Holding tight to Hijab, Losing our Religion

Modesty and faith come together. If one of the two is missing, so is the other. [Hadith]

My dad used to repeat this Hadith a lot when I was growing up —especially as a teenager. It frustrated me because I didn’t want to believe it (I also just wanted to fit in and wear the clothes other teenagers wore). I didn’t want to believe that the way I dressed played a role in my faith. But with time I realize in my own life how deep that connection could and should be. Not just in the modesty of our clothing but also in every area of our lives.

Holistic Modesty

Modesty has been under attack for a while, but in recent years it’s become increasingly directed towards Muslim women, and, perhaps ironically (or perhaps not), that attack has come mostly from the left. The left (progressives, liberals, etc.) has been extremely accepting and welcoming of Muslims post 9/11. But they’ve been accepting of us because of our “oppressed status” and despite our religion. In a strange way, they have welcomed us into their club under one single condition, leave that religious stuff behind.

The left accepts Muslims as a whole (at least in comparison to the right) but they promote Muslims who are on the fringes, engaged in questionable activities, and full of paradoxical identities. They uplift the “niqabi rocker,” the “nonbinary activist,” the “Hijabi biker,” and on and on. The issue is not primarily whether these women exist, or whether their questionable activities (and confusing identities) are haram or halal, the question is why are these people —who do not represent most Muslim women, chosen as our representatives? The answer, for me, is becoming quite clear; if they can divorce Hijab from holistic modesty it isn’t long before they divorce Hijab from Islam itself and it becomes no more than cultural garb or a mere fashion choice.

Muslim women shouldn’t do everything

The danger in this is that if the left wins Muslim women won’t just lose our headscarf —in fact, we might continue to wear it, but we will lose our religion itself. Modesty has never been about merely the clothing on our backs. Modesty is a part of how we act, what we choose to participate in, how we value ourselves, our time, and our relationship with Allah. The way we dress should be a part of and in connection to a holistic modesty that governs our entire life.

We have to run away from our desire to prove how un-oppressed we are —continually showing our non-Muslim counterparts that Muslim women “can do everything”. Sure Muslim women can do everything, but should we? We have the ability like any other free human being to make a myriad of choices but what dictates our choices is not mere ability but the virtue of a given action.

We have to stop treating our scarves like the beginning and end of our modesty and start viewing it as part of and continuation of a holistic modesty (conscientiousness, awareness, hayah, etc.) that governs our lives. So sure, a Muslim woman’s niqabi can be a frontman of a rock band but likely wouldn’t because the niqab is an extension of her approach to modesty, not an exception to an otherwise immodest life.

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