US students term Hijab symbol of feminism, empowerment

WASHINGTON: While the issue of Hijab for students in Punjab has created a heated debate among mainstream Pakistani political parties, scarf-wearing Muslim students in the United States have termed Hijab a symbol of their empowerment and feminism.

Since the election of President Donald Trump, Hijab is emerging as a symbol of resistance to Islamophobia amid policies from the Trump administration targeting Muslim immigrants. As a part of its series on women of America, a mainstream American newspaper USA Today carried interviews of Muslim university students who defended their right to wear Hijab as an empowering tool.

"I do feel empowered with Hijab as I am able to have total control over my image as a person not as commodity," said Alia Khan, a student of biology at the University of Maryland. She said Hijab was part of her identity.

Scores of non-Muslims have also donned Hijabs to express solidarity with Muslim women after the inauguration of new US president. An image of a Muslim woman wearing US flag as Hijab created by famous artists Shepard Fairey was one of the key posters carried by anti-Trump protesters across the United States.

“I do believe Hijab supports feminism," Sameeha Ahmad, a psychology student, was quoted as saying. “The way you look at it from a religious perspective, it empowers you by strengthening your relationship with God. It’s a step you are taking to further yourself within your own religion.”

She said although her mother and sister had been wearing Hijab, she did not wear it for five years. “I was sitting in my class one day when I decided to wear Hijab and since then I am using it. It is my decision and no one forced me into wearing it,” she said.

Anam Khatib, a neurology major at the University of Maryland, believes wearing a Hijab is the most feminist statement that a woman can make in a society where consumerism and capitalism constantly tell women “what to wear and how to look like and what body we should have.”

In Islam, Hijab is not "compulsion," she said. "If it's compulsion it’s not Islam. It’s completely my choice and no one has ever forced me.” Fatima Khan, a 20-year-old studying social sciences, has worn a Hijab for the last nine years and feels the practice has helped her focus beyond her appearance. She finds it empowering.

“By covering my body, I am able to limit how much someone can objectify me and instead have the power to only be judged for my intellect, abilities and personality rather than simply my appearance.”

However, the students said that women being required to wear the Hijab is as objectionable as efforts to forcibly ban the garment in other societies. Dalia Mogahed, Director Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a non-profit US organistion working to empower American Muslims, says while some countries do require a Hijab, "the 'hijab oppresses women' narrative is not only racist, it is also sexist." To assume a woman's Hijab was forced without asking her is to presume she views Western styles as ideal, Mogahed said.

Citing Gallup surveys of 90 percent of the global Muslim population, Mogahed said that "Hijab is a choice by the vast majority of women who wear it, especially in the US where there is great societal pressure to not wear it, rather than the reverse."

"Oppression means taking away of someone’s power, their agency. Yet a woman in a Hijab is only covering her body and hair, not her voice or intellect," said Mogahed, who wears a Hijab. "And a man dressed in a full robe and head cover, like many do in the Middle East, is not said to be oppressed. To say that Hijab oppresses women is to say that the source of a woman’s power, but not a man’s, is her body, not her mind."

However, still many Muslim students in US educational institutions do not wear Hijab. Sharifa Kalakola, a science journalist who is currently in the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship, does not normally wear Hijab despite considering herself a good Muslim. "I am comfortable with or without Hijab. The only thing that I care about most is modesty in my general look and that I carry myself in public in a respectable manner."

Sharifa, however defended the right of fellow Muslims to choose their dress. “Everyone deserves to choose their self-identity,” she said. “If it is OK in the society for women to show their skin then it should also be OK for them to cover up.”