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I was asked this
question by a friend. She asked me because someone asked her
to give rational reasons for covering and she did not want to
hear it from the Quranic verse or from any Hadith, she
wanted a personal view from a person who wore one.
So here is my
answer:
When I try to think
about this, I realise that I cannot give a rational reason to
cover the head. I can think of many reasons but none of them
are rational reasons. For me, I do not do things because they
are rational and logical all the time, I do things because
they feel right and I feel good doing it.
Wearing the head
cover is not something that I've always done. I started
wearing one while I was in Egypt where the head cover was a
common phenomena, whereas in Malaysia, it had not caught
on...... that was way back in 1975. When I first came back to
Malaysia wearing one in 1977, I remember being the centre of
attention when I was in Masjid Tanah when I was the only one
wearing a tudung. A madman even spat in my face because
I was so different with my head cover. It is a never to be
forgotten experience.
When I was in my
own hometown, Penang, which is so much like Chinatown,
certainly, I turned a lot of heads with my head cover. So why
did I persist in wearing it? Because for me it was a symbol of
my reintroduction to Islam. It meant for me that I was trying
to understand my religion the way I thought it was meant to be
understood. Among my friends in my premedical course, I was
the last to cover. One of our tutors, an Egyptian girl, even
called me the naughty one because I went around in above the
knee skirts rather than in the more sedate baju kurung and
tudung of the other girls in my batch. I kept asking,
give me one good reason to cover up, and the tutor, Tahani,
said for me to read the Quranic verse in surah An Nur, ayat
31 which says to draw the cloth to cover the chest. Here I
used my logic to think that one should cover the head if one
were to cover the chest. And there were some hadith
also pointed out to me. At this point I already saw the
struggle and the negative attitude I was going to meet when I
got home to Malaysia but, being a Muslim and quite convinced,
I wanted to be as good a Muslim as I could. I took the plunge
and wore the tudung.
Indeed it was as
anticipated and one of the worse tortures for me was the heat
and humidity in Malaysia. I did meet with a lot of negative
reactions, perhaps from my own self-consciousness over wearing
it. Those were the days when air-conditioning was not so
common, and cars were like travelling torture chambers for me
in my tudung and jubah. I could not stand the
heat. Even now when I have to be in a very hot place, I would
get very tired and even run a fever. It was at this point that
I got angry with God for making me wear layers upon layers of
clothes. Later I figured out it was not God who made me do
that but me in thinking that God wanted me to do it. I
abandoned the jubah for the most cooling clothes I
could find and I abandoned thick materials in favour of much
thinner ones (but not transparent ) for my tudung but I
made sure I kept to a tudung which also covered my
chest, being mindful of the ayat Quran and I also made
sure my clothes were loose and not tight fitting and that my
blouses were below my buttocks. I did this because in my
thinking, I felt these were what was necessary to do to follow
Allah's injunctions. This was my view of what it meant to wear
modest clothes that do not convey sexuality - an Islamic
injunction.
I still dress to
please, that is, I dress to please my own aesthetics and sense
of fashion for the Quran also states that clothes are a
decoration and a protection. For me, clothing is an important
form of self expression and I certainly want to express that
which I am.
After the initial
struggles I had to undergo to affirm my faith in Islam, I
found myself becoming a symbol for the Islam I wanted to
uphold and for me it meant my behaviour was coming under
scrutiny, which meant I had to watch myself carefully because
I was a representative for Islam. I made some very bad
mistakes indeed. My inner reality was far from perfect. I was
an angry person, harsh, rigid, seldom smiled, I spoke ill of
people and I knew none of these were Islamic behaviours.
There were times when my appearance gave me the semblance of a
learned ustazah, but my ignorance became apparent when
I opened my mouth. I had to rectify this by acquiring
knowledge. I had to change myself more and more from within to
be an accurate model of what I had come to represent. There
was so much much more that I had to change within me to
realise my aim of being a true Muslimah and these
struggles are still continuing to this day but I can safely
say that they started symbolically when I donned the tudung.
So what started out
as an act of obedience and surrendering to God's will (as I
understood it) became a focus of changing to keep
improving. So if this can be stated as a rational reason for
wearing a head cover then it may be.
I am now 46 years old and I had started wearing the tudung when
I was 18 years old in the year 1975. I am not such an ugly
person, but in all these years that I've been covered, I have
not had a single wolf whistle nor heard disrespectful speech
from any man I met either in my capacity as a doctor and
healer or, as a traveller, quite anonymous. Many times I
walked alone when I was in safe surroundings. I have
travelled widely to Egypt, England, Australia, USA, Indonesia,
Greece, Syria, Saudi Arabia (I have performed the Haj),
Holland, Hong Kong, Taiwan , Thailand, India, Pakistan,
Russia...Was it my tudung, was it the air of
respectfulness I was radiating? Do I have a rational way of
knowing what it is? I do not think I do. All I do know is that
my life has taken a turn for the better and I am constantly
seeing ways to actualise being human and appreciating it, as I
do, in a spirit of loving compassion towards my fellow
creatures.
What I also saw is
that where ever I travelled, my manner of dressing and my
behaviour were telling people I am a Muslim woman and what I
felt and thought were the ideas of a Muslim woman. Many were
surprised that I was not what they thought a covered Muslim
woman is. I showed no signs of being ignorant, nor was I
oppressed, I was open minded, I was no sour puss, I had a
sense of humour, I laughed, joked, could speak in public and
say my mind and I was all of this while yet remaining a Muslim
woman who is fundamentalist in her beliefs, someone who took
Allah's commands seriously and wanted to be an obedient slave
of Allah. I realise now that my actions based on my own
understanding of God 's words coming from an earnest wish to
understand my purpose of living, was an impetus and constant
reminder for me of being true to myself, of being sincere in
all I said and did.
I guess for me my tudung
was a symbol that spoke what words could not have
conveyed.
August 2005
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