Signs and Sisterhood: Hijab as a Community Marker

I was pulling my suitcase through a hive of travellers across an ever-buzzing baggage claims hall, when an elderly Muslim woman called for me; “Assalamu Alaikum! Assalamu Alaikum!” (peace be upon you), she waved her hand gesturing the need for help. I approached her and the visibly frustrated airport employee pushing her wheelchair. She had trouble expressing to him the city she came from, so that they could find the appropriate carousel. After pointing her to the Casablanca belt, she smiled in gratitude to me, and we parted ways.

That brief interaction I shared with another Muslim woman many years ago, stuck with me. It changed the way that I thought about my hijab. What was once to me a form of modesty which symbolized a special relationship I had with God, also became a symbol of opportunity for a special relationship I could have with other women.

To that woman in the wheelchair, distressed and alone, my visible Muslimness was to her a signal of sisterhood: familiarity, support, and trust. This is a marker that transcends borders of age, geography, even language.

Over the next few years, I would see this sisterhood reproduced again and again with other women I would encounter in public. In spaces where everyone is a stranger, myself and other hijab-wearing women find community in each other.

Hijab is that time I was on a crowded bus of university students after a tiring day of lectures, and a student reached her hand out to me to make a new friend.

Hijab is when I shuffled down the airplane aisle after a stressful travel experience, and a mother in the row behind mine smiled at me with “Assalamu Alaikum sister.”

Hijab is when I passed by a woman at Walmart stressfully on a phone call in one hand and pushing a cart with the other, and her eyes sparkled with joy when we made eye contact.

Hijab is the young mother with a newborn who sighed of relief when I was her neighbour on the airplane, knowing she had a companion to lend her a hand- and not judge her- on the 9 hour flight to come.

Hijab is when I sat down in a cafe, panicking over a paper assignment, and a woman holding her son’s hand outside the window smiled and waved to me when she passed by.

Hijab is that girl at the busy street intersection who looks around the faces of her new city, and chooses me to ask for directions.

Hijab is also that elderly Sikh man wearing a turban on the train platform, who recognizes in me a safety he sees in his own sons and daughters, and asks me which train he should take.

Hijab is all the times I see other women wearing hijab, in malls, on the sidewalk, on busses and trains and in grocery stores, and- in a society that struggles to relate to me- seeing myself in someone else.

Hijab is all the times that other women made me feel good about myself, and I made them feel good about themselves too.

This narrative resists many Western media discourses which impose connotations of a ‘wall’ and a ‘barrier’ to hijab- to many Muslim women, hijab is, in fact, a community builder. It is a doorway. It is a bridge.

None of this is to say that community is built on physical characteristics, like skin colour or other superficial standards. The connection between two hijab wearing women is based on a recognition of shared values, of mutually understood and validated histories and experiences, and on allyship during a politically troubling climate. This is a community that emerges in contexts where Muslim women who cover are largely perceived as strange, as less, as Other. To many women, seeing the hijab on the head of another sister says: “I see you.” “I hear you.” “You are welcome here.”

So, unlike other allyships i.e. Whiteness, this is not a sisterhood which is supremacist, violent or excluding. Thus, one cannot make the counter argument that all people are entitled to this type of relationship in ways that Muslim women, or other ‘women of colour’, are. The contexts are non-transferable. The love exchanged between many hijab wearing women is not based on sameness. Rather, it is born from a symbol of safety, solace and sisterhood.

The hijab, indeed, is for me. But it is not for me only. It is for others too, to recognize me and know that they can find peace here, like a lighthouse or a shelter.

Many have tried to own hijab wearing women by telling lies about us, painting false images, and stigmatizing us for our choices. By stripping us of our agency to define ourselves and our headscarves, stereotypes serve to control us and dominate our behaviour. But, by refusing to feel ashamed of ourselves or of each other, by continuing to be sources of light and love to other women, by choosing resistance every morning we wake up and put our head scarves on- we are the antithesis of what they say about us.

We are the objects of no one.

And we are free.

https://hmngbirdblog.wordpress.com/2019/01/10/signs-and-sisterhood-hijab-as-a-community-marker/?fbclid=IwAR1mUJR_IEaCXyB2HhrEUFO-wXJHyegGNZJYpAiupUGv_EbVElgpcOGhkRA