Finding freedom in Dubai

I remember the first time I donned the niqab (or what some term the burqa). At the time, I was very young and living an ardently religious life in Jeddah - but my feminist conscience was burning away at me, insisting it was the right thing to do.

To the consternation of my orthodox Muslim parents and peers alike, I began to wear it - went shopping, bought the gear and stepped out into the glaring sunlight of a Saudi day.

I categorically believed it defined the complete removal of my physical self from the oppression of being subjected to scrutiny.

It was a tool against conforming to gendered expectations of presentation, of being sexually objectified. It was the highest form of assertion for my humanity as a female - going against the grain of the strictures of fashion, media, and all those who choose to claim and dissect and conquer the female self as if it were their right.

That, indeed, was the paradigm against which we all railed against as civilised humans. How brutal is the life of a Muslim brown woman after all?

We all know the answer to that. As the most oppressed global group particularly ravaged by colonialist aggressions, subject to rape as a tool of war and at the same time to demilitarisation, we are even denied our rights to agency and self-defence.

The trope of white women saving brown women from brown men was another diktat which I sought to escape. Even the idea of "false consciousness" infuriated with its patronising undercurrents; the only person I would need saving from was the archetypal white woman, thank you very much.

Although it was my decision, the sheer hatred and intolerance I faced from peers was painful so I eventually took it off, sticking to the hijab (head scarf) alone.

Later in London, even adopting hijab became an arduous challenge. Could I wear it and be allowed to freely contribute to society? I found glass ceilings everywhere I looked. At sixteen, I challenged the dreadful home secretary in the UK, Michael Howard QC, as to my right to wear the hijab, but to no avail. To this day I can be actively discriminated against with no legal protection, given that I hail from diverse ethnic origins (that is, no racial laws would apply to me). I even had it ripped off my head by local hooligans.

One is prevented from grasping that ideal of human security in Britain if one is either a niqabi or hijabi. I took the scarf off for this reason and also because morality is decidedly not synonymous with apparel and I had failed to live up to the standing of Islam.

And then it happened. Once I had removed any vestige of religious apparel at British boardrooms, I at once felt exactly the kind of oppression I sought to avoid by wearing the niqab. The scrutiny of being checked out and observed, leered at as a young woman in predominantly old white male environment left me with a sense of disgust no matter how conservatively dressed I was.

The feeling that I was right all along in wearing the niqab remains with me to this day. I felt freer in niqab than in those boardrooms. What right does anyone else have to scrutinise my person after all?

A friend advised me in Karachi once: "Habiba," he said, "people will always judge you even if [you are] simply standing on the street." That changed everything for me. Although I now observe no dress code whatsoever, I remain internally a hijabi and retain a profound respect for the right to wear either the hijab or niqab, believing in the inherent validity of the idea and of the practice.

And then I found myself in Dubai. I was struck by its freedom - for the first time in the East I lived the liberty which is so often boasted of in the West but rarely experienced. French President Nicolas Sarkozy's secularists will never know the freedom their constitution so arrogantly proclaims is accorded to them - liberté and égalité indeed.

The irony is that Sarkozy's UAE/French accords were drafted by extraordinarily sophisticated hijabi/niqabi government officers alike (the majority in central government being women in the UAE). And they'll benefit his nation in ways he decidedly won't be able to because of his views.

Women can't run to the beach, work and the mosque in France without raising eyebrows, yet here it's easy. Perhaps Sarkozy should look more closely at who wrote his economic agreements.

And to those Western burka wearing Muslim women, my message is this: If you should seek to develop your minds and contribute to society but obviously can't, because your own freedom is their domain, you should come to Dubai.

Habiba Hamid is an independent writer based in Dubai.

A very well written article. I have seen both the sides - with and without hijab, and I am very happy to say that the comfort which I feel in hijab is unparalleled to any other dress code I tried. Keep it up. I don't understand why to some people a burqa is a sign of limitation! It evidently liberates women from the scrutiny of being judged for their looks and physic - two things over which nobody has control.
Nabila Othman
Dubai,UAE
Posted: July 03, 2009, 17:26

Thanks Habiba for this inspiring article...I felt the same too most especially when I started wearing the hijab..God has given me the strength to stand up for myself and continue wearing it now for 10 years...
Clarissa Ocampo
Sharjah,UAE
Posted: July 03, 2009, 11:03

I appreciate and applaud the points which are being expressed by you on behalf of the Islamic-feminine society across the planet. May God bless and wish you! But who will bell the cat of Sarkozy's???
Mohi Al Deen
Dubai,UAE
Posted: July 03, 2009, 07:43

Indeed an excellent article..... when it comes to hijab....Muslim women in the west are always subjected to criticism .....
Mehwish Rashid
Lahore,Pakistan
Posted: July 03, 2009, 07:42