WHAT HIJAB MEANS TO ME

Asalamualaykum Warahmatullah,

How are you doing?

Today I thought I would talk about my hijab, when I started wearing it, why and what it means to me.
For those of you who may not know what a hijab is, it is a head cover for muslim women as a way of being modest and private. The term 'hijab' is also used as a way of meaning a general 'cover' which includes wearing loose clothes as not to reveal the shape of your body. The people who can see the woman without the hijab are females and men known as 'mahrams' (meaning men who are tied to the woman, like her brother, father, grandfather, son and father in law, husband) therefore excluding anyone who can be a potential husband.
Having lived in an area where Muslims are very rare I didn't really get my influence from anyone outside the house. But I remember always watching my mum wear it which made me want to wear it on days when I could for example during school holidays. It was always something I looked forward to, however Im pretty sure I must have cried when I wore it on my first day of school (year 3 - age 7). Ever since then I didn't take it off. It became my comfort blanket.

Its strange because I always thought that because I wore the hijab, people looked at me different especially because I was the only one wearing it in the whole school. Regardless, I remember the first time someone had mentioned something about my scarf was when this guy in year 3 was like 'Why have you got that thing on your head, are you bald underneath?' At the time I took this as an insult and got really upset. Now I can only look back and laugh, its just funny, especially because we were all incredibly young.

I don't ever remember second guessing wearing the scarf, or ever thinking that when I did something bad that I needed to take it off. It just became part of my identity. It was as if so long as I had it on I could be confident, I could take the stares, I could handle the comments. However during the school years, I was always ready to be offended whenever anyone said anything. My big head used to think that as long as I had it on, no-one would think negatively of Islam, but of course you can't control the world.

I strongly believe that the hijab is a form of protection. It allows you to control how people see you, how people take you. Everything else is like icing on a cake. It gives you the opportunity to reveal yourself through who you are, and doesn't give people the option to pick you out based on your materialistic ideals. One of the hardest things is how nowadays the perception has changed, so how you want to be perceived may not necessarily be how you are seen. But I pray that one day things will change.

Let me know how you started wearing your hijab and how that has changed you!