The Great Hijab Resignation
This past weekend, I was sent a screenshot of another woman in my community who had taken her hijab off. She was posing for an Instagram picture, introducing her new identity to the world. I quickly became overwhelmed with shock and interest.
While it was staggering to see this specific person unveiled, the idea that many women right now are taking their hijabs off is not new information. For the past 5 to 6 years we have seen what can be called the Hijab Resignation. More and more women proudly pose without their scarfs on, wanting to reintroduce themselves into society.
Why are these women taking their hijabs off? To understand this, we need to take a few steps back. Over the years the hijab has become a physical representation of Islam to the world. It is the quickest and easiest way to identify someone as Muslim. When a woman puts on a hijab she now (voluntarily or involuntarily) represent Islam. She is almost expected to become a spokeswoman for the religion.
Because the hijab is a representation of Islam, people who wear them often face the brunt of Islamophobia. As reported by ACLU, 69% of Muslim women who wear hijab have reported at least one incident of discrimination; for those who did not wear hijab, it was 29%.
As a result of these statistics, many women may choose to remove their scarves. The danger to one's physical safety and mental health by Islamophobia has no doubt played a role in the hijab resignation, however, it is not the sole cause.
After a woman puts her hijab on she becomes a recognizable representative of the religion. With this comes the pressure, placed on them by their communities, to represent Islam in the best possible light. This can be best expressed through the symbolism of a pedestal. Women who wear hijab are placed on pedestals and held to incredibly high standards to be admired or judged.
Standing on this pedestal means you need to be the model Muslim. You have to represent modesty with perfection, and encompass every honorable character trait and behavior a Muslim can have, with no room for mistake. Standing on the pedestal also means that the other members of the community are not always held to the same standard.
Women who wear hijab are expected to be religious figures and if they fail to do so the backlash can be detrimental. The best place to see this take place is in the comment section of a Hijabi influencer.
The birth of the hijabi influencer happened in the 2010s when we saw people like Amena Khan, Dina Tokio, and Ascia AKF start to gain popularity. Known for creating the modern Hijabi persona, these influencers have redefined what women who wear hijab are actually like.
It's an image of a covered, easy-going girl, with it all figured out. She represents her community honorably and is visibly Muslim in an Islamophobic country. But as these influencers started to grow and gain a following, so did the judgment of others. Many of them found their comment sections flooded with hate, misogyny, and often death threats.
After the rise of hate on their platforms, some went on to try to distance themselves from Islam. They expressed the pressures they felt to be model Muslims and filmed youtube videos and interviews discussing their discomfort with being placed on the pedestal. Amena Khan, a social media influencer, says in her youtube video titled “Choice” that she is “not a religious figure” and that she felt she was “put in this position of responsibility which I absolutely was not comfortable with.”
For these influencers, distancing themselves from Islam often meant not identifying as hijabis anymore or completely taking the hijab off. In an interview on entrepreneur Anas Bukhash’s youtube channel, influencer Ascia AKF says “I don't like to call myself a Hijabi just because I feel like everything that I represent sometimes can be not the full package of what the mainstream idea of a hijab is”.
It's through these influencers that we get a transparent view of the decision behind creating distance from the hijab or removing it. Tokio, Ascia, and Khan all ended up removing the hijab following years of cyberbullying and abuse.
While not every woman who removes the hijab does so from the pressure of the internet, the pedestal is something all hijabis are placed on, influencer or not. The pressure to represent Islam and be an example of a good and accomplished Muslim is relentless.
Being a hijab-wearing Muslim in today’s climate and society is far from easy. In order to help women feel connected to their hijab and community, the pedestal must be eliminated. Muslim women need to be given the same room for growth and mistakes that the other members of their community are given.
By eliminating the pedestal causing the mass hijab resignation, we help strengthen women’s relationships with their scarves, and show them how their scarf should serve them rather than others.
