From The New York Times
by Stephanie Meade
My 6-year-old daughter loves headscarves. In preschool she went through a phase where she color-coordinated them with her outfits while getting dressed. This is my same daughter whose most frequent proclamation when we view her vast dress collection in the morning is, “Nope, not fancy enough!”
On a recent trip to Morocco, she discovered a drawer in her grandmother’s bureau filled with colorful, silky headscarves. She dressed herself up in the mirror for the next half-hour, reminding me of the pleasure I derived from my grandmother’s jewelry box as a child.
Her love of headscarves is no different than her love of fancy dresses, hot chocolate or her bike. It’s not something I give much thought to.
One Saturday morning just after her ballet class, she found a scarf in my purse and declared, “Mama, let me do your scarf so you can look Muslim.” She said this in the same way you might say, “Let me do your hair so you can look beautiful.” She carefully wrapped the scarf around my head, smoothing wrinkles and pushing it off my forehead, ensuring not a strand of hair was visible while my older daughter took a picture. After some internal debate about whether this could be offensive to Muslims since I am not Muslim, I decided to share it on Facebook. The very first person who commented declared, “How creepy,” which was followed by another person announcing that I would be better off teaching my daughter that not all Muslim women wear a headscarf.
What these snap-second judgments didn’t consider was my daughter’s own identity: She is Muslim. Some of the most beloved people in her life wear a headscarf, and others do not. She understands there is no one way a Muslim looks. But that’s all beside the point. To her, at age 6, a headscarf is not so much an expression of faith as it one of beauty.
