Quotes & Sayings About My Hijab

I was born in 1965. When I grew up in India, there was no expectation that a good Muslim woman wore the headscarf. But what happened when I came here to the U.S. and the emergence of the Saudi and Iranian theologies in the world is that the headscarf became the hijab and the hijab is now the idea that is synonymous with headscarf. — Asra Nomani

It was nice to be in my own country, where I didn't need a translator or a driver. Where I didn't need to figure out cultural references or what hijab I needed to wear to cover my hair. — Lynsey Addario

With my veil I put my faith on display - rather than my beauty. My value as a human is defined by my relationship with God, not by my looks. I cover the irrelevant. And when you look at me, you don't see a body. You view me only for what I am: a servant of my Creator.
You see, as a Muslim woman, I've been liberated from a silent kind of bondage. I don't answer to the slaves of God on earth. I answer to their King. — Yasmin Mogahed

To the Muslim woman, the hijab provides a sense of empowerment. It is a personal decision to dress modestly according to the command of a genderless Creator; to assert pride in self, and embrace one's faith openly, with independence and courageous conviction. — Randa Abdel-Fattah

For many, the hijab represents modesty, piety and devotion to God, and I truly respect that. But the hijab should not be used as a means of applying social pressure on people. — Queen Rania Of Jordan

The best hijab is in the eyes of the beholder. — Benazir Bhutto

In the Ummah, there was no tradition of veiling until around 627 C.E., when the so-called "verse of hijab" suddenly descended upon the community. That verse, however, was addressed not to women in general, but exclusively to Muhammad's wives: — Reza Aslan

Many Arabic/Islamic words have now entered the English dictionary, such as haj, hijab, Eid, etc., and I no longer need to put them in italics or explain them. — Leila Aboulela

If you ask Muslim women why they cover up, ninety-nine percent of them will say it's to avoid arousing men. Fuck that, where's your self-accountability? — Michael Muhammad Knight

Body is hijab to conceal one's soul! — Farheen Viquas

A woman wearing a half hijab sat on a dirty rag. I could see her toes through her ripped shoes. A baby cried in her arms. She opened her palm to me, saying, "We have no home. Please help me and my baby. God will bless you."
I noticed her broken teeth. My heart sank; I turned my face to the other side. My God! If I turned to every misery around me, I would be crying rivers on the street. — Sarah Salem

When I walked out of the house with hijab on, i felt beautiful in the eyes of Allah. I felt protected, shielded - i just felt somebody was watching over me'
- Nadia, a reverted Muslim — Na'ima B. Robert

I am against revolution and am proud of it. Democracy cannot be created through revolutions. The most important dichotomy that I make for a society is between those who support democracy and human rights, and those who oppose it. In a totalitarian state, the state views any act of an individual to be political in nature. For example, the clothing that a person wears in a modern state is a private affair whereas in the Islamic Republic all women are forced to wear the hijab (Islamic attire). When women push their headscarf back an inch or two, this is interpreted to be a political act, — Akbar Ganji

I saw a mother who lose his country, city, home and children, but she had hijab between corpses. — Ali Rezavand Zayeri

And it's when I'm standing there this morning, in my PJs and a hijab, next to my mum and my dad, kneeling before God, that I feel a strange sense of calm. I feel like nothing can hurt me, and nothing else matters. — Randa Abdel-Fattah

What crystallized the importance of speaking out like that - of making nonviolence not just a tool or a tactic, but a way of life - was in San Diego [at Comic-Con]. One of the young girls who marched with us was wearing a hijab, and she came up to me afterward because I talked about my beard, and I talked about why I was doing it, and she came up and she gave me a hug, and she was crying. And she said, "Thank you. You have no idea how the other students treat me because they're shown that this is OK by Donald Trump. Thank you for speaking out." — Andrew Aydin

We heard from a professor at an evangelical college who wore a hijab in solidarity with Muslim women. Now we have a different perspective. Asra Nomani co-wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post titled in part "As Muslim Women, We Actually Ask You Not To Wear The Hijab." — Ari Shapiro

When you write about a Muslim woman, like I did with my previous novels - 'Minaret', for example, which is about a woman who starts to wear the hijab - it sets all the alarm bells ringing. — Leila Aboulela

Very interestingly in a movement that I call now the hijab lobby, sadly promulgated by women that some of us refer to as Muslim mean girls and their friends, are trying to put out this meme that we are denying women their choice. — Asra Nomani

His name meant "He Who Fasts for a Hundred Days," and in person he more than lived up to his name. He was so thin that he looked like skin stretched over bone. While Sister Aziza wore the hijab, Boqol Sawm wore a Saudi robe, a bit short, so that it showed his bony ankles. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

There are irrational fears. If you see a woman wearing a hijab and fear is your first thought, something's really wrong. — Hamza Yusuf

Too many people look at it as though it (the hijab) has bizarre powers sewn into its microfibers. Powers that transform Muslim girls into UCOs (Unidentified Covered Objects), which turn Muslim girls from an 'us' to a 'them. — Randa Abdel-Fattah

The drugs took over and she fell asleep then.
Only her face was visible, the medical equipment acting as some hideous hijab for her. — Ruth Ahmed

People have the wrong idea about the hijab,: said Zuhra with a toss of her glossy hair. I wear it because I respect myself. And when the beauty is hidden the more important things rise to the surface. — Jennifer Steil

I grew up in a very westernised environment and went to a private American school. But my personality was shy and quiet, and I wanted to wear the hijab but didn't have the courage, as I knew my friends would talk me out of it. — Leila Aboulela

I see certain parallels between the debate over feminism where some women argue that women should not be forced to stay at home and take care of children [and debate about hijab ]. And there are other women who are saying you are criticizing my decision as a free liberated women to stay home and take care of my children. — Ari Shapiro

Many sisters complain that people don't want to marry them unless they stop wearing hijab. No man is worth your hijab, and a real man wouldn't request you to take it off in the first place. — Omar Suleiman

Ambo opens his eyes and snaps to awareness - looking around wildly. He tries to move his hands, but he can't; his wrists have been bound to a wooden armchair. It takes him a moment to recognize it, to remember how he got there.

Arla is standing next to him, looking withered. Skin mottled and sweaty. Her eyes are swollen, and the cloth of the hijab has unraveled slightly. She whispers something to him, and it sounds like she's asking whether he's okay, but he can't make out the words.

He tells her to repeat herself. Louder this time, child.

'I said, what are we going to do? — Jonathan R. Miller

A woman of European heritage sporting a preacher's collar had the opposite effect of a Muslim woman wearing a hijab. She used her privilege and the favored religion to look like a golden child. — Eric Jerome Dickey

Yet she belongs, finally and truly, only to God. The hijab is a symbol of freedom from the male regard, but also, in our time, of freedom from subjugation by the iron fist of materialism, deterministic science, and the death of meaning. It denotes softness, otherness, inwardness. She is not only caught in a world of power relations, but she inhabits a world of love and sacrifice. This freedom, which is of the conscience, is hers to exercise as she will. — Abdal Hakim Murad

I write as someone who has no more time for repressive Islam than he does for repressive Christianity or Judaism, but at least look at the face in the hijab - and try to imagine the one beneath the niqab - before you depersonalise its wearer. — Will Self

My escape route was to emphasize the
idea of "choice." If a woman had a
right to wear a miniskirt, surely I had the right to choose my headscarf. My choice was a sign of my independence
of mind. Surely, to choose to wear
what I wanted was an
assertion of my feminism. I was a feminist, wasn't I?
But I was to learn that
choosing to wear the hijab is much easier than choosing to take it off. And that lesson was an important reminder of how truly "free" choice is. — Mona Eltahawy

I have always thought that if women's hair posed so many problems, God would certainly have made us bald. — Marjane Satrapi

When it comes to the hijab - why to wear it, whether to wear it, how to wear it - there is theology and then there is practice, and there is huge diversity in both. — Randa Abdel-Fattah

The sun doesn't lose its beauty when covered by the clouds. The same way your beauty doesn't fade when being covered by Hijab — Angelina Jolie

Ilm Ne Mujh Se Kaha Ishq Hai Diwana-Pan
Ishq Ne Mujh Se Kaha Ilm Hai Takhmeen-o-Zan

Knowledge said to me, Love is madness;
Love said to me, Knowledge is calculation

Band-e-Takhmeen-o-Zan! Kirm-e-Kitabi Na Ban
Ishq Sarapa Huzoor, Ilm Sarapa Hijab

O slave of calculation, do not be a bookworm!
Love is Presence entire, Knowledge nothing but a Veil. — Muhammad Iqbal

What a strange fate for Muslim memory, to be called upon in order to censure and punish! What a strange memory, where even dead men and women do not escape attempts at assassination, if by chance they threaten to raise the hijab that covers the mediocrity and servility that is presented to us as tradition. How did the tradition succeed in transforming the Muslim woman into that submissive, marginal creature who buries herself and only goes out into the world timidly and huddled in her veils? Why does the Muslim man need such a mutilated companion? — Fatema Mernissi

Flying while Muslim is nerve-racking in itself. Every time I prepare to fly, I have to make sure the anxiety I feel from all the stares I get from the moment I walk into the airport doesn't show on my face. This is what every woman in a hijab or bearded Muslim man experiences. But we are not alone: Sikh men who wear a turban experience the same anxiety because they encounter Islamophobia by dint of being perceived as Muslim. — Debbie Almontaser

The hijab or a variation of the word shows up eight times in the Quran. And it never means headscarf. And so what's happened is that the identity of a Muslim woman especially is being equated to this piece of cloth on her head. And in that ideology there's a very fundamental assumption that people need to think very deeply about, which is do you believe that a woman is too sexy for her hair? — Asra Nomani

The hijab, or sikh turban, or Jewish skullcap are all explicit symbols, but they do not represent a threat or affront to others, and have no bearing on the competence, skills and intelligence of a person. — Randa Abdel-Fattah

There is more to this hijab than the whole modesty thing. These girls are strangers to me but I know that we all felt an amazing connection, a sense that this cloth binds us in some kind of universal sisterhood. — Randa Abdel-Fattah

Muslim women, and critics, male and female, of Western models of sex and sexuality, are silenced. The price of speech for a Muslim woman in the West is the disavowal of Islam. Books condemning Islam are picked by publishers and featured on talk shows. Their authors are commended for their courage. Speech in defense of Islam is read as the speech of subjection. Islam oppresses women. Any woman speaking in its favor must be deluded or forced to speak against her will. If she defends the hijab or speaks in defense of polygamy, she cannot be believed. No woman in her right mind could defend these. Any woman who does must be deluded or coerced. The more Muslim women object to Western efforts to "help" them, the more need there is to liberate them. — Anne Norton

The assumption that women in hijab are less enlightened or empowered than those rocking daisy dukes is arrogant at best. Feminism should fight for all women to have he right to live as they choose, not for all women to live the same exact lives like we're all in some sort of Sims game. — Luvvie Ajayi

Her skirts, sleeves, collar, and hat saw to it that none of the young ruffians of the Leased Territories would have the opportunity to invade her body space with their eyes, and lest her distinctive face prove too much of a temptation, she wore a veil too ...
The veil offered Nell protection from unwanted scrutiny. Many New Atlantis career women also used the veil as a way of meeting the world on their own terms, ensuring that they were judged on their own merits and not on their appearance. It served a protective function as well, bouncing back the harmful rays of the sun and intercepting many deleterious nanosites that might otherwise slip unhindered into the nose and mouth. — Neal Stephenson

There are ways to minimize the risk if you are a woman working in the Middle East: You can dress modestly, wear the hijab, cover your head, always travel with a man. — Lynsey Addario

You marry them,' Blue Hijab said, 'hoping they'll change, and grow. And they marry us, hoping that we won't. — Gregory David Roberts

In practice, you realise that most attempts to feed your baby in a public space will be met with subtle but palpable resistance. Older chaps roll their eyes, slick young businesswomen purse their mouths, teenagers look disgusted, waitresses anxious. But it strikes me as ironic that many members of the public fret about British Muslims donning the hijab, yet happily condone the veiling of nursing mothers. — Rowan Pelling

Everyone seems to agree that it is Minnesotans' responsibility to assimilate to Somali culture, not the other way around.11 The Catholic University of St. Thomas has installed Islamic prayer rooms and footbaths in order to demonstrate, according to Dean of Students Karen Lange, that the school is "diverse." Minneapolis's mayor, Betsy Hodges, has shown up wearing a full hijab to meetings with Somalis. (In fairness, it was "Forbid Your Daughter to Work Outside the Home" Day.) — Ann Coulter