Wearing a headscarf is a symbol of freedom

Photo courtesy of Stanford University Press

When I first stepped onto the USC campus on a scorching day in mid-August of 2015, I never expected to be a spokeswoman of sorts for Islam and the hijab.

Would I have reconsidered transferring to USC had I known that people thought I was making a political statement by wearing a hijab? No, but knowing that might have prepared me better for what was to come.

“The Muslim woman’s headscarf seems to attract an unusually large set of interpretations in political debate,” write Anna Korteweg and Gökçe Yurdakul, authors of The Headscarf Debates: Conflicts of National Belonging.

The Headscarf Debates focuses on modern discourse around the hijab in Turkey, Germany, France and the Netherlands, which are all countries with large Muslim populations. Much of what Korteweg and Yurdakul find, however, also applies to the U.S., specifically Southern California, which has a significant population of Muslims. A 2010 U.S. Religion Census estimated there are approximately 130,000 Muslims living in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties. Arabs make up only 27 percent of the population, while South Asians make up the bulk with 41 percent.

“Debates on where and what occasions headscarves can be worn … turn into conflicts, sometimes heated, about how Muslims can show their religiosity. Debates regarding how headscarves should be worn… segue into discussions of what headscarves represent politically. Do they represent fundamentalist Islam? A threat to nationhood?” Korteweg and Yurdakul continue, accurately sketching out the politicization of a piece of cloth.

Within my first week in Los Angeles, I was taunted for being Muslim. At the first football game of the season, an elderly white man took one look at me and my hijab-wearing friend and yelled out, “terrorists!” A USC student also called me a terrorist, but he added a “boom!” After the Paris attacks, a man in Downtown stopped me as I exited a cafe and yelled a litany of insults, including “Kill all Moz-lems! You did Paris!” According to these people, I was a terrorist.

Others focused on my hijab in a different way. Non-intersectional feminists thought I was oppressed by my patriarchal Arab and Muslim cultures. Why did I wear that? Was I forced to wear it? Will I be ‘honor killed’ if I took it off? (I really hope the last question was a failed joke, but I still can’t tell if the girl who asked me that was serious or not.) According to this set of people, I was a victim.

Each of these incidents is the direct result of being identifiably Muslim. Those interactions boiled down to people reducing me to my hijab in order to project their perceived idea of Islam on me, ironically enough.

It is as though there is a disconnect between the hijab and the person who wears it.

“For wearers, the headscarf can have a range of meaning beyond the obviously religious,” write Korteweg and Yurdakul.

These meanings range from the headscarf as an indicator of religious and ethnic identity, to freedom of self-expression, to “cover[ing] up one’s messy hair,” according to Korteweg and Yurdakul. As someone who struggles with basic hairstyles beyond the ponytail, I can confirm that the hijab is a great way to hide my terrible braiding skills.

All jokes aside, however, freedom of self-expression is a very important aspect of wearing the hijab. Groups like Femen, which is “an international women’s movement of brave topless female activists painted with the slogans and crowned with flowers,” call themselves feminists and yet try to pull off the hijabs of Muslim women. This white feminism ignores a core tenet of real feminism, which is allowing women to be whatever they want to be, be it head-honcho, housewife or hijabi.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet: Islam calls for women to be covered, leaving the face visible; this is called the hijab. A niqab is not the same thing as a burka. A niqab covers the face but not the eyes, while the burka covers the entire head and includes a mesh panel so the wearer is able to see. Neither is prescribed by Islam.

Noorhan Maamoon is a junior majoring in print and digital journalism.  Her column, “The Hijabi Monologues,” ran on Thursdays.