Transcriber: Cécile Grégoire Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
It was in her eyes, the way she looked at me.
You could tell that this question was incredibly important,
this question was a matter of life and death itself.
It was also the last thing in the world I wanted to answer
after a long day of school.
She reached out, placed her hand on my arm,
and with such eloquence, such consideration
it would have made Shakespeare turn over in his grave, said,
"Attiya, are you bald?"
Really, for the record, I'm not bold.
The hair I do have is not neon green or painted UVA colors.
On the days that I choose to wear my hijab as a turban,
I'm not pulling a Quirrell and hiding Voldemort.
I don't sleep with it on, I don't wear it in the shower,
and no, I am not oppressed.
I have been wearing the hijab or headscarf since sixth grade, of my own volition.
So, for years I've struggled with divisive stereotypes
that threatened my identity as a human being.
I was 11 years old when my English teacher pulled me aside during class, and said,
"Attiya, don't you feel ugly compared to the other girls
with that thing on your head?"
I don't feel ugly. In fact, I feel rather beautiful.
I was 12 when one of my good friends decided to take it upon herself
to apologize on behalf of whatever cruel being out there
had forced me to put this on my head, whether that was my dad or my mom.
For the record, it was me.
So, I guess she was apologizing for me.
I was 14, when in the hallways of my middle school,
someone knocked my books from my hands,
and called me a terrorist.
Someone I didn't know, someone who didn't know me,
didn't know what I was like.
I was 15 years old, when in the irony of all ironies,
I found a letter in my government notebook
bearing the words: "Go back to where you came from.
Kill yourself, terrorist."
It was signed "Love, Jesus".
These words were addressed to me, a teenager like any other,
different only because of the fact that I chose to wear upon my head,
a hijab, a headscarf.
To truly understand what a headscarf is, which is the purpose of my talk today,
it's important to take a brief lesson in Arabic semantics, Arabic grammar.
In Arabic, words are composed of trilateral roots.
That's three letters that create a root word that holds meaning
for every other word that branches out from that sole root word.
In the case of hijab,
the three root letters are "ha," "jeem," and "ba."
When put together, they form the term "Hajaba,"
which literally means "To conceal or hide from view."
So, at its base level in the Arabic language, at its root word,
the word hijab means modesty, it means concealing, hiding from view.
Whether that means being humble in your daily conversations,
whether that means wearing loose clothing, modest clothing,
and whether that means putting a scarf upon your head.
This idea of the hijab, the headscarf, is not only inherent to women,
it's inherent to men as well:
It's this idea that Muslim men, as well as women, lower their gazes;
they are humble; they are pious; and they wear loose clothing,
clothing that isn't immodest or tight-fitting.
It's this idea of finding empowerment through the lack of sexualisation
within your own body.
In today's culture, this idea of modesty is often seen as outmoded or primitive.
People hear "modesty" and think of body-shaming, oppression of women,
systematic oppression of women.
But in reality, Islam's perception of modesty is something that is meant
to empower people who carry it out.
It's this idea of rejecting the objectification of a body,
and instead focusing on your individualism,
your identity as a person without the sexualized aspect of yourself.
Muslim men and women reject sexual objectification,
and choose instead to be intellectualized, personalized, that we are human beings.
And yet, how do you explain this idea of modesty
in a world that promotes the sexualization of women and young girls?
We live in an age where you have to be sexy in order to fit in,
or find an attractive other.
In order to find an attractive other, you have to compete
with current plastic surgery trends or fashion trends.
There's an author named Wendy Shalit, and she wrote a book called:
"Modesty: Recovering the Lost Virtue."
In this book, she writes that modesty is an empowering and yes, feminist tool,
whereby women can, not only accord themselves self-respect,
but also, demand respect from others.
To say, "I'm only showing you what I chose to show you.
And the only people who get to see special parts of me are the people
who I wish to see to those special parts of me."
For everyone else, look at my personality, my identity as an individual,
my identity as a fellow human being, regardless of what is on my head,
and what is not on my head.
Where does this rhetoric about the hijab as an oppressive institution come from,
if it's such an empowering concept?
Why does the West have this idea of the hijab as an oppressive institution?
"Muslim women are oppressed!
Look at her, she's standing on stage giving a Ted talk about this.
What is she saying!"
In reality, in order to find the source of this rhetoric
you have to look back at the times of early colonization.
Leila Ahmed wrote this book called "Women and Gender in Islam."
In this book, she writes that in the 19th century,
when British and other European colonists entered Muslim countries,
they were looking for a means to justify,
as they had always done, their colonization.
They were looking for a way to prove that this is okay.
The way they did that was to dismiss the traditional culture as backwards,
as regressive.
They chose to fixate upon the hijab that Muslim women wore, in order to say,
"We want to liberate you from this horrible thing that you are wearing."
They used feminism as a colonial tool.
People such as Lord Cromer, for example,
the governor of Egypt in the early 19th century,
would often tell women,
"You Egyptian women, you are so oppressed.
Let me liberate you, and introduce you to western ideals."
In reality, Cromer was a pretty awful guy.
What he did was he raised tuition fees in women's schools,
so that women who had already been gaining a primary education
prior to the British influence, suddenly couldn't go to school
because they couldn't afford it in peasant communities.
He limited the actions of female medics, new medics in society,
people who were empowered, who were ready to embody their knowledge,
to midwifery, saying that "Science was the realm of men."
To top it all off, the icing on the cake, this guy, back home in Britain,
was the leader of the Men's League [Opposing] Women's Suffrage.
He was replacing, maybe a medieval,
maybe a Middle Eastern concept of patriarchy,
with his own British medieval concept of patriarchy.
There's patriarchy in both cultures,
and it was a matter of choosing one over the other,
rather than allowing these women to find their own meaning,
to find their empowerment in their own culture,
to define feminism for themselves.
The saddest part of it all is that even the concept of the hijab as a discussion
that we're having today,
is something that was handed over to Muslim feminists,
as something that they had to talk about because the West gave it to them.
In every other culture you talk about, perhaps the West itself,
you have symbols that you choose for yourself: bras, skirt, pant, dresses.
This is something that we chose to talk about ourselves.
Yet for Middle Eastern feminists,
we were given the hijab as a source of conflicts,
as something that detracted away from the ultimate discussion
of women's education and women's rights.
Malak Hifni Nasif was a feminist in the late 19th century.
She often wrote about this.
She said that our faith does not dictate that whether or not you wear the scarf
is what makes you a feminist.
Our scarf doesn't have anything to do with this.
In reality, we need to talk about women's education,
we need to talk about what's truly important for women,
and we need to ignore that the West is giving us this object, this symbol,
to have contention about between ourselves.
So, we've established this is the root of Western rhetoric on feminism.
This is where it all comes from:
Western feminists telling Muslim women and women of other cultures
that they can't create their own conceptualization of feminism.
Instead they must adhere to a Western construct,
they must adhere to Western ideals of feminism.
In reality, feminism is a diverse, beautiful movement,
in which women from various cultures, backgrounds, religious upbringings
can find meaning for themselves and what they are doing,
can determine equality for themselves,
and can determine how to advocate that equality for themselves.
I personally consider myself to be a feminist.
I know, scary, right?
I'm not going to jump at you all, don't worry.
Yes, I consider myself to be a feminist,
and what this means to me is that my hijab,
rather than inhibiting me from embodying that feminism,
further allows me to propagate that feminism,
allows me to to embody this idea that I am no longer a sexual object,
that I am a human being and I have a voice,
that I am someone who is an aspiring future lawyer,
an aspiring human rights activist.
Someone who already actively involves herself in social rights,
and social activism on grounds.
The hijab, in my opinion, does not detract from that in any way.
And yet, I am told by society that I cannot be proud of my scarf,
that I cannot be both hijabe and feminist.
I'm told that I'm oppressed.
I'm told to be depressed about my so-called "oppression."
And when I'm happy with what I have, I'm told that I am regressive, radical.
What am I doing? Why am I wearing this on my head?
It's up to me to define what I choose to do with my body.
And it's up to you, up to everyone around me
to not tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing,
to not dismiss my intelligence,
but to accept it, to acknowledge it, to respect it.
It is sad that in today's culture we don't have that respect,
we don't have that knowledge and acceptance.
In Australia, Muslim women who choose to go to their House of parliament
have to sit in glass-enclosed galleries, apart from their fellow Australians,
because of their religious garb.
While United Nations commissioner, Tim Wilson,
said that this is segregation on the basis of religious apparel,
the prime Minister of Australia doesn't seem to mind.
He has actually been quoted saying:
"I wish people didn't wear it, it's so confrontational."
Yes, because my American flag headscarf is very confrontational.
All the bright red, white, and blue.
Pretty creepy, huh?
In France, burka bans have incited violence against women for a long time.
Violence that is often gone under looked, and over looked.
Just a couple years ago,
a women was walking back home on her way from work,
and she was attacked by several men who began to beat her.
She threw her hands over her head
and yelled, "I'm pregnant, I'm pregnant, stop hitting me."
And they began to hit her harder, to the point where she miscarried.
She lost her baby to violence and intolerance.
Is that something we are going to allow to perpetuate in our society?
Is that something we are going to allow to spread in the United States?
Where young women who wear the hijab already have horror stories of their own
to tell, much like my own?
Friends, it's not.
We can do something about this.
People already have been doing things about this.
In Australia, campaigns like #wish, #illridewithyou,
have begun to make Muslim women feel safe within communities,
and show that whether or not the government cares,
the citizens care about injustice anywhere.
In America, at UVA itself, World Hijab Day was brought to grounds.
And a moment of true solidarity with women who choose to wear the hijab,
a moment where we, as UVA students,
said that would respect people's decisions,
regardless of what they wore, and acknowledge the fact that yes,
in the world there are some people who don't have that choice.
It's true.
Somewhere out there in the world, there's a women
who can't leave her front door without being shot down by the guns of patriarchy,
a women who's forced to wear certain clothing,
a woman who has to wear all black garb without her own choice
being involved in the matter,
a women treated like livestock, like cattle.
But I'm here today to represent my own perspective.
I'm not saying that there is justice in all forms of the hijab.
I'm saying that my perspective is beautiful to me,
I, a first-year college student in the United States,
cannot, in any way, represent 1.2 billion Muslims across the World.
It's just not feasible.
I mean it'd be pretty cool, I would feel really awesome,
I'd feel amazing actually, but I can't do that.
So, I'm here today to ask you to broaden your horizons, to open your minds,
to realize that there is a diverse culture behind what you are making a monolith of,
that Islam, in and of itself has a diverse culture
that is a unique religion just like every other religion.
And that what you hear on the news, what you hear on social media,
is biased and untrue.
The majority of Muslims are peaceful, happy, freedom loving people,
and you have the opportunity to meet them.
I stand before you today as one of those happy Muslims,
happy with her religion, happy with who she is,
happy with what she chooses to wear upon her head
So don't tell me I can't be both feminist and Muslim.
Don't tell me I can't be both Potterhead and rag-head.
Let me label myself. Let me define myself.
Let me choose what it is that I wish to embody,
what I wish to live for in my life.
The hijab is after all my right, my choice, my life.
Thank you
(Applause)