Hi, again.

Ok so yes I used to blog and here I am again. After persuasion from friends hah yeah Tgrawk I love youu. And also after some deep thinking on my part I was like, OK try je la lagi sekali. Now there's internet connection everywhere even though most of the time it's freaking slooooow coz my room seems to be the only place in the whole college that can't get a decent internet connection.

So anyway like the title, a truly serendipitous moment also pushed me into trying this out again.
I stumbled across this article during class (haha memang sekarang kerja cari article untuk assignment la, presentation la, homework la) and it truly made me feel like, woah.

This lady named Jameelah Medina is an American born Muslim raised in California. She decided herself to wear the headscarf when she was 19 even though her mother disagreed for safety reasons la. So one day, when she was on the way to work, she was arrested for having an invalid train pass. During detention the officers harassed her into taking off her headscarf. She said it was her right to wear it and refused to take it off. They forced her anyway.

So after she got out, she felt completely humiliated and angry so decided to stand up for her rights. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) decided to help her with her case and filed a lawsuit against the authorities. Good for her!

What really got to me was the fact that when interviewed by an ACLU representative about why she wanted to wear the headscarf, this is what she said,

"As a woman, I felt it was such a privilege to be able to wear the hijab because it also served to remind me of my faith. I think it is difficult for people to understand how a woman can view her hair and neck as sexual parts of her body similar to her genitalia. However, this is how I feel about my hair and neck. Throughout history and literature, the hair of a woman is sensualized -- the longer it is, the better and the sexier. The woman's neck has also been eroticized and touted as an erogenous zone in literature and even in films. I did not want to be sensualized and eroticized; I just wanted to be human. I wanted to be free from unwanted advances from men, and I also wanted to feel in charge of my own femininity and create my own empowerment as the gatekeeper of my own body, not a slave to mainstream standards of beauty, and my own mind, not subject to rampant body image and self esteem issues. With all this said, it all goes back to maintaining my sense of privacy and not making public what I perceive as intimate."

And when they asked her about what the headscarf meant to her she simply said,
"Freedom!"

That totally blew me away. That statement coming from someone who lives in a society where the majority are NOT Muslims and where the physical appearance is the first thing one is judged by. She even admitted that she is very vocal in nature :) This is her.





Inspiration much! I think I as a Muslim living in Malaysia can sometimes forget the real reasons why I choose to wear the headscarf. It's just become so routine. The way Miss Medina talked about why she wears it was putting it so simply clear and it just made me proud to be a Muslim girl. She is a very strong lady and she has my full respect for that. You go girl!