NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

When I started wearing the hijab as a teenager, I was shocked at the reaction I received.

I hadn’t expected a cloth on my head to cause so much outrage. 

A girl at school said she could ‘no longer look at me’. My favourite teacher kept calling me by the name of the only other Muslim girl in class, until I corrected her. Another teacher made a comment about my dad forcing me to wear it. 

My friend’s boyfriend popped up on MSN to tell me that he didn’t think anyone should force me to cover my hair (not that anyone had, but thanks prepubescent white saviour!). Some of my non-Muslim relatives didn’t speak to me for weeks, and many of my friends iced me out.

Overnight, my identity changed. Being half-English, I was able to ‘pass’ as white as a child. The only playground racism I experienced was aimed at my dad for being the only brown face at pick-up time. 

But as soon as I decided to wear the hijab, society forced me to see myself as foreign, strange and un-British. In the spaces I had inhabited my entire life, I was suddenly unwelcome – something that my teenage self didn’t understand. 

Muslim women might cover their hair for a multitude of reasons. Ultimately, many believe it is simply ordained by God, just like we are told to fast in Ramadan or pray at certain times. But the hijab is also social and political. It allows us to publicly identify as Muslims and reminds us of our values. Some consider it a radical rejection of the male gaze, patriarchal fashion norms and euro-centric beauty standards. 

On TV, we’re either a quivering, meek terrorist’s wife or living a secret life, whipping our hijabs off and sneaking off to the pub as soon as out parents go to bed

Since adopting it on an identity-crisis-induced whim at 14, the hijab has come to mean a combination of these things to me. 

Muslim women have long been objects of intense observation – hypersexualised in colonial artwork as veiled figures in exotic harems, or weaponised as oppressed victims in need of western salvation in order to justify military force. 

On TV, we’re either a quivering, meek terrorist’s wife or living a secret life, whipping our hijabs off and sneaking off to the pub as soon as our parents go to bed. 

We are a pawn for far-right politicians to win votes, to excite the sections of society who oppose multiculturalism, the swathes of people who see a covered woman as the antithesis to Britishness. 

We have been made into a metaphor for otherness by politicians with racist and nationalistic agendas. 

When Boris Johnson called us letterboxes, he wasn’t commenting on the visual similarities between a niqab and a postbox. He was undermining the very notion of a pluralistic society where people get to believe what they want and live how they wish.

He was inciting far-right notions of a Britain that looks a certain way, signalling to that portion of the electorate that a vote for him is a vote for the good ol’ days – a vote for a Britain that doesn’t include people like me. 

Far-right politicians are experiencing a surge worldwide, and Muslim women are the bogeyman that they are united against. Marine Le Pen is currently running for the French presidency on a platform of islamophobia, racism and anti-multiculturalism.

And – you guessed it – her views are embodied in one simple law that she promises to pass: a hijab ban. 

Full or partial hijab bans are ironically all the rage amongst a far-right intent on promoting free speech. India recently upheld their ban on hijabs in schools and colleges. The niqab is banned in over 10 nations across the world, from Latvia to Cameroon, Sri Lanka to Switzerland. 

Last year, the EU supreme court even ruled that European companies can ban the hijab at work. Last time I checked, a scarf doesn’t prevent a woman from treating me in hospital, serving me in a shop or teaching my children. 

The problem with this global obsession with policing Muslim women’s clothing is that it is disingenuous to claim that covering our bodies is the real issue.

Opponents of the hijab and niqab claim the garments are subjugating and repressive – that they prevent women from participating in society and are a security risk. 

Except, nobody was calling fashion bloggers oppressed for wearing balaclavas at this year’s New York Fashion Week – the so-called must-have trend of the season, which are nothing more than knitted hijabs. 

When Kim Kardashian turned up to the Met Gala in an all-black outfit that covered her whole body and face, she was deemed to be forward-thinking and cool. Is it because hers was Balenciaga and mine is from Whitechapel market? Or is there one rule for the super-rich and one for Muslim women who are already obliged to exist at the terrifying intersection of violent misogyny and systemic racism? 

Nobody calls for nuns to be banned as a security risk for what they wear, and when the Queen wears a headscarf she isn’t berated for upholding patriarchal ideals. 

We are emerging from a period in which all of us covered our faces in public for months. In my job as a teacher, I’ve taught 30 students at a time behind a mask. My husband had to wear one the whole time I was in labour. 

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We all managed to interact with each other and go about our everyday lives without society descending into chaos because we could only see each other’s eyes. 

So if the issue isn’t about Muslim women covering themselves, then what is it? Are some men so uncomfortable with an absolute rejection of the male gaze that they seek to weaponise that decision against us and our communities? 

Are politicians threatened by our unwillingness to conform, our refusal to leave our traditions at the door, our beliefs at the border? 

Or is it that the world is so used to seeing Muslim women as meek and malleable, and the idea of us having autonomy over our own bodies is so unsettling that it must be prevented through policy and stifled through discourse?

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.

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