It was just before March break in Grade XI when Saima Ali hit the peak of her popularity at Oakville Trafalgar School. She was partying hard, going with the flow and raising eyebrows. For her, that meant leaving her culture behind. "Oakville is very white; there is a lot of pressure to assimilate and when you’re having a good time, you don’t realize you’re forgetting yourself," she says. When March break rolled around, her father broached the idea of her "wearing hijaab."
Hijaab comes from the Arabic word "hajaba" meaning to hide from view. The idea is that after puberty, a Muslim girl should cover everything other than her face and hands. Although there is no standardized dress code, the clothing must be loose enough to conceal the shape of the woman’s body. To the women who wear it, there is more to the concept of hijaab than a piece of cloth to cover one’s body. It denotes a certain lifestyle. It is about adopting a modest code of conduct but in Grade XI, these are difficult concepts to grasp.
"I totally rejected the idea at first. I hated the thought. I wondered how people would see me," Saima, a first-year business student, remembers. The thought of showing up at school with a head covering had her in tears. But once she worked up the resolve to wear it, everything worked out.
"I became more confident because people were seeing me for who I was, not how I dressed or who I hung out with. I felt so liberated."
She lost a few friends who teased her with taunts such as "What, now you’re gonna be good?" but by and large she retained her circle of friends. "In fact, it grew! All of a sudden I got to know everyone — the jocks, the nerds, the rugby girls." Most of all she got to know herself. "I became more open, more accepting. I felt like a better person; I am not predisposed to passing judgment on people for their preferences." Although there is much debate in the Islamic world surrounding the issue of whether wearing a cloak is essential for hijaab, none of the students we interviewed in Canada wear one.
In countries such as Saudi Arabia there is no room for discussion. It is the law. All women wear the abaya, an elegant black cloak. In other countries, it is either choice or family tradition that determines what a woman wears. It can run the gamut of styles and variations from the simple shawl-like chador, used mainly in India and Pakistan, or the chic manteau, a coat-shaped thin garment to the knees, that women sport on the streets of Iran, to the elegantly embroidered, gem-encrusted sheer abayas of the United Arab Emirates.
In Canada, the issue is not what the garment looks like but the woman’s identity. And despite a very Western perception that hijaab is a tool of oppression, it is about exercising the freedom to represent oneself and one’s religious belief. "It tells the world my identity — without my having to say a word," says Sabina, as she adjusts the black scarf edged in golden lace around her face. Hijaab is about women reclaiming their body image and in that context, it is a sanctuary.
Ayesha, studying nutrition at Ryerson University, is among the women who find it liberating to be enveloped in the protective folds of loose clothing. "I am no longer the object of a man’s unwanted attention," she says. "In the West there is so much pressure on a woman to conform to the ideal of beauty that the media promote. I think that is oppression."
Hijaab also functions as a proclamation of faith.
"Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that will make for greater purity for them; and Allah is well acquainted with all that they do. And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; and they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what must ordinarily appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms and not display their beauty except to their husbands..." (Qur’an 24:30-31)
For Sabina, a second-year journalism student, this is the third time she has put on hijaab. "When I took it off, I felt like something was missing; there is nothing that I have ever wanted to do as much as wear hijaab," she explains.
It was the daily indignities she suffered at the hands of school bullies that induced her to stop wearing the scarf she later put back on in university. Talking about the experience opens a flood of negative memories and she refuses to go into descriptive detail. Sabina is an unusual head coverer as her family disapproves of the practice, "but they are discreet about their reasons, changing the subject when I try to discuss it." She explains, "The people who are dearest to me don’t agree with my wearing hijaab. I love them for their concern." But their disapproval makes no difference to her determination and she quickly whips it off everyday as she pulls into the driveway before her family sees her. When she goes out with her parents, she uses a scarf. She says, "I wear hijaab much as I wear any other article of clothing. In the morning, I pull on my jeans, my sweater and my hijaab — clothes are clothes."
Wearing the hijaab may be a non-issue for Sabina but it is not for Emilie Ouimet. She was expelled from her school in Quebec for refusing to remove her scarf in 1995. Hijaab is still controversial for many Canadians. The principal of Louis-Riel Secondary School justified his decision about Emilie with the statement, "Distinctive clothing such as hijaab or neo-Nazi regalia could polarize aggression among young people." Francois Lemieux, president of the separatist St. Jean Baptiste Society, said wearing hijaab "denies the equality of men and women here in Quebec."
The Montreal Gazette fought in the frontlines of the war that followed the expulsion, condemning intolerance and coining the term "hijaabophobia" in an editorial.
And Sept. 11 has now reinforced pre-existing negative stereotypes about Muslims in general and hijaab in particular. Just weeks after the event that the media continue to cover with renewed zeal, Ayesha felt the ugly undercurrents of ignorance in Quebec. She was dismissed from her job because, according to her supervisor, "We did not want Muslims in the building after Sept. 11."
The discrimination she endured because she chose to identify herself on sight as a Muslim did not stop there. A similar story unfolded when she went to work for the federal government as a language teacher. The director of program told her she would have to take off her scarf because people in the town just could not handle the hijaab.
Strapped for cash, Ayesha thought she had no choice but to remove her hijaab. Two weeks into the work, however, she felt stifled. "It was horrible. I felt as if someone had forcefully taken away something that was very dear to me." She left quietly and put her hijaab back on. "They wanted an explanation, but I just couldn’t bring myself to tell them why I left. I felt they would have devalued my reasons and ridiculed me. If there was more awareness of diversity in Quebec maybe I would have been more comfortable there."
This is a sample of the ideas of those very Muslim women whom the West claims are oppressed. They live their lives with dignity and ask no more than their due as Canadian citizens: To be able to represent their ethnic and religious values in their outward appearance. And to be accepted for who they are, not what they wear. Hardly a tall order, considering we live in a country that, on paper at least, affords equal dignity to all cultures.