Printed Hijab – Business Casual

I paired the same printed hijab with a white collared blouse and a black

blazer for an edgy sophisticated look.

Printed Hijab – Business Casual  featuring harem pants

Mango shirt
mango.com

Lanvin wool blazer
$2,770 – brownsfashion.com

Bardot harem pants
$73 – bardot.com.au

H M ballet flat
$23 – hm.com

Chanel watch
$2,795 – farfetch.com

Ben Amun gold necklace
couturecandy.com

Victoria Beckham sunglasses
boutique1.com

Printed Hijab – Night Out

Who said you can’t get creative and mix and match your outfits while wearing

hijab?! Here’s a quick post to show how you can wear this printed leopard scarf

two different ways, while still maintaining a modest look:

Printed Hijab – Night Out 

Warehouse
$88 – warehouse.co.uk

Ichi
$68 – nelly.com

Jessica Simpson black fur boots
heels.com

Chanel bag
my-wardrobe.com

 I paired a red blazer with a long black sleek dress to bring out the

leopard scarf and heels for a girls night out.

Q & A

Interview with graduate student, Lisa Jaradat. 

Q: What inspired you to start wearing hijab?

 A: My friend Sherry inspired me. One day she sat me down and told me that I was a good person and that I was doing a lot of good deeds but many were going to waste because I was like a candle that provides light for  others but burns itself. She told me to just try it for one day and I did. I never took it off since, I love it.

Islam advises its followers to have higher morals and values as compared to the degenerate levels of morality found in society today. As generations pass, it seems like our society is growing backwards. Cave men were barely clothed and strived to cover themselves with leaves. Now, civil humans are striving to be naked. So this is backwards. People who say hijab is something that is backwards or from the stone age or medieval, are wrong; it is an advancement for women and society. Modesty is progressive.

What inspired me to take this decision was to follow the Wajib. The simple question was why not ? Do I love my lord more than my hair? No. Why risk upsetting my lord and go against the Islamic teaching to simply fit in a society who truly will never accept me for who I am because women are objectified and characterized by looks. How could I advocate for Islam if I didn’t fit the description– being a hijabi, people know me for who I actually am; it’s empowering.

Q: How would you identify what hijab means to you?

A: Its my shield; this shield only reveals my heart & makes it visible to humans eyes.The hijab is my blessing and it’s the answer to my prayers.

Q: Was the transition difficult for you, especially because you started wearing it at an older age?

A: Of course it was difficult, it’s my hair.  I love my hair. Hair is the best accessory a lady has. I started wearing the hijab at 22 and I am 26 now. Had I waited longer, I probably would have never worn it. I got attached to my reflection in the mirror with my hair out. It may sound silly but I had to let go of the idea of my hair making me beautiful because it’s me who is beautiful. So, regardless of what I am wearing, my inner beauty always shines and is radiant because my glow comes from deep with in.

Casual

My very first outfit post!

This is usually how I dress on a daily basis: jeans, shirt/blouse, jacket, boots, and ,of course, a hijab. I don’t often wear my hijab like that unless I’m just throwing it on like a shawl (my lazy days). I actually got this navy blue Chanel hijab as a gift from Egypt, and I fell in love with the material! It’s super soft, but I can’t figure out the exact material of it because it’s written in scripted Arabic (I can read Arabic, but the writing is super small and I can’t exactly see what is says). I think it feels kind of like rayon material.

So, I looked all over the internet to try and find what I’m wearing here, and I couldn’t find the exact items but found very similar styles:

1- Jessica Simpson trench coat; it’s really light and good for Spring.

2- Navy blue Matelot skinny jeans.

3- Slip-on mid-calf beige boot.

4- Bow Blouse.

 

Everyday Hijabi

This piece of cloth on my head always attracts people’s attention. It’s always noticed in the crowd. So, I try to dress in a fashionable manner. I don’t often wear printed hijabs because I like wearing my scarf plain and simple. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t try to incorporate everyday style with it.

I wear different colored hijabs. In the summer, I usually wear brighter colors, and in the winter, I often wear neutral colors.

Neutral Hijabs :

Bright Hijabs:

My hijab doesn’t prevent me or limit me from doing things I want to do. We are still able to go on cruises, jet-ski, sky dive, and parasail. 

Does this look like oppression to you?

Reasons and Reactions

I’ve always wondered what people’s initial reactions are when they see a hijabi. I wonder how it would feel as an outsider looking at a hijabi, especially if I wasn’t sure why she covers the most beautiful and exotic part of her beauty. So, my curiosity got the best of me. I went and asked a few non-Muslims what their reactions are when they see a covered girl. Here’s one girl’s perspective: “I see it as mark because it identifies a girl as a Muslim. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to wear it. There’s so many pressures and stereotypes that can come with wearing it. We’ve become so sensitized to the media’s portrayal of Muslims that we don’t realize that we’re prejudiced against them until you see them in front of you.”

And then I thought about it. The same way I see other people cover for religious purposes, like the Sikhs, is probably the same way people see me. But, maybe because the Muslims are more targeted in the media, it makes all the wonders more evident.

Every girl has her reason to wearing hijab. Not everyone thinks it’s okay to practice your belief; islamaphobics still exist.

But not everyone is judgmental. Not everyone is going to treat you any different for wearing hijab. I was curious to ask a male of what he thought. He said, “I didn’t think anything of your hijab. I wondered why you wore it and I wondered if it was your choice or if it was your family’s. I wondered what you were hiding and why you wore it the way you did. At some point, I thought most religious women who practice their faith more than most wouldn’t speak to a guy.”

I’m not here to speak on behalf of every hijabi, because no two people are alike, and just because we practice the same religion, it doesn’t mean that every one of us are the same. So, for me, I speak to men as I would to anyone, with sincerity and respect, because that’s what I’m hoping to receive from them.  I don’t want to come off as an intimidating person who makes people feel like I can’t be approached because I can. And I hope that I can always communicate this to everyone who I interact with.

A Hijabi’s Podcast

Her Struggle

At age 14, Fatma Ismail, decided to start wearing hijab. Now 17 years old, and a current senior attending New Dorp high school, she “had quite an experience” wearing a veil, but doesn’t “regret one bit of it.” Both her best friend and mom were the reason why she was motivated to wear hijab. “They are the closest people to me and they showed me the right way to my religion,” she said smiling.

Fatma wore her hijab because she chose to and because it is part of her religion. “This is a way of me pleasing Allah because it’s mandated in our religion to be dressed modestly.”

Everyone can chose what they decide to wear every day for modesty, but Muslim women who decide to wear hijab follow what God has commanded them to wear for modesty. When people asked Fatma why she wears hijab, her response to them was, “my love for my religion means everything to me.”

Those responses were not enough for some people. She faced negativity in her past for wearing hijab. “During my freshmen year of high school, I felt like people weren’t accepting me with my hijab,” she said. “People tried to bring me down by trying to take off my scarf.” She explains how at one point she struggled so hard to keep her faith, but eventually learned to accept that there will always be “some people in life that will try to bring you down and there is nothing you can do about it.” Her four years of experience made her stronger because she no longer cares about the negativity that people have to say about hijab.

“I have more positive feedback from people now because I wear it with more confidence.” Fatma’s peers at my school are more accepting towards her wearing hijab. More people are fascinated with her hijab and continuously compliment her style and hijabi look. “It makes me so happy to know that people accept me for who I am and for my religion.”

An Inspired Hijabi Tells Her Story

19-year-old Hunter student, Toka Shalan, tells her story of what inspired her to wear hijab. Her transition to wearing hijab was easy because she grew up in Bay Ridge and attended Al-Noor, a private Islamic school.  She was surrounded by many Muslim women; some of them were her mother’s friends while the majority of them were high school friends. “I fell in love with the way they looked using different color scarves as well as different ways of wrapping it around their head,” she said. “It amazed me how they would walk down the streets of New York confidently wearing their headscarves and letting people define and respect their identity as that of a Muslim woman.”  She explains that was her inspiration of putting on her hijab. “It has become a part of me and a part of what I am identified as in society, as an Egyptian-American Muslim woman.”

Throughout her nine years of wearing hijab, Toka witnessed first-hand racism and discrimination. “One day, as I was walking with a classmate who wore the Niqab (A veil worn by some Muslim women in public, covering all of the face apart from the eyes) near my high school, two teenage boys came from behind us, pulled on our headscarf from the back and ran away laughing,” she said. “There would also be days where I would be walking home alone or with friends and people would tell us to ‘Go back to where we came from’ or ‘Take that thing off your head! Don’t let them oppress you!’

She ignored these hate remarks and continued to wear the hijab that “liberates” her. Ayesha Nusrat, a 23-year-old Muslim Indian from New Delhi published a similar story in the New York Times. 

Even though Muslim women are still discrimination against for wearing hijab today, many others respect and admire the fact that they cover. “In college I’d receive compliments about how pretty my scarf looked and how they thought it was pretty cool that my scarf would always match what I would wear.”

Toka said her greatest experience wearing hijab is when curious people approach her  and wonder why she  wears hijab. The people’s wonder give her a reason to believe that not only is she approachable, but she can also express to them the sense of freedom she feels while wearing hijab. “Some of my friends even tried the Hijab on just to see how it would look on them and they’d walk down hallways or streets just to see how others would see them or treat them.” Toka said that when her friends put on the hijab for a day it changed their perceptions and ideas about women who veil. Some of the girls who experienced putting on hijab said it made them more noticeable in a crowd, but felt nothing of oppression like some people assume. They had made the choice of putting it on simply because they wanted to know how it felt and realized that veiling was a form of expression.

Distinct styles

My friend once asked me if I feel different in every hijab I wear, and if each color brings out a different side of me. But it’s not so much the colors of my veil that do anything. It’s the style of my scarf along with the outfit I’m wearing that makes me feel different. Here are a few outfit choices that correspond with a hijab style.

Meet my friend, Israa. She is wearing a printed veil that compliments her casual, yet more formal outfit.

Oftentimes, people wonder how hijabis dress going to occasion. And I mean fancy occasions, like attending a wedding, engagement, or even prom. If I wasn’t a hijabi myself, I’d probably wonder the same thing. So to save those curious wonders, here is a fancier way of wearing hijab:

Here are other less formal ways to dress your hijab. This is my friend, Islam (yes, that’s her name) , dressed in jeans and a tee. Isn’t it just amazing how we can match every outfit with a veil. I fell in love with her shirt. It reads: ” Love, Hope, Faith, Wish, Imagine, Trust, Give, Believe.” Stuff we all love to do.

This is just another casual way:

You can find a similar scarf here