What's it like to wear the hijab in Halifax?
“What do you think?”
I looked into the mirror in the bathroom on the bottom floor of Park Lane and felt—as any secular Westerner might—uncomfortable, but excited. A woman wearing running shoes and her hair in a short bob finished washing her hands next to us and smiled.
“It looks beautiful,” she said.
When she left, Anisa turned to me: “Did you hear that!”
Two hours later, my hope that everyone in Halifax was this unquestioningly accepting had vanished, and my experiment felt, at least partly, like a failure.
What is the hijab?
We met at The Seahorse last fall during PechaKucha night. Anisa Awad stood out immediately with her big smile that shows her teeth, and her cool style. She gave a talk that night about her experience moving to Halifax over a year ago from the United Arab Emirates (she’s originally from Palestine), and showed us photos she took of Halifax—the waterfront, the birds, the buildings.
I interviewed Anisa for Halifax Magazine about her choice to wear the hijab, and we became friends. I told her I wanted to wear the hijab in Halifax and asked if she would chaperone me. She agreed.
The word “hijab” has numerous meanings. Sometimes the word refers to the head scarf Muslim women wear. In the Koran, it means “covering”—a modest style of dressing. What “modest” means can be open to individual interpretation, but sometimes it is government legislated, or dictated by religious leaders or family members.
Many, but not all, Muslim women cover their hair, arms and legs to express modesty. Some women cover their faces too. The Koran also encourages men to dress modestly.
I used to think there were strict rules governing how a Muslim woman could dress. I thought, based on this false assumption, that their religion was oppressive. I wrongly associated the niqab—a version of the hijab that covers the lower half of the face—with forced wear.
But after visiting Turkey, Egypt and Morocco, wearing the hijab in mosques and researching the garment, I’ve shed those misconceptions about the style of dress.
Western curiosity
“Do you wanna take a picture with him?”
The guy was slurring a bit, pointing at his friend, a bachelor out for his last hurrah in a mascot costume that vaguely resembled a cat. We were on Argyle Street and the four of them had been drinking.
“Sure,” I said, digging in my backpack for my camera.
We posed for a few photos with the drunk cat, and I took the opportunity to ask what they thought of the hijab.
We had already asked a couple people for their opinions about the garment. One young woman said it was an expression of religious freedom and she was fine with it. Another woman said she experienced reverse culture shock coming to Halifax because it lacked diversity compared to Toronto, and Scarborough where she grew up. She saw the hijab every day back home.
His inhibitions lowered, one of the inebriated guys said, “Honestly, it makes me wanna bang you!” Then, inexplicably, he took his shirt off. His friends followed suit.
When I left the house to meet Anisa for our experiment, I had high hopes. I experience more street harassment from males in the summer and I wondered, naively, if wearing the hijab would deflect some of the honks, wolf whistles and rude comments. It didn’t discourage that sort of attention when I was in the middle east, and it didn’t in Halifax either. (Granted, this time I solicited their opinions.)
The man’s slightly more coherent friend said the hijab made him wonder what was underneath.
In general, people we passed on the street looked at me for a fragment of a second longer than usual. It felt like curiosity. I didn’t sense negativity.
Assumptions about the hijab
Overall, the experience felt positive when we stopped at Pizza Corner. I recognized an old friend from high school walking down the street toward us. (To avoid embarrassing her, I’ll call her Caitlyn.)
I greeted Caitlyn and her friend, and introduced them to Anisa. Caitlyn acknowledged my head scarf immediately, and I told her about the experiment.
“But your shirt is too short—it’s not covering your bum,” she said.
Generally, the hijab covers the hair on a woman’s head, and her arms, legs and everything in between.
The shirt covered the top five inches of my pants. My skin wasn’t exposed.
Anisa explained to her that there are different ways to dress modestly, and the length of my shirt didn’t matter as long as I was covered.
Caitlyn and her friend began asking Anisa questions about her head-scarf—all the same questions I had asked her, but without permission: How long have you been wearing it? Why did you decide to wear it? How does it feel to wear it here?
Anisa answered their questions politely, but I could tell she was getting weary.
The conversation ended awkwardly when Caitlyn’s friend asked Anisa why she was wearing makeup, in a tone that suggested she shouldn’t.
Anisa was taken aback by the girl’s question. She was wearing a translucent line of eye-shadow along her lashes.
Makeup doesn’t have any relation to the hijab, she explained.
Caitlyn’s friend looked embarrassed, her cheeks slightly red.
We said goodbye to them and walked toward Spring Garden Road.
When we arrived at her building, Anisa was honest: “I didn’t have a good time,” she said.
By starting a dialogue about the hijab, I disturbed biases lurking just below the surface. And when Anisa heard these misconceptions and stereotypes, she felt hurt and annoyed.
The hijab is a superficial part of Anisa’s personality. She’s more than that—a new MBA student at Dalhousie, a political thinker, a sister and a daughter.
The goal of the experiment wasn’t to hurt anyone; the goal was to challenge my own biases. By that measurement, the experiment was a success.
One assumption I used to make was that the hijab always indicated the wearer was Muslim, but Anisa told me that wasn’t true—it can be a cultural garment, too.
But the cost of the experiment—that Anisa felt hurt by the assumptions and stereotypes she heard—didn’t feel worth it.
Challenging assumptions
The next day, I ran into Caitlyn and her friend at a yard sale. We talked about the previous day’s conversation and I told them Anisa’s reaction.
Caitlyn said she wouldn’t have asked so many personal questions if I hadn’t said we were doing an experiment. Religion isn’t a topic usually discussed within the first 30 seconds of an introduction, but by using the word “experiment,” I gave Caitlyn the impression she could ask Anisa anything.
There was no malice behind their questions.
A Buddhist, Caitlyn has heard uninformed comments like, “You eat meat? I thought Buddhists didn’t eat meat.”
Though Caitlyn and her friend’s biases stung when Anisa heard them, the opportunity to ask Anisa questions helped them better understand the hijab, Caitlyn said.
Source :http://www.openfile.ca/halifax/story/whats-it-wear-hijab-halifax
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