Veiling: Nada's View

     Her name isn't really Nada, but since she's chosen to veil with the niqap (the face cloth that exposes only the eyes), I've offered to withhold her name from this post.

     When I first noticed women in Hyderabad in burqas, I was reminded of the nuns of my childhood.  We would drive to Sterling to attend mass at a time when there was both a convent and a K-12 Catholic school, and I remember my mother greeting the sisters in black habits and clunky black shoes.  Seeing the flowing burqas of these Muslim women takes me back to those days when Catholicism was something I could see, hear, smell, and taste with a sort of mysterious reverence.  Mass was said in Latin by a priest facing the altar and I carried a small leather-bound red missal to church.

      So when I saw Nada waiting for the campus bus and felt that same sort of spiritual calm radiating from her, I asked for an interview.  Her dorm room reminded me of a room in the convent in Sterling where I had been taken after becoming ill during a high school Catholic retreat.  I lay alone in a neat, unadorned room in the convent with a single bed and a desk and fell asleep in peace.  Nada's room had the same, simple silence.  

     As an international student from the Middle East, Nada chose Hyderabad, India for her post graduate studies for several reasons:  the proximity to her own region, the reputation for solid education, and the acceptance of veiling.  

     Nada wears the niqap because of the protection it affords:  both from the harassment and the interested glances of men.  She feels comfortable under the burqa because it is an expression of her devotion to God.  These concepts seem a bit foreign, but most of us don't travel in crowded public transport in a city packed with strangers, and while Christianity encourages modesty,  Catholic women haven't covered their heads in church since we used to pin the lace mantilla in our hair--or bobby pin a kleenex on if we forgot it. 

     So how is veiling an expression of devotion?   In about 600,  after the death of Mohammad's monogamous relationship of twenty-five years with his wife Khadija, he married nine different women.  These marriages were, according to Reza Aslan in his book No God but God, largely political alliances when polygamy was the norm.  Aslan states that because Mohammad's house in Messina was also the mosque and because delegations from other tribes would literally camp in the courtyard, he imposed hijab (veiling and seclusion) for the protection of his wives.  Over time and throughout different cultures this has been interpreted in a variety of ways, but some women now choose to practice hijab.

World Hijab Day - February 1

     Nada talked about the media portrayal of extremists who are not Muslim--only pretending to be for political gain.  This harms relationships and creates stereotypes.   The political unrest in her own country has resulted in many people, including her own mother, living now without car and electricity.  

     As the desperation of the situation took shape in my mind, Nada stated, "I am happy.  I am devoted to God."   

Save Us All--Tracy Chapman