as something else — a subjugated woman. They looked at her with pity, she says. Some were just baffled. “One guy asked me if I was allergic to the sun,” Hekmati says.
Abdelaziz, the New Jersey high school senior, also had her tense public encounters: angry looks, people feeling sorry for her or assuming her father ordered her to wear the hijab. “It’s not oppression; it’s not that I’m accepting degradation — it’s about self-respect,” she says. But it’s more about faith as well. She says the hijab affirms “Islam in the most respectful and purified way.”
“When you actually wear it, it opens your eyes,” she says. “It makes you want to explore your religious faith.” At times, Abdelaziz says she wonders what it would be like to attend her prom, get a tan at the beach and have a boyfriend. But she says her decision to honor her faith is already paying off. “It really feels good,” she says. “It felt like I was missing something and now I’m complete. I finally understand my purpose.”

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The issue is addressed in a very interestin way by Mr Zia Gurchani. Here what he wrote…
Having children is not a big deal after getting married. Once couples multiply it’s the post-partum anxieties that rear their heads. The little bundles of joy turn into little monsters of dissent. Who should take the blame? Parents.

Feeding, clothing, and paying for tuitions is not where duty ends. Those are mere extensions of parental responsibilities. What goes on in a child’s life manifests itself later in his/her adult life with equal intensity. Children constantly snubbed by parents become withdrawn as adults and can’t open up. Children ignored by parents even when they are wailing become total attention-seekers as adults. Socially, physically or emotionally abused children develop serious confidence issues. Superficially they laugh and joke around yet something underneath that facade remains cold and unapproachable. Such individuals cannot stand up to bosses, lovers, individuals senior to them in status or hierarchy. An inner fear gnaws at them, perpetually. The childhood beatings haunt forever. Unconsciously. The point I’m making is that children who become adults on this planet are not just physical by-products of their parents’ genetic makeup but also the net result of their psychological standards.

Some parents invest far too much time in careers, jobs, offices, or businesses only to realise too late that their small kids are now grown up teens with fiercely independent personalities. Personalities that are very difficult to mould now! Some fathers think they are working hard for their children’s future only to discover the children are not even remotely interested in those schemes. All those millions stashed away in banks for the children’s education are just not luring enough to seek education. Those children want to do something totally opposite. They want to do nothing. Just laze around, chat on internet, stay awake all night, sleep all day. Thank you very much!

Loss of daily interaction between children and parents is one of the most heartbreaking outcomes of modern day lifestyle. Westernised concepts like ‘privacy’ are proving detrimental. Parents who respect the so called ‘privacy’ don’t realise the locked door could be standing guard to drugs, dope, and psychologically disturbing activity. Older generations produced healthy minded individuals thanks to joint family system. Fathers should be equally involved in their children’s everyday life. It helps stabilise children’s psychological well being. Children should not be left alone emotionally. That in itself is abandonment. Kids have a right to be involved with parents. Children, when made to feel alone or isolated staying on the outside looking in, develop resentment. Too much of kindness and coochie-coo loving can also be tossed back in parents’ faces. As growing teens children tend to snap at parents as to why they were not disciplined when they were kids? A dagger sharp thin line for parents to walk on but they must figure out how much love how much discipline is needed in accurate measures.

Children are not to be matched wits with. Yelling is counter-productive. Instead of hollering, “Your room looks like jumma bazaar” say firmly, “your room needs cleaning. Please pick up all the stuff from the floor before lunch. I’ve made lasagna for you.” The kid knows it’s not a battle. Firm, assertive but loving is the appropriate way to handle kids. Too much of screaming will give you only nerves and too much of coochie-coo love allows children to blur the boundaries of accepted norms of do’s and don’ts. Bringing up decent kids is one thing but grilling them like fauji jawans is another. At times fathers make an excuse of their careers for not intervening in the children’s lives. Unfortunately there comes a time when the mother finally gives up and the issues end up on daddy’s table. Had daddy been actively albeit tactfully involved from the start things may not have come to such a point.

Physical love is equally important. Hugging, holding your children, expressing affection is just as important as feeding them. Preaching is not as effective as diplomatically ‘discussing stuff’. It won’t sound like a lecture or sermon. Offer solutions instead of admonishing. Children need guidance and support at every step. Remind yourself you are the parent. When confronted by children’s unreasonable demands don’t twist yourself in a knot but laugh and explain why it’s not going to happen.

Even the best parents sometimes end up raising dysfunctional kids. It’s not entirely your fault. The environment plays a dramatic role in contributing good/bad traits to children. Keep a watchful eye on their activities. There is really no need for a school-going child to have a cell phone or several yahoo/hotmail ids. Spending too much time on the internet might open an unpleasant Pandora’s Box, which you may never be able to shut again. There are many things, which a child should not be exposed to. Surfing the internet on acceptable sites with parental guidance is fine but staying glued to the computer in a locked bedroom is a sure invitation for trouble to come slithering in your life.

Many parents send small children to school alone with drivers. That is an absolute no-no. Drag yourself out of bed and ensure you go to drop them to school and pick them up again. Drivers can be predators who cross lines of decency by molesting children. Enforce strict rules: Under no circumstances should children allow drivers to seat them in their lap while they drive. Many children become addicted to it and although secretly they know they should not be doing it but they succumb to the physical molestation. Remain vigilant with domestic help at all times; regardless of your children’s’ genders. For you your children maybe innocent kids, for them they are interesting toys to be played with.

Life can never be hazard-free, for sure. But having said that, one needs to stay alert and prepare our children for the long journey they will undertake in future.

Zia Gurchani is a writer, columnist, TV-show host, and author of “In the ruins of solitude”.

Technorati Tags: adults, children, Kids, parents, Zia gurchani

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When you thought I wasn’t looking I saw you feed a stray
cat, and I learned that it was good to be kind to animals.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw you make my
favorite cake for me and I learned that the little things can
be the special things in life.

When you thought I wasn’t looking I heard you say a
prayer, and I knew there is a God I could always talk to
and I learned to trust in God.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw you make a meal
and take it to a friend who was sick, and I learned that we
all have to help take care of each other.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw you give of your
time and money to help people who had nothing and I
learned that those who have something should give to those
who don’t.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I felt you kiss me good
night and I felt loved and safe.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw you take care of
our house and everyone in it and I learned we have to take
care of what we are given.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw how you handled
your responsibilities, even when you didn’t feel good and I
learned that I would have to be responsible when I grow up.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw tears come from
your eyes and I learned that sometimes things hurt, but it’s
all right to cry.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I saw that you cared
and I wanted to be everything that I could be.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I learned most of life’s
lessons that I need to know to be a good and productive
person when I grow up.

When you thought I wasn’t looking, I looked at you and
wanted to say, “Thanks for all the things I saw when you
thought I wasn’t looking.’”

Technorati Tags: child, children, Kids, kids observe, mom, parents

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