“Hair Down = Beautiful; With Hijab =Terrorist”

My name is Zainab Jabak. I was born in Dallas, Texas and was raised their till I turned ten, I left the United States. When I was nine years old, the time had come where I would have to wear the hijab like my mother. I was not forced to wear it, although some people claim that all women who wear the hijab are women deprived of their freedom and are oppressed. My mother made me fall in love with the idea of wearing the hijab as she told me how God wanted to protect women that God gave all women a special unique feature, and that God created all women beautiful. That in order to protect and keep us from harm, He told us to cover. To be modest, to let modesty be our beauty. To let people admire what's inside of us and what makes us, us rather than our physical image. She told me that I am not required to “show” myself in order to be beautiful and that the hijab was a representation of beauty by itself.

Before I wore the hijab, my mother received praise and compliments when I was with her. People would comment on how “beautiful” I was. Later on when I started wearing the hijab, I received looks of pity, hatred, and disgust. With the help of media, the portrayal of Islam had gone downhill and wearing the hijab was a dead giveaway as to which religion I believed in. One day, I was at the park playing with my brother, when a lady walked up to me and asked me whether or not I was receiving cruel treatment from my parents. Being a nine year old girl, I was extremely confused and did anything a nine year old would do, I walked away from the “stranger”. In third grade, a boy started calling me “Table Cloth Girl” even though I had known the boy from kindergarten.

When I turned ten years old, I left the United States still with my beliefs. Seven years later I returned to Houston, Texas and I am faced with what I had not expected. I received the same looks, glares, and underestimation my mother had when we were in Dallas. The day after I landed in Houston, I went to Walmart with my family to purchase groceries. I had been waiting with a shopping cart in an aisle waiting for my father to pick up an item in the aisle across the one I was in. I overheard an old white couple whispering in hushed voices. I didn’t hear everything they said, but hearing the words “covered girl” and “terrorist” with accompanying distorted glances towards me, can give you a pretty clear idea what they were talking about. I walked past the couple and then I heard it. “Terrorist”, straight to my face. What a wonderful way to return back to a place you once called home as a child. To say I was shocked at the audacity would be understandable. Just nine years ago, I was considered “beautiful”. But now a terrorist? Is it crazy what society has led us to be? That if a girl doesn’t have her hair down and is wearing clothing that is not supposedly accepted by society, she is considered a terrorist.

 Just because I choose to practice freedom the way I want to do not make me “oppressed” or a “terrorist”. Just because my hair is not resting down on my shoulders does not make me any less of a human being or moreover a terrorist, but unfortunately, “Hair Down = Beautiful; With Hijab =Terrorist”.