Scarf not frightening or foreign — but freeing

By Lina Hashem
1999 Scholar

Posted: Nov. 24, 2000

Every morning, as I get ready for work, I pick out one last article of clothing. In Egypt, they call it "hijab," in Iran, a "chador."

I call it a scarf.

I fold the little cloth into a triangle, pin it over my hair and head out the door. As I glance in the mirror to make sure I've pinned it straight, it looks as much a part of me as my shirt and jeans.

But when I see the same scarf on someone on television, a movie, or a film in class, I realize how many millions of Americans see it -- as something different, something other.

On the television news, the scarf often is a shapeless, all-enveloping black tent, worn by wailing women or surging masses of protesters.

In the newspaper, it's sometimes used as a symbol of foreignness. Like the time the wire services sent along a photo of a scarfed woman to illustrate a story about weapons inspections in Iraq.

In movies like "Not Without My Daughter" and "The Siege," women wearing scarves walk down the street to the sound of ominous music portending sinister events -- perhaps the abduction of a child or a terrorist bombing.

In women's studies or political science classes, scarf-covered women appear without fail on the TV screen just in time for the narrator to solemnly pronounce words like "oppressed," "primitive" or "fundamentalist."

I often have wanted to scrunch down and hide behind the little foldable desk attached to my seat.

But, when I'm in my other world, the scarf looks different.

It looks like my mom.

It looks like many of my friends.

It looks like the quiet comfort of my mosque.

It looks like holiday celebrations.

It looks like me.

It also looks like the Muslim women who have worn scarves for 14 centuries, in dozens of ways and in dozens of countries. Orthodox Islam requires women to wear it when they reach puberty. In some Muslim countries, even small girls wear it, while in others, only old women knot it under their chins.

But as my women's studies classes, along with certain media portrayals and a number of actual discussions with people, have made it painfully clear, too many Americans think the scarf has meant one thing for these women -- a symbol of subjugation.

I beg to differ.

First, I have to say it's true that some Muslim women in some countries have been oppressed and mistreated.

I would argue that this is directly in defiance of Islam, however, not because of it. But for the moment, I'll spare you a thesis on the rights of Islamic women and just stick to the scarf, which -- poor little piece of cloth! -- gets waved around by all sides as the symbol of the entire religion.

What is this scarf, really?

If Islam were a tree, the scarf would be one leaf on the same twig with all the guidelines for modesty for both men and women. Muslims believe that God created humans and all their strengths and weaknesses, and he created guidelines for how to best deal with his creations.

We believe the attraction between the sexes is a gift from God, but belongs within certain parameters. If it gets out of hand, you can end up with a community where sexual images and innuendo pervade all aspects of life, including advertising and television -- where half of all children are raised in single-parent households and grow up too fast, mainly on their own.

Hmm ... Sound familiar?

So Muslims try to act responsibly by making a conscious effort to attract no one except their spouses. As one Muslim speaker likes to say, "I'm not out to please every Tom, Dick, Harry and Muhammad."

Both men and women in Islam, then, are to act modestly and dress modestly. Women cover everything but their faces and hands. Men cover from their stomach to their knees, and also should loosely cover their chests. What should be covered in public differs for men and women because what's under the clothing is different.

No one has ever forced me -- or even asked me -- to dress the way I do. The day I first braved the doors of my high school with a scarf on my head, I did not even tell my parents until I got home.

As the Quran, the holy book of Islam, says, "There is to be no compulsion in religion."

Instead, I wear a scarf because it makes perfect sense to me. I don't see this as oppression, but liberation.

To me, oppression is being judged on the basis of the shape, color and size of your body rather than on something you can control. Oppression is having your body used as a commodity to sell everything from frozen foods to fast cars.

I like the power that comes with being able to choose what elements of myself I want people to judge me on. It's like telling people, "Look at my mind, look at my personality, look at me."

I'm not expecting everyone who reads this to agree and start wearing scarves. What I resent, though, is when people - and these are a minority - seem to feel that mainstream American values are the gold standard for humankind, and the values I live by and dress by are strange, inferior, outdated or in need of change.

It also amuses me that America tends to see the scarf as something foreign. Western civilization considers itself an inheritor of ancient civilizations like Mesopotamia and Babylonia -- societies where upper-class women wore scarves as symbols of morality and social status. Scarves also are found closer to home. Jewish women cover their heads for Shabbat. Several of my friends and I have been mistaken for nuns.

And look at any painting of the Virgin Mary -- she wore a scarf much like mine.

But, still, many people see my scarf as foreign. A car full of young men did last year, when they chased my friend's car (with me in it) down a street near campus, shouting obscenities. My downstairs neighbor does too, judging from her response when she first saw me: "We don't need no f---ing Indians around here." (She got the wrong continent and wrong religion, but you get the picture.)

The scarf is also foreign to people in many newsrooms. I doubt if my college paper, The Review at the University of Delaware, ever had a scarf-covered editor before me. I'm not sure The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., where I now work, has either.

At many newspapers, reporters and editors are primed to think of the scarf in the "foreigner" category. And this is sometimes reflected in their articles. Of course, a lot of my co-workers have been terrific, taking my choice in stride. At The Review, an editor once offered to tie-dye a scarf for me. And at The News Journal, colleagues have sometimes ooohed and aaahed over the scarves they like best.

These are the people who refuse to see the scarf as something frightening or foreign. They see it instead as a symbol of differences that can be understood rather than feared. They treat it like a passport offering glimpses into another world, a world where my mother and beloved friends beam beneath Italian scarves or Egyptian hats, and where flowery Turkish "hicabs" or shiny Pakistani "dupattas" adorn women at holiday celebrations.

I say to all of them: The door is open, and they're welcome in.

Lina Hashem was a 1999 Scholar at The News Journal in Wilmington, Del, where she now is a copy editor. Reach her at lina_hashem@yahoo.com

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