Hijab Stories: Compare and contrast

Story 1: Muslim reverts having problems with their parents because of Hijab.

Below is the email exchange:

assalam alaikum

A sister is having a problem with her mom (and dad
too) for wearing Hijab. First, they said u can't wear
it inside the house, then they said you can't wear it
when going out with us, so she stop going out with
parents, now they are saying you are cutting family
ties.

Their relationship was good before Islam. Now, mom is
crying and dad is arguing and all that.

Any ideas?

Please pray for her.

Email Response:

Wa'alaikum assalaam...

Yeah, I started making dua for her as soon as I read that. SubhanAllah. As if it's not hard enough to start wearing hijab with everyone staring at you and asking questions, when your parents give you a hard time, too, it just wears you down. My mom used to call it my "garb", as in garb meaning a garment, but the way she said it to me it sounded like it was short for "garbage". :P My dad used to joke that people would think he was with a movie star in disguise or a cancer patient covering up her bald head. People would look at me in restaurants and he would keep whispering things like "see, they're all pointing at the poor little cancer girl." He lost his sense of humor over it after a while and won't go out in public with me anymore either. My mom is noticeably embarrassed, but has decided that life goes on and so we go out everywhere together now. All of us reverts get the same problem. My friend Yasmine's mom calls the hijab her "rags". I also got the same line a lot about cutting family ties (usually after THEY had refused to spend time with me, same story), but you have to just keep trying. It is sooooo important in our deen, and you know this already, that we can never break ties with our family, that we have to give them love and respect, and that especially we have to give our mom the highest respect and the best treatment no matter what. Chances are that they will get used to the hijab after a while, or least most of them will. It also helped in my case to try to maintain some of the same sense of style that expresses my personality that they are used to, for their sake and for my own. For example, they tend to freak out way more seeing me in jilbab and a black hijab than to see me wearing long skirts (which I always liked) and a flowery/lacy matching scarf. And when my mom would talk about religion with me and cry, I would just try to give a loving response and explain my reasons for my faith to her, even when I had already explained it again and again. It's not easy. Your family, who loves you more than anybody else, can also make you feel more uncomfortable than anyone else. It's a long process.

Amina

Story 2: According to news reports, a father killed his daughter for not wearing Hijab

Father says killed daughter in Canadian hijab case
Tue Dec 11, 2007 1:50pm EST
TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian teenager who was said to have clashed with her father about whether she should wear a traditional Muslim head scarf died of injuries late on Monday, and her father told police he had killed her.

Aqsa Parvez, 16, was found without a pulse in her home in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga earlier on Monday. She was resuscitated by paramedics, treated at two hospitals, and later succumbed to her injuries, police said on Tuesday.

Her father, 57-year-old Muhammad Parvez, has been charged with murder and was remanded back into custody after his first court appearance early on Tuesday.

"There was a 911 call placed by a man who indicated that he had just killed his daughter," Jodi Dawson, a constable with Peel Regional Police, told Reuters. "Everything else is evidentiary in nature and the investigation is in its preliminary stages at this point."

The victim's brother, Waqas Parvez, 26, was arrested and charged with obstructing police.

The story was on the front pages of Canadian newspapers on Tuesday. The newspapers quoted friends and schoolmates of the victim as saying she argued with her father over wearing a hijab, the traditional head scarf worn by Muslim females.

Photos of the teen retrieved from a social networking Web site show her in Western dress with her long dark hair loose.

"She was always scared of her dad, she was always scared of her brother," the Toronto Star quoted a classmate as saying.

Others were quoted as saying the girl wore traditional Muslim dress when leaving the house in the morning, but would change into other clothes in school washrooms.

Dawson said investigators will likely speak to the victim's schoolmates. The father will return for a bail hearing on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Peter Galloway)