Hijabs and Handmaids' Bonnets, and Why Teachers Should Know the Difference

We were sitting in front of our lockers, eating our lunch, when my friend Katherine started talking about the unit on Islam they had just started in her World Religions class. We were in 12th grade, 8 months from graduating high school. “Noha, it’s awful. The textbook has chapters and chapters on Christianity, and then the parts about Islam are so wrong. Nothing like what you’ve told me.”

Katherine, my best friend since 9th grade, had been over to my observant Muslim household many times. She’d waited outside the guidance counselor’s office while I prayed, heard me say my dua at lunch, watched me rewrap my hijab in the girls’ washroom. It was 1998 and we didn’t have the words for Islamophobia yet, but she knew the textbook had flattened my identity and beliefs.

“You should talk to Mr. Rayburn. You could come and talk to the class about Islam instead, since the textbook is so bad.” The next day, we walked to the World Religions classroom and had a chat with Mr. Rayburn. He was welcoming of a session or two where I would give his class an “Islam 101” lesson.

A few weeks later, I stood before his Grade 12 students, explaining the 5 pillars of Islam: The shahada, salah, zakat, fasting, and hajj¹. Once I had explained these, I jumped into the story of the revelation to our Prophet Muhammad, followed by some common misconceptions about Islam and Muslims. I was careful to cover topics like hijab, worn by Muslim women as a sign of piety, and jihad, a term woefully misused by Islamophobes that is wrongly translated as holy war, when it truly means “self struggle”. The class had lots of questions, and I was happy to answer them and provide my personal experience and the experience of my community.

Growing up as an Arab, Muslim girl in Canada, I learned very quickly to be open to questions asked with curiosity, even if they were hurtful or insulting. The kinds of stereotypes parroted on TV and in the papers during my childhood were negative enough that I preferred to be asked something directly and have a chance to explain it. The alternative was to leave those who asked to return to the same orientalist sources they had gotten their misinformation from in the first place, and that was no alternative at all. So, my sisters and I became little model minorities, little spokespeople for the Muslims are human beings, just like us! camp, and we got pretty good at it. Truthfully, I didn’t mind.

Mr. Rayburn’s class went so well that he brought me in to do the same presentation and QA with his second class. We agreed to repeat the process again the next semester, when he taught the course to a new cohort. When February rolled around, another friend reached out. She was taking Canadian Literature with Ms. Blanchette, and they were reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Ms. Blanchette wanted to know, since they were studying women’s oppression, would I be ok to talk to her students about Islam? She’d heard I was doing the same in Mr. Rayburn’s class.

The question was a slap in the face. Ms. Blanchette had taught me 9th grade Literary Arts. She knew I was an outspoken, confident, hijab-wearing student. She had met my parents: my understated, sweet father, who towered above me at 6 feet tall but rarely raised his voice above a whisper. My dynamo of a hijabi mother who commanded every room she entered, a charismatic force to be reckoned with. The link Ms. Blanchette had made from women’s oppression to Islam, unprompted, took my breath away. I decided I would talk to the class, if only to give myself an opportunity to undo the ideas she was feeding them, if only to give myself a chance to change her mind.

In the coming weeks, I redid my entire presentation - no longer was the focus on the beloved Prophet Muhammad, or the 5 pillars, or spirituality. Instead, the presentation was a series of orientalist tropes about Islam and Muslims, and then the argument to undo each one. The night before my presentation to the CanLit class, I hardly slept. My stomach twisted like a knotted rope, anxiety creeping from my centre out to every limb. A chronic people pleaser, I knew I was going into a fight ring, raising conflicts with my old teacher’s long held racist beliefs, with her unquestioned biases.

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

I gave the presentation in 15 minutes, and then went to Q&A. I felt like I was standing in front of a firing squad. Aside from the students’ questions, Ms. Blanchette herself did not seem able to get past her prejudices. I stood at the front of the classroom, imploring them to see my hijab for what it was, a choice that no one had forced upon me. No one should insist that a girl or a woman wear a hijab. But no one should insist that she take one off, either. I tried to point out the inherent bias in associating Islam with women’s oppression, in the exclusion of a Muslim woman’s choice from the brand of feminism my teacher was espousing. I tried to point out that

Margaret Atwood

had based The Handmaid’s Tale on Biblical, not Quranic, passages, the Salem witch trials, and the state of American politics in the 1980s. While I seemed to get through to some of the students, it was clear that the adult in the room couldn’t see me for who I was: a young woman with my own agency, the agency to make choices that were different from hers.

In hindsight, I look back and wonder what Ms. Blanchette was trying to get out of the presentation she had asked me to give. Had she actually wanted to hear my side, or simply to give me a dressing down before the class? To save me from myself? Over the years, many others, from strangers in coffee shops to politicians in my province, have attempted to do the same². But I resent the implication. I am as smart as any woman who chooses a different way to be than I do. I do not require saving.

Do you remember a time you were judged or stereotyped by a person with authority? How did you react?

1. You can learn more about the 5 Pillars of Islam here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Pillars_of_Islam

2. I have written about my experience as a hijabi woman in the lead up to Bill 21 in Quebec. You can find that writing here: https://maisonneuve.org/article/2020/04/9/degrees-freedom/