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Someone Asked Me Why I Don’t Wear a Hijab

by in Culture & Lifestyle on 24th June, 2017

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Last Saturday I woke up to a couple messages, a few miss calls and a voicemail. Fast forward a few hours and my plans to do the laundry and then go to a car boot sale were sidelined.

My sister and I, co-founders of Amaliah were asked to hold a Q&A session at the prestigious WPPStream conference. The WPP conference is an invite-only conference which brings together 300 industry leaders, from brands, technology companies and agencies, for three days, usually on a beach. The purpose? To learn from, and contribute to, the freshest thinking around the future of technology and communication.

First Question:

Why do you wear hijab (to Selina) and Why don’t you wear hijab (to me Nafisa).

I ‘virtually’ looked at Selina and she replied with…

Because Allah commanded me to. I could go into other facets but that is the top line of it. I, like most women faced insecurities and identity challenges in myself and when I came to explore these it was Islam that empowered me.

She killed it, mashaAllah.

Me:

The honest answer, I’m struggling. It’s something I’m working towards. My sister and I never grew up around Muslims or a community, I guess it was a result of being Bengali Muslim Indians born in Indonesia (me the UK), the mix and match of influences meant that my parents never really ever fitted or identified wholly with a community and that trickled down to us.

As a result, I guess my sisters and I found our Muslim identities quite later in life (aka in the last 2 years). For me, Amaliah is about emulating the community and support I wish I had when I was younger.

We talk about sisterhood in Islam but honestly before setting up Amaliah I had never really felt ‘sisterhood.’

I hope to ensure that no young Muslim woman feels confused, lost or struggles with their own identity. I hope that Muslim women feel they can have a place in this world being exactly who they are.

I can’t say it will take the struggles away but I think there is something empowering about struggling together.

Second Question:

Because we were being streamed we couldn’t hear the questions well and were having them repeated to us. All we could hear what sounded like an impassioned angry woman. Instantly I thought, ‘great, she’s going to talk about how bad Islam is and ask us to be a spokesman for ISIS, oppression and terrorism.’

But actually, she raised a really valid point. She said we’re here to speak about the Muslim Economy, why are we asking them about why they wear or don’t wear hijab, it’s no ones business! Can we get back to the discussion.

I understood where that anger came from, I wrote a post on my personal post about why we need to stop asking the question ‘What’s it like to be a woman in tech.’ I think it’s an unproductive and lazy question, I want to be asked about our achievements and what we are working on not my biology.

BUT, I see this question as a step forward. The more people can actually turn to real Muslim women rather than the media headlines to understand Islam, the more we can put out the real Islam. There have been studies that show that in areas where there is little to no Muslim population have negative views about Muslims and Islam, of course they do, their only perception of Islam is that in the media. People shouldn’t be afraid to ask these questions, I agree in some cases these questions are just asked in an antagonistic way but in this case it was a genuine effort to understand more about the ever so elusive Muslim Woman. I still did appreciate that this woman spoke out, thank you.

The rest of the discussion was around what we were doing and how! It was honour to be able to share our story with an audience that normally wouldn’t find out about us, thanks WPP for having us! 

Nafisa Bakkar

Nafisa Bakkar

Co-founder and CEO at Amaliah Find her @nafisabakkar on IG and Twitter