Sierra Cowan interviewed Rice senior and OpenStax intern, Yasmine Rahmat. Yasmine is originally from Tusla, OK and of Indonesian descent. The full transcript of their conversation can be found here. What are the biggest influences on your decision to not wear a Hijab? I would say probably the biggest one is my mom because she didn’t start wearing a Hijab until maybe five years ago, and then she’s always said it is going to be my choice. Like she wants me to want to wear it rather than have her force me to wear things. And also, just kind of the culture I grew up in. So, I grew up in Oklahoma where we didn’t really have a huge Muslim community there and everyone was really Christian. So, it was kind of like of a weird thing. I never really was drawn to it because it was like if I wear it, I will be super different. And even now, it’s just like that feeling of like being different if I wear it still follows me. I don’t have any desire to wear it because I didn’t grow up feeling like I wanted to wear it, and now even though I’m not as sensitive to the social stuff that comes with wearing a Hijab, I just like don’t really want to. Have you experienced discrimination based on your decision to not cover?
Yeah. I think in America, it’s very subtle and unspoken. I never feel like outright discrimination like, “Oh, you should wear a Hijab because that makes you a better Muslim.” But definitely from my family in Indonesia. Like I visited two summers ago and it’s always like, “Do you not wear the Hijab because you live in America?” Like it’s something I’m supposed to do, but because I live in America and other people don’t that America is stopping me from wearing it. If if I don’t cover they won’t say anything like, “Oh, you’re a bad Muslim,” but it’s very implied. Is there anything that would make you change your decision to not cover? I think the only thing that would change it if if I was like personally, I think it’s time for me to cover, like where I am now in my religious journey. But I don’t think anything from the outside, like any other person or the culture around me could force me to cover. Like even when I was in Indonesia, for example, I was there for like two months and I considered that maybe this was a good time to wear the Hijab just for two months because everyone else would be doing it. But because I have always kind of grown up not wearing it, it’s so ingrained in me and the only thing that could make me change that was me personally wanting to wear it not like anything else. So how do you view other Muslim women who cover versus Muslim women who don’t? My instinct is to say that I don’t really see them any differently, but I guess I do. I kind of associate [women who cover] as having more knowledge, so if I ever like wanted to talk about my religion or had a question I feel like, implicitly, I would be more willing to go to someone who wore that instead of someone who didn’t because I would say, “Oh, because they wear it they must know a lot since they represent the religion.” Which is maybe wrong of me, but I do do that because I kind of associate them with knowing more. Many people suggest that Muslim and American identity are incompatible. What do you think of that? There’s so many definitions of like American identity and Muslim identity, that I can’t say they’re mutually exclusive. I just think that whole divide is part of the problem. Like the people who live in the Middle East who live a very strict, Islamic life are saying, “Well, you can’t mix the two because they’re very opposite.” And then they kind of blame America as the problem, but then that thinking that Islam can’t conform itself to any kind of identity is part of the problem itself. And then on the other side, hearing people say that Muslims are part of the problem, I feel like it’s all just putting up a divide between a religion and a nationality. It’s comparing two different things and there’s always going to be a problem with that. I just feel like it’s very simplistic too. Like what do you mean by American? What do you mean by Muslim? You can’t put either category into a specific box.
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