“[Wearing the hijab] is such a powerful choice at a young age, people would say things like towel head, or Osama’s daughter, but It really sends a message,” says Maheen Haq.
Maheen is a civil rights litigator based in Washington DC, she grew up in Hagerstown, a city in Maryland in the USA, an area with a majority white population.
She chose to wear the Hijab aged 10, the first in her family to do so. A choice she explains was originally a reaction to her environment, as she explains how these Islamophonic comments created an “inferiority complex”.
“For me [wearing the hijab] was always an F you. That was my message – you can’t change me, I don’t care. That was always what I wanted,” she says.
Maheen notes how modern society has constructed this belief that the Hijab is oppressive to women. The scenes across Islamic nations like Afghanistan and the media narratives have no doubt played a role in these preconceptions as they paint the hijab restrictive of one’s power in society. A narrative about Islam which is incorrect, as the oppression across these nations are instead fuelled by the abuse of power rather than religious intervention.
Read more about the construction of Islam and its link to feminism here
“You can’t force anybody to wear the hijab, and people who do that are committing a serious sin. However, these are the things that are publicized, but that’s not following the religion.
“The people who claim to be Muslim are imperfect, but the religion itself is perfect,” Maheen adds.
Now that she’s older, wearing the Hijab has become a symbol of love and something she notes that the religion has ordained for her.
“It’s really empowering [wearing the Hijab], because I feel like people don’t have access to my body, only certain people do, and that is really special to me,” she says.
“I play sports, I’m a lawyer, and when the narrative is oh, the hijab restricts you, or these women aren’t in touch with modern culture, seeing that challenges the notion of what a hijabi woman is.”
She explains that this idea of empowerment through sexuality makes up the cornerstone of western feminism. The idea that feminism is sexuality has knock on effects to women globally who are empowered by their ability to choose to hear the hijab and the power their faith brings to their lives.
“The programming and the amount of things we consume, indicate to us that sexuality is empowerment. This is not to come at women who feel this way, but to say that a covered woman is not powerful, and to be oppressed is to have no power, and to have all these inputs in the media that say [sexuality is] a prerequisite of power is harmful to Muslim women,” Maheen continues.
“If you have a problem with somebody privatizing their sexuality, and you say that means that they don’t have power, then what are you saying about sexuality?
“You’re saying that sexuality is the only means of power.”
The power instead lies in one’s ability to choose what empowerment means to them, judgement and bias free.
“My contention with colonial [western] feminism is not that I’m saying this patriarchy doesn’t exist. It’s that we’re not being heard in the way we want our advocacy to be done,” she says.
“No one is centring what Muslim women are saying.”
Maheen has written a paper detailing her experiences, read it here.
