It's Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race

by Mariam Khan

To me, being Muslim is steeped in my faith and practice of Islam; to someone else it may be found in their cultural background, or it may be a political statement, or just something that comes to light twice a year at the Eid celebrations. In order for our faith to stay intact in the public and private spheres, we must have guidelines on representation, but where do they come from?

The ‘hijab’ (usually understood as a head covering) and ‘veil’ (a face covering), terms often used interchangeably and excessively by people who either observe neither or have negligible ‘association’ with them, have frequently been refracted through a prism that sees Islamic beliefs as regressive, constituting oppression and violence.

Viewed as a symbol and marker of Islam, the hijab and veil are now increasingly worn by Muslim women to reassert their socio-political and cultural identities and act as an affirmation of their ethno-religious selves.

Muslim women have fought for comprehensive acceptance, yet the only way Western society is willing to engage is within a framework of cultural choices, and when it comes to the fashion world, we find ourselves in a place that expects us to leave behind certain elements of our religion and to comply with a reformed and acceptable version of it.

We have to be fashionable, we have to wear make-up, we have to be pretty and on trend, and women who aren’t like that, who choose not to wear make-up or subscribe to certain fashion trends, are relegated to the sidelines, to their homes and behind closed doors, to be further racialized and stigmatized – and not just by the media, but by us as a community too.

On the one hand we have a wealth of magazines advertising a glorious and heavily made up Muslim woman, and on the other, wilfully misinterpreted images of Muslim women are being promoted by Russian bot accounts, Britain’s most widely circulated newspapers are sporting headlines calling for a ‘national debate about banning Muslim girls from wearing veils in public’,2 and the head of Ofsted is proposing a ban on headscarves in schools.

It strikes me as ironic that while it is Islamic clothing, Islamic culture, and Islamic ideals that are supposedly being represented, the models on those catwalks are not Muslim, the designers are not Muslim, and even the audience present is not Muslim.

up-and-coming Muslim designers are not empowered or raised up, nor are they employed to design ‘Muslim-friendly’ attire (because let’s face it, modest doesn’t automatically mean Muslim and vice versa).

Ideally the hijab mitigates instances where a woman is valued solely on her appearance and sexuality – though whether it successfully does that in such hyper-sexualized societies is a whole different discussion – rather it aims to place worth on her intellect, her actions, her character, and so forth.

Diverse representation of backgrounds is important in an industry that supposedly reflects the demographic of the people, and having hijab-wearing women featured in beauty and fashion is not entirely oxymoronic. Yet still, the flaws and the nature of the industry haunt me, and undoubtedly haunt most mothers and daughters of all races and religions.

Before pictures of hijab-wearing Muslim women were everywhere, I was far more confident about not wearing make-up or sporting a plain hijab. I now feel the complete opposite; enslaved by the new Muslim woman who I’m supposed to look like – a better, skinnier, more perfect version of me.

I loved my religion and I hated those who were making me question its beauty. My own choice to wear the hijab had been politicized and commercialized to the point where I didn’t know what to do, and for this I blame an industry that consumes women, creating insecurities where there were none.

whilst some will read what I have written and nod along, the words on the page echoing the thoughts circling in their mind, others will shake their heads with considerable force, roll their eyes, and toss my words to the side. And that’s fine. I’m not here to speak on behalf of all Muslim women.

fighting for Muslim women to be able to own their faith and have confidence in Islam was a small battle to be won. Now it has turned into a full-scale war against a global industry intent on creating and fuelling insecurities in women across the world, regardless of their faith.

Nevertheless, it is important to remember that whilst we sit in our comfortable homes here in the West, happy at this new representation on catwalks, we forget that ordinary Muslims are being detained, tortured, and massacred by the very governments whose acceptance and approval we so ardently seek.

Many interpretations of Islamic dress are still shunned, including the jilbab, the salwar kameez (until, ironically, we saw it modelled on a white woman for H&M, who added an extortionate price tag for a staple form of clothing), and the veil, and it is the women who choose to dress in these garments that are often ostracized and maligned.

Covering is not a foreign concept, and so we need to stop allowing for the internalization of hijab as ‘brown’ and ‘Eastern’, which falls directly into the hands of racists and Islamophobes and allows for the successful othering of hijab and, more broadly, Islam.

If you truly believe it is not about the burqa, prove it and stop talking about it. It is not the duty of Muslim women to have to educate entire nations about boundaries, choices, and representation, and neither is it our duty to justify what we choose to wear.

When writing as a Muslim woman among other Muslim women, one is no longer bound by the broad, representative, generic sentiments so often expected of us and that, despite our best efforts, we often find ourselves sticking to.

We know what is expected, and what an audience unfamiliar with nuanced perspectives of Muslim women will be comfortable with. Though that narrative is achingly tired, alternatives are few and far between. The space we are allowed to take up is so limited, it leaves little room for the ribbons of our voices to unfurl.

Because, I am the holder of an unpopular opinion: things were a lot easier when I wasn’t woke. Or perhaps they were easier because I wasn’t woke.

My family were one of the first few Sudanese in Brisbane, and with that came privilege: we were a ‘founding family’ for the North African migrant community. A number of things reinforced that position of privilege: our early arrival, Mama and Baba’s thriving in a system not built to support them, and qualifications that included an advanced diploma, two undergraduate degrees, four Master’s degrees, and a PhD (mashallah!).

By taking an active role in defining who we now were, my parents were creating a blueprint for my brother and me to follow: you can choose how to live your life, even when you are completely different from the norm.

I had no reason to believe that I should be treated any differently from my co-workers, no reason to think that my experience in the workplace would be any different from my life in school and university. Boy, was I wrong.

At work, however, who I was came with no inherent power. I was a young, female graduate in a hyper-masculine working environment, and a clear deviant from ‘the norm’. It was becoming obvious that there was a chasm between my understanding of my place in the world and the reality of it.

Anne Summers, a prominent Australian feminist, once said to me that young women don’t think they need feminism until they have a child. The implication was that having a child is a life stage when the difference between women and their male colleagues becomes irrefutable.

Research by Deneen M. Hatmaker at the University of Connecticut published in 2013 shows that women in engineering tend to fall within two main categories when dealing with the male dominance of the workplace: coping mechanisms and/or impression management.

Internal coping mechanisms include ‘blocking’ and ‘rationalizing’: blocking involves using verbal blocks of any kind to stop any mention of gender or gender identity. This serves the purpose of bringing one’s professional identity to the foreground, and attempts to prevent any gendered biases, expectations or stereotypes affecting an interaction.

Rationalizing is a more cognitive process whereby female engineers convince themselves that they’re ‘OK with’ unf...

I fell into the rationalizing category, hard. It was easy to do: when trying to fit into a group, where you’re the only one who is ‘different’ and when your income is dependent on being accepted, there is an enormous amount you can rationalize to yourself. It also helps if you’re unaware of the biased dynamics at play.

Impression management, the second category of survival strategy, I also used in spades. The two techniques within impression management, according to Hatmaker, are ‘proving oneself’ and ‘image projection’.

Proving oneself is as simple as it sounds: being so good that you outperform your gender, or, ostensibly, your entire identity. The ultimate achievement is to be recognized as a technical expert. On the other hand, image projection involves women typically choosing to project a ‘gender neutral’ version of themselves.

when impression management embraced ‘gender ownership’, the women were coping by owning their gender and projecting positive aspects of being a ‘woman engineer

Women feeling comfortable enough to project an image that being female is positive, where it is currently seen as a negative, or at best neutral, can only be beneficial. However, it r...

‘Identity work’ is an extensive and exhausting process, and many women – and any group that doesn’t enjoy the power and individuality of being in the dominant de...

after twelve years, 50 per cent of women in STEM will have left their jobs, compared to 20 per cent of women in other professions. Most of those leave in the first five years.

I pushed back against the idea that I might be faced with racism, sexism or discrimination. Look at my privilege, I would say. My education, my class, my lightness of skin tone. If people pointed to the specific experiences of others, I believed that I could continue to do what I had always done: rise above.

I was unaware of the impact of history on my current existence. I was incognisant of the systemic inequalities that exist. I was ignorant to the cunning adaptability of the system, which learnt to use the example of the exception to make liars of those who dare shine a light on the true nature of the rules.

‘Why do you get so mad anytime anyone mentions that you’re a chick?’ my mate asked, abruptly. ‘Like, I mean – you are one, right?’ I nodded, unsure where the conversation was turning. My forehead creased as I tried to parse the meaning behind his words. ‘Well, why don’t you just, I dunno, embrace it or something? I mean, I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, but surely there are some advantages to it? Why don’t you, like, just focus on them?’

Paradigm-shifting moments don’t often come in a neat package, yet mine came in the form of a simple question from a Measurement While Drilling operator on a rig in Western Queensland.

You see, although I’d had a paradigm shift with respect to gender, I had yet to apply that perspective to other facets of my identity treated with bias: faith, migration status, race. It took losing everything – my public standing, my job, my safety – to fully comprehend the scope of the lesson I had learnt.

Engaging with and understanding the structural nature of inequalities in the world is crushing, and it’s not just the weight on one’s shoulders. Sometimes it feels as if my very bones are heavy; the marrow weighed down with lead. Truth has turned my soul’s light spirit into the viscous tar of molasses.

I am not entirely ‘woke’, for that would mean a finished product, which I am far from being. I am on a journey of awakening to the world around me; a constantly evolving project taking into account where I have come from and where I might, inshallah, go.

Part of the journey, for me, is owning these inconsistencies in myself and my stories – we cannot change our past perspectives, but we can certainly reflect on them, own them, and commit to growing from them.

I did say it was easier, back when I wasn’t woke. I didn’t say it was right.

When our mental health is good, we are supposed to be able to handle the normal pressures of everyday life. But what is normal?

I was lucky compared to a lot of other Muslims who suffer with mental illness. I had received a relatively secular education in regard to mental health, and so, after talking to friends who confided in me about their own diagnoses, I eventually went to the doctor.

when I looked online, on social media and Muslim forums, I was struck by the overwhelming prevalence of one single idea: that you could not be Muslim and depressed, because a true Muslim would be content with what God had planned for them.

Yiiiiikes

Studies have found that Muslims are often reluctant to get help regarding their mental health as they face stigma from both within the community and outside it.1 Muslims are often afraid that they may experience Islamophobia when seeing non-Muslim therapists and practitioners, particularly because that therapist may not understand the role of faith as either part of their problem or part of the possible solution.

In Islam, alcohol, drugs and pre-marital relations are all forbidden, as is suicide. Therefore, when a Muslim whose mental health issues are tied up with one of these turns to the community, they often find nothing but judgement, when what they seek is the relief promised by the Islamic principles of mercy and forgiveness.