Reflections on the Hijab ban: In fashion world, an act of cultural pride subverts logic in a polarised world

In 2016, a Latina graduate student Ana Carolina Antunes carried out a collective art project called The Hijab Project in a public high school in Utah. Antunes worked with Muslim girls from immigrant and refugee background. The girls “spoke back to assumptions made about them in and out of school” because of their hijab. These included: questions about whether they were going to kill the person sitting next to them, being asked if they “shower with the hijab”, “have hair under it” or “have cancer”. They had repeatedly been singled out everywhere for wearing the hijab as emblems of Islam, as extreme religiosity. Antunes notes the irony that the school was in Utah, a state defined by its extreme religiosity as centre of the Mormon Church. The girls all had different cultural backgrounds but “people saw them all as one and the same”. In the backdrop was the 2016 Trump elections, a climate of heightened xenophobia.   Antunes writes that, “despite traditional framing of Muslim women as passive victims, through their artwork, the girls in this research group prove that religiosity and choice are not dichotomous”. The girls created hijabs with textile art on mannequins accompanied by an artist’s statement on what it meant to them. Their creations were exhibited at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and initiated public conversation on their experiences, on their terms. The hijab as a lens Society, the state and now the market sees young Muslim women only through the lens of the hijab. At last count, 61 countries around the world regulated women’s clothing headlined by bans on the burqa. The Indian government recently joined this club with the Karnataka state’s ban on hijab in educational institutions and the High Court order upholding it . Simultaneously, anecdotal evidence says there are more women adopting the hijab around the world, to express their cultural identity or defend the demonisation of their faith in the backdrop of widespread Islamophobia. The market has been eager to cash in on the shift, with unique collaborations that integrate the hijab into fast fashion for the first time.   The fashion world too has opened its borders to let in the hijab. With the message that you can be fashionable and faithful at the same time, the “modesty fashion” movement has gained ground. Modest Fashion Weeks are held in London, Jakarta, Istanbul and Dubai. Hijabi fashion is emerging as a creative field bursting with fabrics, drapes and form-fitting silhouettes in bright colours that subvert the logic underlying its religious aspect, but embrace as an act of Pride its cultural relevance in a polarised world.   [caption id=“attachment_10366471” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] An Indian Muslim woman holds a placard during a protest against banning Muslim girls wearing hijab from attending classes at some schools in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. AP[/caption] The hijab as a tool If the world looks at them through the lens of the hijab, young Muslim women in the West are using the hijab as the tool through which they express and define themselves. Hijabi fashion has been a key strategy through which young Muslim women are building supportive communities online, engaging in dialogue with non-Muslims and using their platforms for online activism that pushes for a more inclusive public sphere. Young Muslim fashion influencers on social media are reshaping how Western audiences look at Islam. In India, hijabi fashion is still at the margins. Even backstage, the hijab is conspicuous. Fashion designer Muneeba Nadeem, who showed her collection at Lakme Fashion Week 2019, mentioned in a talk with The Voice of Fashion how she felt challenged backstage. A puzzled gaze seemed ask her: “what are you doing here?”, as if a woman in a hijab had no place in the world of fashion.   The hijab and the politics of what women wear

For most women, what we wear is not a “free choice”. The idea of modesty is not unique to Islam. It lies in every faith’s spoken and unspoken diktats for women warning her not to be provocative.

Modesty is framed as superior or desirable, something inherent to defining the individual character of a woman, or collective attribute of womankind in general. It sets the framework within which women must make “choices” about how they present themselves. Meanwhile, society judges these choices and finds ways to punish those who operate outside them.   As a result, women’s clothing choices, Muslim or otherwise, are usually strategic. Sameera Khan observes that what women wear more broadly (bindi, dupatta, hijab, sindoor) is aimed at maximising their access to public spaces and other opportunities. While the hijab is often singled out and perceived as a rejection of modernity or a return to traditionalism, studies find that it correlates with women’s increased participation in public life while maintaining their cultural identity. A study in Indonesia with young women finds that for the women it is “a bridge that allows them to connect all aspects of their lives without any sacrifice”. Studies in Bangladesh have shown that an increase in veiling practices happened alongside (and contributed to) a rise in indicators of gender empowerment including higher levels of education, increase in women’s status and public participation.   There is no official data on any such rise in India. A Pew Survey indicates 9 out of 10 Muslim women wear a covering on head in public in India, although major differences exist across regions. But it also finds, this is common for women in India. The report states that “as many as 61% of Indian women reported covering their heads outside their homes. While the practice is the most prevalent among Muslims (89%), it is at almost similar levels among Sikhs (86%) and higher than the halfway mark (59%) among Hindus as well”.   The National Family Health Survey 2015-16 indicates that Muslim women have the least freedom of movement in India. But it’s not much better for non-Muslim women! If only 32% of Muslim women (age 15 to 49 years) surveyed are allowed to visit the market, health centre or places outside their village on their own, only 41.6% of their Hindu counterparts can do the same – that is, a whopping 60% of women in India don’t have freedom of movement.   The hijab and the lived realities of young Muslim women in India These numbers don’t tell us how women actually experience these restrictions. Scholarly discussion remains at conceptual level – is the hijab liberating or oppression? But what are the realities? What are the struggles and stories of both women who choose to veil and those who choose to stop wearing the hijab, or the degrees of experience between these?   Recently, non-fiction books such as Nazia Erum’s Mothering a Muslim and Ghazala Wahab’s Born a Muslim: Some Truths About Islam in India offer sensitive narratives. But there is still very little research on the lived realities of young Muslim women, who are overwhelmingly impacted by legislation like the Karnataka ban.   A paper by Haniya Rumani and Sujata Sriram gives us some insights from qualitative research with twelve young Muslim women in Mumbai. It finds that the hijab is impossible to extricate from the wider ecology women live in, stating: “Positive response to the veil at home, neighbourhood and on social media promoted the hijab while negative responses at work and in educational settings impeded it.” These mixed messages create a stressful and emotionally taxing situation for the young women to live with.   In another paper by Smeeta Mishra and Surhita Basu on the visual self-presentation of Muslim women online, they find that upholding family honour, a requirement in leading peaceful offline lives, is the defining factor in their online representation as well. They are bound by strict codes of shame and honour – something not specific to Muslim women but to every young woman in India. A life of hypervisibility is true for most young women in India living at the intersection of spectacle and surveillance. Young women are burdened with the responsibility to uphold family honour even in the digital world. In a report by the Parcham collective titled “ Being Muslim at the Workplace”, young Muslims talk about difficulties in accessing education, entering the formal sector (only 8% Muslims are employed in the formal sector) and everyday Islamophobia in the workplace, from consistently feeling othered to colleagues refusing to share food or casting aspersions on their commitment. As the report finds, there is no need for a hijab for Muslim women students to face discrimination. Just a name is enough. In such a terrain, what you wear is a small deal to strike in the face of larger gains. One is reminded of Deniz Kandiyoti’s famous term “bargaining with patriarchy” – we learn early on to strike bargains with patriarchy so that we can move ahead in small steps towards larger goals of freedom, someday. Egyptian feminist Mona Eltahawy in her book Headscarves and Hymens asks a particularly poignant question: “Are we more than our headscarves?” For young Muslim women in India caught between the state and society, there is little space for them to define themselves outside of the hijab. We need to create space to listen to their voices and understand the fabric of their lives beyond the headscarf. It is not the burden of the young Muslim women to teach the mainstream – the mainstream also has to do the work of learning.   Manjima Bhattacharjya is the author of  Mannequin: Working Women in India’s Glamour Industry [Zubaan, 2018] and Intimate City [Zubaan, 2022]. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.