A Girl in Niqab (bikinis or burkinis, its her CHOICE)

I am in close contact with a young woman who studies at a major university and who happens to dress in niqab. When she and I first met, I told her a bit about the exploring prejudice project and she suggested that I wear Niqab and see how this is different from what I experiences in hijab. (For clarification, in layman's terms, niqab would be the type of covering that only exposes the eyes)

When I first told my friend about my project, and asked her about what it is like to wear niqab all the time, she said that she is lucky. Because the university she attends (and her place of business) are so multi-cultural, she says that her experiences have not been so bad. She says that she gets strange looks from people sometimes, but nothing much more than that.

I can't tell you much more about my friend for fear that I will violate her rights to privacy. I have asked her permission to write this blog entry, but I'd still like to protect her autonomy. That being said, she has had a rough couple of days.

She works with a woman who is French and who has been making her feel increasingly uncomfortable in the office. This French woman said a number of things to my friend which were off color but recently this woman crossed a line. She explained to my friend, in front of the rest of their co-workers about how awful niqab is, how it objectifies women, how it is being forced on women, and how right France was to recently ban its wearing.

my friend responded to her much more kindly than I would have, given the circumstances. My friend told this woman that maybe someday France will have a truly free democracy where everyone has the right to decide for themselves what to wear, and how they feel comfortable. This woman basically walked away with her tail between her legs. But the story continues. Later this woman pressed the issue and asked ignorant questions about the reasons for covering oneself, including suggesting that my friend just wear street clothes with a transparant cloth over her. This woman suggested that my friend would then still be covered, and yet other people wouldnt be offended by having to see a woman wearing niqab.

A number of my friend's co-workers were uncomfortable by the whole situation. They all know that my friend is a convert to Islam and has not always dressed this way. They know that this is a personal CHOICE and that she is not being forced into dressing this way by anyone. They also know that just as we each choose what to wear in the morning, so does my friend. should she be offered any less respect?

Of course I am abbreviating the story a bit, and I am sure I am going to have left things out, but bear with me.

Anyway, this morning, this French woman brought in an article that my friend helped write for her university newspaper where she was talking about a recent guest lecture given by an Iranian woman who was anti-niqab. The student paper asked to speak with my friend because they wanted someone to add a little pro-niqab spin to the story. Basically, my friend blasted this Iranian woman because she felt this is just another way that people were trying to take away her rights. My friend's side of the story was basically that women should have to CHOOSE their garb (whether it be bikinis or burkinis).

When she brought the article in this morning, the French woman basically talked to everyone but my friend about the article and how wrong my friend is and how oppressed she is and how wrong the niqab is. My friend's coworkers filed formal complaints with their management.

And there is more.

This afternoon, I was sitting at a picnic table with my friend today and she stepped away from me to take a phone call. I watched a group of undergraduate aged boys walking up the path towards us. They started staring and gesticulating towards my friend and saying things like "oh, look at that freak" etc. She later told me that the other day while at the health services center on campus, an employee (speaking Spanish) called her a ninja. She thinks the employee said this assuming that she wouldn't understand Spanish, but WRONG. My friend's native language IS Spanish! My friend had to file a formal complaint with the employee's supervisor.

2 formal complaints in as many days.

I love my friend and worry about how she deals with this. It can't be easy dressing this way, but it is her choice and she should be commended for having strength in the face of adversity.

I chose to wear hijab for this project, but I also chose to take it off. Now, I will be choosing to wear Niqab. I don't have a start date yet for the next phase of this project, so stay tuned.

The things we can learn from others:

I find myself sitting here at my computer with a LOT to say, yet I dont know where to start. Everything that I can think of to write about seems so trivial... particularly in light of what is going on right now in Egypt. But maybe that is a starting point for me to use to talk today. When information started leaking into the US, people immediately began to think that there would be fuel added to the fire due to ongoing religious tension between Christians and Muslim, particularly between Coptic Christians and Muslims.

I have to admit, that this was one of the fears that I had, but I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised. During the middle of this uprising, I saw one of the coolest things I had ever seen.

This past Sunday, after the media was already pulled out of Egypt for fear that they would be targeted by the government as well as protesters, images were leaked to the mainstream public using spoofed IP addresses off of internationally registered sim cards in camera phones. This was the ONLY way these photos could spread globally, because the Egyptian government had already cut off all internet and news media that was not giving the Mubarak approved messages to the masses.

Regardless, on Sunday, photos were made global in which Muslims created a safe passage to the churches for the local Christians to have easier access to their house of worship on their holy day of the week. These Muslims lined the streets to keep governmental military from injuring the Christian worshippers, and to keep them from being victim to other violence as the protests grew out of control.

Immediately after these images were released, Someone sent me the above photo which pictures Egyptian men holding hands around a group of Muslims as they made their Salaah (their five daily prayers). For Muslims, praying in a public place which is growing increasingly hostile can be life threatening as they are required to perform a series of movements including standing with the eyes closed, bowing, kneeling and then kneeling with their faces touching the floor (which would leave them particularly vulnerable to attack from hostile people). During the many prayers that Muslims were doing during the day, Christians would encircle these people, hold hands and form a human barricade to protect the Muslims during their rituals.

How cool is that? Christians protecting Muslim during prayer, Muslims protecting Christians during prayer? seriously too cool!

How many times have I heard that the Muslim World could learn a lot from the Western world? How often have people told me that Muslims (and Arabs in general) have so much catching up to do if they want to be "less barbaric" and as "civilized" as the Western World?

In response to these recent photos that are circulating worldwide, I cant help but ask this in return: perhaps there is something HUGE here that we can learn from the people of Egypt. If the people of the Middle East are supposedly so uncivilized, why (in the middle of one of the largest uprisings of our time), are Christians going out of their way to protect and show their love for one another? Wouldn't it be amazing if American Christians, Muslims and Jews could get along like this???