How I came to Wear an Abaya

I have been wearing the headscarf since 2005 when I was 15. Later, around in 2007, I learned more about the Islamic dress code for women and realized that an abaya was an essential garment. But it wasn't until 2010 that I actually started wearing one. It took me three years to prepare myself for I knew wearing an abaya is no easy task. Some of the issues that I had resolve before following my religious ambitions were...

1. I Will Have to Wear it EVERYWHERE!

Once a woman dons an abaya, she endorses it in totality. Hence, whenever she steps out of her house, the abaya accompanies her. However, there are times when a woman might be tempted to take off her abaya just because of the glamor around her, such as in weddings and parties.

Bringing myself to the resolution of wearing an abaya everywhere, including weddings and parties, was a tough decision but I think it was worth the while Alhamdulillah.

 

2. Breaking the News - Anticipating Heart Attacks

My parents and relatives have significantly contributed to my life. Hence, they have expectations from me in return. Since no girl in my family is a hijabi, breaking the news to them that I will be wearing a boring black abaya to weddings was an upheaval task. I was apprehensive that they would reject my plan outright or make negative remarks.

But fortunately, my mother supported me. Even though she doesn't wear an abaya herself, she thinks that I have made the right decision. As for my father, having lived in the Middle East for around three decades, he is culturally attuned to the outfit and the only problem he has is the 'plainness' of my abayas.

 

3. Carrying it in the Professional World

I also wondered how my abaya will affect my profession. I believed that my impression before my college professors, interviewers, colleagues at my workplace would be radically altered because of my abaya. And this was yet another challenge that I had to prepare myself for.

 

4. The Heat

During summers Karachi can get really hot and that's when men loosen their ties and undo their buttons while women resort to wearing lighter fabrics. But if one is in an abaya, there isn't much choice. You can't wear a fabric as light as 'lawn', you can't take your headscarf off or do things that let air touch your skin. Although, most of the places I go to on a routine basis have airconditioning, there are times when I do feel terribly hot and I knew this would happen before donning the abaya. And it was another hurdle that I had to brace myself for.

 

5. My Personal Commitment versus My Temptations

Being a woman, I have never been too fashion forward, but I haven't been behind the times either. Like other women, I know the therapeutic effect of dressing up. Just by wearing a certain color can entirely change one's mood. And the joy of wearing new clothes to college or wearing a certain outfit that you know is going to turn heads can be an uplifting experience. Committing yourself to an abaya means saying good-bye to fashion in public. It means that you have to shift to a completely different alternative universe when it comes to dressing.

This has the potential to create a desperate desire in a hijabi woman to wear what non-hijabis do in the public, to feel joy of people praising them for their styling sense and beauty. And many actually give in to this temptation by unraveling themselves at weddings and other events they consider 'important'. This was the part that I had to mentally prepare myself for most before donning an abaya.

For a long time, I had been gathering courage and faith to execute what I had been wanting to do for so long. But it was a video I watched that finally pushed me to practice what I preached to myself.

It was an interview of Shabina Begum. Shabina is citizen of UK who sacrificed two years of her education fighting for her right to wear an abaya at school. She thought it was more important to practice her religion than anything else. MashaAllah, her family supporter her in her cause and she fought a legal battle with her school for letting her wear an abaya. Watching this video, I thought - there is a Muslimah, in a non-Muslim country, sacrificing so much just so that she can practice Islam. While here I am, with these minor challenges not doing what I should have right when I reached puberty.

Hence, finally in March 2010, at the age of 20 I started wearing an abaya to every place I went. It has been a very fulfilling journey since then alhamdulillah.

Yes, let’s be Liberal – to the Point of Nudity on Public Roads.

I remember, at school, I was once asked to prepare a speech on ‘Enlightened Moderation’. At that point in time, the term was newly ‘imported’ from the West, as informed to me by a grand-uncle. He had asked me to stay away from it for behind the unperceivable veil of a term as innocent as ‘Moderation’ lay a whole new ideology that attempted to change the perceptions, ideas, beliefs and actions of the upcoming generations of Pakistan.

Almost a decade later, the term no more sounds strange to me. I have read, heard and seen quite a lot on the media about the seemingly never-ending debate about ‘Extremism’ versus ‘Moderation’, ‘Liberalism’ versus ‘Conservatism’ and ‘Freedom-of-Expression’ versus ‘Oppression’. These terms have been dwelt upon by minds disproportionately than far more important ideas have been such as justice, morality and economic progress has, specifically talking about Pakistan. Now, the result today can be clearly seen.

The generation I belong to has mentally defined these terms for itself (after being inspired by certain ideological campaigns by certain people within and outside the Pakistani border), the definition being that

“ ‘Moderation’, ‘Freedom-of-Expression’ and ‘Liberalism’ are ideas that collectively seek to borrow and adapt (actually the worst of the and rarely a few good) social and cultural values of the West and to strengthen a few degraded traditions from within our own culture. ”

This, I think is the ‘Net Effect’ of the term an adolescent heard years ago,  a term that grew into a whole belief in the fact that whatever a person feels like doing and however, he has all the right to do it and should be encouraged to go ahead with it even if it is as shameful as…

photo by the author

… posting a larger-than-life-sized-billboard degrading a woman! . . .

  

Today, in Pakistan that was ‘created in the name of Islam’, a fast-food franchise’s billboard ad uses not only the picture of a model who seemingly is wearing nothing to sell something as irrelevant and mundane as cheese-sticks but also captions it as ‘Kya Cheese Hai’.  It translates into English [Kya = What, Cheese = Thing, Hai = is] as ‘What a Thing!’… Speaking about the connotation of the phrase, it is so derogatory and disrespectful for a woman in Pakistani culture that the least a woman would do would be to slap a man who would pass such a remark on her, if she has the strength to.

This example very well illustrates the definition I mentioned above of ‘Liberalism’, and the terms of its like, for what was done in Pakistan by this franchise seems clearly inspired by one of the worst practices of the West –capitalising on feminine beauty. Here have a look…

I have censored the picture because I believe that I don't have to
post nude photos of my fellow sisters in order to prove my freedom of expression.

Right in the middle of the road a 40 feet high billboard ad features a naked woman again, to sell something as mundane as trainers!– and the only concerns the Western media shows about it is that it might cause road accidents!!!

At this point when the society fails to call bad as bad as it is, and the few voices that rise are lost in the continuous noise being made in the name of ‘Freedom-of-Expression’, I wonder if I make any sense at all to anyone out there.

Picture courtesy : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1300827/Naked-Kelly-Brook-posters-blasted-deadly-distraction-drivers.html