‘The Toronto Star recently had an article interviewing four women about their “dejabbing” experiences. The title is “Why we stopped wearing the hijab.” However, the seemingly simple notion of removing the headscarf is acknowledged to be a complicated process. The article explains that “From safety to spirituality, each woman has her own reasons” for no longer wearing a headscarf, and that some women “may go back to it.” Note the plural “reasons” here and the fact that dejabbing is not always (although it can be) a categorical casting off of the hijab forever. A few days later, in response an article by a young hijabi woman expressing her fears of being attacked, Richard Dawkins expressed the more familiar unveiling-as-liberation notion, encapsulating it in a tweet asking “why not throw off hijab in Islamic defiance of Isis?”
As we at Muslimah Media Watch discussed the Toronto Star article, and Dawkins’ question, we shared our own broader thoughts about and our experiences of dejabbing. ‘
Shereen Malherbe 