At UW, Empowerment can Come in the Form of a Hijab

Step one — place scarf over your head, one side longer than the other. Step two — wrap longer side around your neck. Step three — tuck. Done.

This is the daily routine for UW neurobiology student Fatima El-Ghazali and other hijabis, people who wear a hijab. She has an entire closet full of scarves, giving her an endless possibility of styles.

People who don’t normally wear hijabs got the chance to try them on or even wear them for the whole day at the University of Washington’s World Hijab Day on Wednesday. Perhaps lured by free cupcakes, those who approached the event’s tent were greeted by a table of neatly folded scarves ranging from neutral colors to bright floral prints. The air buzzed with chatter and giggles as people tried on scarves, learned different ways of wrapping them, checked out their look in mirrors and took selfies together.

Although World Hijab Day normally takes place Feb. 1, Pillars of Service, a student organization, has the event in spring to avoid some of Seattle’s wetter weather and encourage more people to participate. Organizers aimed to address what they see as the main misconceptions about women who wear hijabs in order to normalize and destigmatize the practice.

The biggest misconception is that women who wear it are oppressed, said Dina Bassyiouni, vice president of Pillars or Service, but it’s really about choice. “You should be the only one who has the right to decide if you wear it or not,” Bassyiouni said. “No one else should tell you to wear it or to take it off.

“As a feminist, that really irritates me. You have to decide if you are ready and comfortable with wearing it.”

When people see someone wearing a hijab, they often make conjectures not only on a person’s reasons for wearing it but about Islam itself. Many people think hijabs give men a means to control Muslim women when, in religious teaching, men have nothing to do with it. “In the Koran, God is talking to the women directly about wearing it,” Bassyiouni said. “He’s not asking the husbands or the men to tell them. In Islam, there is no middleman. It’s only you and your Lord, that’s it.”

As she’s speaking, a man walks by and yells at the group to “stop promoting the oppression of women.” It’s not the first time, the women say, that he’s harassed the group today. “As long as it’s only words, I don’t care,” Bassayiouni said. “They can say whatever they want.”

While most visitors only briefly tried on hijabs, some chose to wear it the entire day. “I can never fully understand what it’s like to wear a hijab all the time,” said Elizabeth Bernbaum, a senior physics major. “But I want to experience it for a day and see if I get any weird looks or anything.”

She’s wearing the simple, everyday hijab style that Bassyiouni and Pillar of Service President Fatima El-Ghazali are wearing.

Originally published on www.crosscut.com