Beyond The Hijab

In Secondary 3, I attended a religious camp where a guest ustazah spoke about the aurah. It was during this talk when the ustazah made a specific reference to the Quran about a woman covering up that I made the decision to don the tudung. However, I felt conflicted. On one hand, I felt a sense of…

By Elfarina Roszaini I lost my mother at 16 years old and I struggled with the realness of death and its inevitability. It has been 7 years now and it has not gotten easier. Since that fateful Thursday evening, I had been floating. Wandering along, moving swiftly through the motions, never finding a real purpose in anything…

When I was 14 I felt compelled to study the Qur’an and I spent the entire summer between grade 9 and 10 reading it in English and reading through the tafsirs of sections I felt were particularly interesting or somehow confusing. I read about hijab and the rulings surrounding it. After a few months of…

I’m thirteen years old. Every day I check my underwear pantiliner for those few precious drops of blood to signify my entry to the world of adulthood. Finally, in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, that moment comes and I am overwhelmed with feelings of panic, pain, excitement and anxiety. You see, as a Madrassah…

There was this girl on campus; she owned the turban before Yuna, Ascia Akf or Dina Tokio ever did. She was quiet and always kept to herself but never failed to get noticed everywhere she went. She was bright and oh-so-pretty. But she didn’t know it. Next semester, she took it off. That girl, was…

In my Junior year of university, many of my friends, including few of my closest friends, began to wear hijab. I respected their strength and courage and supported their choice to express their religion and identities through hijab. They found acceptance, understanding and support in our friends circle. Our friendships were strong, it didn’t matter…