Around three years ago I enthusiastically logged into Mideastyouth.com to blog about my new found spiritual enlightenment; a nineteen year old me had decided to wear the niqab – or known commonly as the Burqa in Western media – and I was desperate to share my journey with the rest of the world. I typed fast and excitedly, leaving my spelling and grammar to Microsoft spell check. I yearned to share with the world that this new British niqab-wearing woman was not oppressed neither was she sad, she had in fact chosen out of her own accord to wear it! Well, today I blog again. Mostly about why a few years on I have abandoned the niqab and left my Islamic faith. I am undoubtedly a little bit nervous about telling my story and a little more hesitant of my grammar.
Three years ago I sat at university with fellow Muslims, men on one side and women on the other, at our weekly private Islamic meeting. It was a small meeting made up of a couple of Muslim brothers and sisters. Living in Europe and attending university proved to many young practicing Muslims like ourselves a test. For one; we were Muslims now studying far from home at a university with secular students from around the world; we were able to gain access to any type of information we wanted even if it challenged our faith; and of course the parties were free. For me it was about fighting this temptation, to not give into the ultra secular lifestyle despite being free of my judgmental parents. *However I would also like to stress that there are many practicing young Muslims at Western universities who do not hold the same beliefs as I, and that are much less conflicted than I was.
At the Islamic meeting I felt righteous and confident knowing that I was one of four sisters wearing the face veil in the presence of the brothers. After my decision to wear the niqab, I received an overwhelming amount of compliments, marriage proposals and even an invitation to meet a journalist from a national newspaper. It was somewhat strange to me because I had not intended or expected that I would receive so much attention after wearing it, but I began to like the attention eventually.
Despite my new choice of dress, I stressed to everyone that knew me that I was still the same old open minded Yosra. I wore the niqab for two reasons; I wanted to be a ‘better’ Muslimah – and prior to the Islamic meeting at our leafy British university I had been spending a tremendous amount of time online listening to Islamic lectures on women and the Islamic dress instead of revising. One particular YouTube lecture effected me, a YouTube talk by Shaykh Haitham al Haddad a controversial Salafi scholar. His use of Islamic evidence and eloquent interchanging Arabic-English language won me over and I felt a sudden rush, a familiarity as he spoke in his loud commanding tone. I had been enchanted. He was harsh and strict. And I loved it.
A few days after I immediately decided to obey the command to cover myself completely from head to toe. I felt a rush, a responsibility from Allah and His Messenger (and Shaykh Haitham) to cover myself in a black robe exported from Saudi. Some of my Muslim and non Muslim friends were surprised and appalled by my decision but I felt content. It was an exhilarating feeling and to this day it is a feeling that I cannot describe. Even though I still can’t quite describe the adrenaline of covering my face, I am today a disbeliever. And my second reason for wearing the niqab will probably make it more clear as to why I wore the niqab and then began disbelieving in my religion.
My second reason for wearing the niqab was due to my personal gender politics. Being the daughter of a young immigrant woman in northern Europe in the 90s had a huge effect on me, I had seen my own fair share of every day sexism towards my mother. She was inspiring, speaking out against injustices within her own culture; condemning practices such as forced marriages and FGM. I often heard white men compliment her as exotic and brave for her progressive activism, and men within her own culture deem her a slut and a traitor. I was angry at as a child, angry at men that looked upon my mother in a way which suggested they found her foreignness sexy and those who put her down and threatened her. As a young child I was very, very much against sexism, and sex. I attended a Christian a school (my family lived in a beautiful parish) and visited the local church several times a week with the school. But I was weary as I had a Muslim surname and looked slightly different from all the other children. At age about six, I told the pastor that the Islamic faith did not allow me to join in with the hymns at the church, nor was I allowed to listen to his sermons.
Years later I would be living in an urban city and my surname and dark features would be a lot more common than in my parish. Of course by now the internet was also much more accessible and my Muslim identity became of interest to me once I began to notice others like myself. I began to cling onto my culture, more so out of passion than out of understanding. I found a certain connection, a brotherhood within Islam that I never felt as a young child and I also felt that Islam, although claimed by many feminists that it is oppressive towards women, offered me protection from white men labeling me as exotic and supposedly brave for having a voice, and sheltered me from radical Muslim men.
I wore the niqab and removed it a few months later. But my disbelief only came years after and I did not remove my niqab out of resentment.
“You don’t act like a woman in niqab” I was told by my (non niqab wearing) Muslim friend when she overheard me singing on the train one night. She was right, I had decided to wear it to ‘better’ myself from the outside but not so much internally. The majority of Muslims today tend to focus on their inner jihad, the spiritual jihad of mastering the soul. But I on the other hand was desperate to cling onto an identity, to belong and to listen to far right Islamist speakers because, like them, I was angry and desperate.
At 22, I have learned that the young me attending the Christian school but ultimately identifying as Muslim, did not truly understand religion or the concept of a God and an afterlife. I understood that I was different and refusing to listening to the sermons, I thought, would protect me from a thing which wasn’t ‘meant’ for me. In fact, my mother came into my bedroom one evening to ask me why I was so down. Being a very timid and often emotional child, both my parents and teachers were worried about me. Today I recognise that I am clinically depressed and looking back I suppose my depression began from a very tender age.That evening I quizzed my mother on life; why I should live if we were going to one day die? Why we got up every morning knowing that we would be back in bed by the evening? She offered me an ultimatum inviting me to an afterlife, a paradise created by a loving merciful God. If I lived as a good Muslim girl, God would reward me and look after me and eventually accept me into Paradise where I would find candy fountains and flying carpets, and most importantly immortality. *I was an imaginative child, my mother did not mention candy fountains or flying carpets
The promise of immortality and candy completely appealed to me.
As years went on religion became my opium.
Today I am sober and have exposed myself to secular theories and atheist thinkers. I am not reading passionately about natural selection as much I was reading passionately about a paradise but to me my new found disbelief is rational and balanced, and not based on my desperation to cling onto an identity. Ironically, I still wear the Hijab and live with my Muslim family who suspect my atheism due to our debates about religion but they tell themselves just like my Niqab, my disbelief will be a phase.
The iqab to me represented a way for me to become closer to God (while I abandoned my spirituality) and it gave me an identity. Just like my Hijab still does, and who knows it may come off or stay on.
*My personal journey isn’t that of hundreds of other women who choose to wear Niqab, or take it off, or leave a religion I do not speak for anyone but myself and it would be very unfair if all Muslim women were painted with the same brush – which I believe mainstream Western media is guilty of a lot of the time.
I will be blogging about Identity, Islam in the West, Gender and Conflict on MideastYouth