The Hijab: A Symbol of Liberation, Not Oppression

By Warina Sushil A. Jukuy

Some very young Muslim women approached me three weeks ago. They expressed their anxiety over the fact that academic policies have compelled them to take off their hijab, specifically the head veil or khimar. School authorities ordered them as nursing students to take off their head veils while they are on hospital duty in the course of their RLE practicum. Naturally, these veiled Muslimah are naturally apprehensive. School authorities quashed their mild protestations with the following lame, controversial, and debatable reasons: that the veil is dirty (this is either a slanderous or libelous statement); that the veil is just a cultural costume or worse a fashion just because some Muslims wear hijab while others do not (highly fallacious); and that seeing veiled nurses on duty has traumatized hospital patients (are they running out of lucid alibi? Even, surgeons have to be fully clothed in sterilized gowns even their masks resemble the niqab except the color of course ).

This brought to mind a similar hijab incident at Pilar College. Pilar College’ authorities steadfastly refused to listen to the imploration of Muslim parents on behalf of their veiled daughters. They adamantly reasoned that no one forced them to enroll their children at Pilar College and so they have to conform to school regulations just as non-Muslim OFWs have to conform to Muslim countries’ legal compulsion for the former to wear the veil.

Reiterating my pronouncement during the Magna Carta for Women Conference organized by Cong Beng G. Climaco where we lobbied for the rights for equal educational opportunity for Muslim women in the Philippines. I observed that infringement on the Muslim student’s right to wear the veil is a result of profound ignorance of its divine merit and significance. Asking a Muslimah to take off her veil is not as ordinary as asking her take off her hat; or as mundane as asking her to take off her coat; or as simple as asking her to take off her shoes. In Islam, the female body, excepting the face and the hands, is considered “private parts” (awrat or juyyubihinna), and thus, the Qur’an ( XXIV: 31; XXXIII:59) and Ahadeeth have so decreed that it must be covered before public eyes and even in private ie home if in the midst of prohibited or restricted males. Thus, the school authorities are unaware that asking a Muslim student to take off her head veil is tantamount to asking her to strip off her unmentionables, her undergarments, or her underpants! Thus, such action is an encroachment upon her right to privacy; it is synonymous to stripping her nude or to physical transgression.

A Muslimah who wears the veil by choice, in her obedience and worship of Allah as the Supreme Being fundamentally understands the wisdom of being covered. It is a protection of her hayya modesty or chastity just as the habit is as vital to a nun. How would a nun feel if one violates her habit? The hijab of a Muslimah is her shield from the penetrating bullet of evil desires of nafs / hawwa just as a knight cover himself with an armor or a cop protect himself with a bulletproof vest. How would a cop feel if he is deprived of his armor? One Muslimah in the name of Danah Quijano said, it is my life; Islam is my life! Armed with her faith in Allah, rather than disobey Allah and resolute in safeguarding her chastity, she chose to deprive herself of a nursing career and shifted to RadTech. If you take off my veil, you are killing me! I understand Danah’s predicament, I resonate her sentiments; and I know many Muslimah empathize with her. How would an astronaut feel if if he is deprived of his spacesuit which to him is his lifeline?