From DAME Magazine
by Laila Alawa
The first time that I felt silenced, an older woman came up to me at a mall in western Massachusetts and said, “You and your scarf have no place here. We’re free in America.” Her anger stunned me to silence, as I watched her brusquely walk away. I was 15. Raised by my mother to be proud of my identity, I felt it all stripped from me in that one moment.
Recently, I read about Tanya Smart’s harrowing experiences in the Daily Telegraph. Smart, a non-Muslim, is female reporter who wore a niqab—a word she frequently alternated with burqa (the former is a veil, the latter covers the entire face and body)—to “see how people would react” as she went about her day in Sydney, Australia. I felt like I was 15 all over again—palms sweaty and nervous—as I read her account of how she felt “straight away [like] I did not fit in” as a visible minority in Sydney. She then described her walk around Lakemba, a Muslim neighborhood where she felt like an outsider in her T-shirt and pants. It was only when Smart covered herself in the niqab that she felt safe, though she reported feeling afraid of the reaction she would get from the immigrants around her once they realized she was actually Australian.
As I finished reading the article, it took me a moment to regain composure before frustration kicked in. This, Smart said, was the most terrifying experience she has ever endured, rife with moments of alienation and feeling like an Other. She had created a reality she believed Muslim women—especially covered Muslim women—go through daily, one in which every move is cloaked with fear of reprisal, where strength and empowerment have no place. What was even more disconcerting to me was the fear Smart expressed of being discovered and exposed as an Australian Muslim, as though the two realities are so distinct that they can never overlap. What was more, she was concerned that she was going to be exposed as a fraud to the Muslims around her, masquerading as one of them.
Smart’s experience presumes that all Muslim women experience a similar personal crisis with regard to their religious and national identities. Can a non-Muslim woman dress up as a Muslim woman and really expect to experience life as a Muslim woman might? Why would Smart’s portrait of Islamic life gain such recognition—why not ask a Muslim woman about her life, instead? And reducing what it means to be a Muslim woman down to a piece of fabric—is that how the non-Muslim world sees Muslim women? There is obviously more to us than that, and of course, many different sects within the faith, as with all religions.
Within the Muslim faith, women are asked to dress and behave modestly. For many, that means wearing the hijab, a scarf that covers the hair. Within America, only 43 percent of Muslim women choose to cover, the rest choosing not to do so. For some Muslim women, choosing to cover their face with a niqab is their way of covering. Far fewer wear the burqa, which covers the head and body entirely. Hijab is considered foreign and alien to the West.
Smart isn’t the only journalist to conduct this experiment—she is part of a tradition of similar undertakings, each reporter attempting to provide a glimpse into the world of covered Muslim women. In 2010, a Kentucky woman wore a hijab for a month, revealing an experience that “silenced, but simultaneously … brought unforgettable words.” The writer found that the experience made her uneasy, but was unable to pinpoint certain encounters because they were rarely transparent. The writer concluded that “what you see and hear from the media is fallible—if you want the truth, talk to a Muslim.” Yet her very experiment failed to do that. In 2011, an editor for The Huffington Post chronicled her endeavor to become “Islamic,” describing the niqab she chose to purchase as “something an executioner would wear.” Throughout her piece, she says things like “the sight of fully veiled women has become disturbingly familiar” and “there are people right here who want to shroud women … to make us all submissive and invisible.” In 2012, a VICE journalist decided to explore “what life was like for women who have been consigned to wear the least-revealing piece of clothing of all time,” her article sexualizing what she felt life was like for a woman in niqab.
The reality is that the Western media rarely listens to covered Muslim women attempting to share their lives and realities, and instead asks their readers to heed the words of those who are privileged enough to be given the voice, rather than having to fight for one, and who have appropriated those experiences as their own.
