Hijab

• 1. A Question For Nasser

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  In everyday speech, the hijab is the headscarf worn by many Muslim women. It is wrapped to cover the hair, neck and ears and leaves the face exposed.

  In 1953, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser claimed that the head of the Muslim Brotherhood told him the group wanted the hijab enforced. Nasser said he answered by pointing out that the man's own daughter, a college student, wore no headscarf. Then he asked: "So you can't make one girl, your own daughter, wear it, and yet you want me to go and make ten million women wear it?"

  That exchange holds a question that still divides governments, scholars and families. The word itself may point to something wider than cloth. It can describe a range of bodily covering and behavior that reaches even into human emotions.

  This documentary asks what the word first meant, what scripture says and does not say, and where veiling came from. It asks why the garment returned in the twentieth century. It also asks why some states command the hijab while others forbid it.

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• 2. A Word For Curtain

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  The Arabic word hijab is the verbal noun of the verb hajaba, built on the three-letter root H-J-B. That root produces a large family of words about hiding, concealing and blocking. Its literal sense is a curtain or cloth barrier. The term first denoted a partition, and only later was it sometimes used for Islamic rules of modesty.

  The Qur'an never uses hijab to describe women's clothing. For clothing it chooses other words. One is jilbab, a long and loose outer garment. Another is khimar, a generic headscarf.

  Other uses of the word in the Qur'an concern separation on a larger scale. Verse 42:51 describes a barrier between deity and mortals. Verses 7:46 and 41:5 divide the wrongdoers from the righteous. Verse 17:45 separates believers from unbelievers, and verse 38:32 divides light from darkness. In Turkish, the word names an emotional state, shame, that has nothing to do with clothing.

  One usage does involve a household. Sura 33:53, believed to have been revealed in 627, says that when men ask Muhammad's wives for something, they should ask from behind a hijab, meaning a partition. The verse adds that this is purer for the hearts of both sides.

  As Muhammad's influence grew, he received more and more visitors in the mosque, which was then his home. Some visitors stayed the night only feet from his wives' apartments. The verse is commonly understood as protecting the wives from these strangers.

  Leila Ahmed adds that Muhammad's concubines did not wear veils, while his wives did. She notes that the phrase darabat'ül hijab came to mean, among Muslims, that a woman had entered among Muhammad's wives. Others read the barrier differently. They see a visual divide between his family and the community, a physical divide that gave privacy and comfort, or an ethical divide tied to the purity of hearts.

  When the Qur'an turns to what women wear, it reaches for different words, and scholars have argued over those words ever since.

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• 3. Verses And Reports

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  Seven verses in the Qur'an refer in some way to women's clothing. Surah Al-A'raf, verse 26, gives the simplest purpose of dressing, which is covering what is ugly. It adds that fear of God matters more than covering oneself.

  The clearest passage tells believing women to lower their gaze and guard their chastity. They are not to reveal their ornaments except what normally appears, and they are to draw their veils over their chests. The passage then lists those in front of whom they may be less covered. The list begins with husbands and fathers and ends with children still unaware of women's nakedness.

  Scholars disagree about the ornaments. Some take them to be the adorned parts of the body, and others take them to be the female body, potentially all of it. In his Syro-Aramaic reading of the Qur'an, Luxenberg treats the phrase about drawing veils over the chests as an idiom. He renders it as snapping belts around the waists. In that reading the belt was a symbol of chastity, and no part of the body is ordered covered with cloth.

  Surah Al-Ahzab, verse 59, tells the Prophet to instruct his wives, his daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks over themselves. The stated reason is that they will then be recognized and not be harmed. Some interpreters read this as a command to wear outer garments when going out for needs such as defecation. Others read it as a recommended protection against sexual harassment in Medina.

  Among those who see a command, most scholars do not include the face. A small group argues that the veil exists to prevent women from being recognized, so the face is included.

  Reports about Umar help explain the verse. It is reported that Umar prohibited female slaves from resembling free women by covering their hair. Al-Qurtubi said the verse was directed at free Muslim women rather than slaves or non-Muslim women, and Tabari cites Ibn Abbas for this. Ibn Kathir said the jilbab marked free Muslim women off from the women of Jahiliyyah, so that other men would know they were not slaves or prostitutes.

  Later scholars including Ibn Hayyan, Ibn Hazm and Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani questioned that explanation. They noted that slaves were not explicitly excluded in the verse or hadith. They also argued that slaves could attract lust more easily and that the prohibitions on adultery and molestation applied to them too. On size, Qurtubi reports that the jilbab covers the whole body. Ibn Arabi countered that excessive covering would make recognition impossible, and recognition is what the verse mentions.

  Sahih al-Bukhari records Aisha describing the pressure Umar put on the Prophet. Umar used to say, "Let your wives be veiled," but the Prophet did not do so. One night Sauda, the daughter of Zam'a, a tall woman, went out. Umar saw her and said, "I have recognized you, O Sauda," because he was anxious for a Divine order about the veil. According to Aisha, the verse of veiling was then revealed.

  Another report concerns the women of the Ansar. Safiya bint Shaiba said that Aisha praised them. When Surat an-Nur came down, Aisha said, they took their curtains, tore them and made head covers. In another account, men of the Ansar recited the revelation to their wives, daughters and sisters. The women wrapped themselves and appeared behind the Messenger as if there were crows on their heads. That image implies black clothing, but other narrations say the Prophet's wives also wore yellow or rose.

  The report of the torn curtains is often translated as covering heads and faces with the cut pieces of cloth. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, in Fath al-Bari, claimed that the covering included the face, based on one word in the Arabic text.

  Other reports point toward more freedom. In hadiths from Sahih Bukhari, Abu Dawud and Nasai, men and women of Muhammad's time performed ablution from the same bowl, dipping their hands in together. On that basis the arms to the elbows, the feet, the face and part of the head can be considered free zones.

  Umm Salama, a wife of the Prophet, was asked what a woman may wear in prayer. She answered that a woman can pray in the khimar and a diri' that reaches down and covers the top of her feet. Aisha also reported the Prophet saying that the prayer of a woman who has reached menstruation is not accepted without a khimar. From reports like these, jurists built rulings, and they did not all arrive at the same place.

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• 4. Law And Dissent

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  Sunni and Shia scholars say the hijab is mandatory. Ismailis, who account for about 0.25 percent of all Muslims, do not.

  In the Sunni tradition, scholarly consensus, known as ijma, holds that hijab is mandatory. The four major schools are Hanafi, Shafi'i, Maliki and Hanbali. They say free women must cover their hair and the entire body except the face and hands when in the presence of people of the opposite sex who are not close family. Hanafis extend the rule to the company of non-Muslim women, for fear that such women may describe her physical features to unrelated men.

  The Sunni Permanent Committee for Islamic Research and Issuing Fatwas in Saudi Arabia says women should cover the head. So does Muhammad ibn Adam Al-Kawthari. For men, the required covering runs from the belly button to the knees. The schools differ on whether this includes the navel and knees themselves or only what lies between them.

  Shia jurisprudence also holds, by consensus, that women must cover their hair and the whole body except the hands and face before unrelated men. The major Shia hadith collections Nahj Al-Balagha and Kitab Al-Kafi give little detail on this. A passage in the Shia fiqh book Man La Yahduruhu al-Faqih records Musa al-Kadhim replying to his brother about prayer. He said, "She covers her body and head with it then prays. And if her feet protrude from beneath, and she doesn't have the means to prevent that, there is no harm."

  Across the schools, scholars usually require women to cover everything but the hands and face in public. They do not require the niqab, a face covering worn by some Muslim women. In nearly all Muslim cultures, pre-pubescent girls are not required to wear a hijab. Rules relax in private and among close relatives, called mahrams. Before a husband, most scholars stress mutual freedom and pleasure.

  Some scholars go further and count a woman's voice as part of her awrah, to be kept from men outside her immediate family. They cite hadiths that describe women's voices as a source of fitna, meaning charmingness or attractiveness.

  Khaled Abou El Fadl, Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, Abdullah bin Bayyah, Ahmad Ghabel and Nasr Abu Zayd are notable scholars who do not consider the hijab an obligation. Zaki Badawi and Gamal al-Banna also took positions far from the current mainstream. Quranist movements agree that Islam has no traditional dress beyond the rules in the Qur'an, so beards and the hijab are not necessary.

  Karen Armstrong, Reza Aslan and Leila Ahmed argue that the requirements were first meant only for Muhammad's wives, to preserve their sanctity. Ahmed explains that Muhammad wanted to give his wives privacy from the constant presence of a bustling community. These thinkers hold that no other Muslim woman wore the hijab during Muhammad's life. Aslan suggests that women began wearing it to emulate the wives, who are revered as the "Mothers of the Believers."

  Abou El Fadl argues that all Islamic moderates agree the decision to wear the hijab should be a woman's own. He grounds this in the Quranic teaching that there ought to be no compulsion in religion.

  Some traditionalists accept parts of this case. The Indonesian scholar Quraish Shihab holds that the hadith sources behind the mandate are not sahih. He also argues that ijma would no longer apply once even a single scholar argues against it.

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• 5. Veils Through Empires

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  Statuettes of veiled priestesses date back as far as 2500 BC. Elite women in ancient Mesopotamia and in the Byzantine, Greek and Persian empires wore the veil as a sign of respectability and high status. Assyria had explicit sumptuary laws saying which women must veil and which must not, depending on class, rank and occupation. Female slaves and prostitutes were forbidden to veil and faced harsh penalties if they did. The veil therefore helped to "differentiate between 'respectable' women and those who were publicly available."

  Between 550 and 323 BCE, respectable women in classical Greek society were expected to seclude themselves. They wore clothing that hid them from the eyes of strange men. Roman pagan custom included the head covering worn by the priestesses of Vesta, the Vestal Virgins.

  It is unclear whether the Hebrew Bible prescribes veiling. Rabbinic literature presents it as a matter of modesty, called tzniut, which became an important rabbinic virtue in the early Roman period. It may have helped distinguish Jewish women from their non-Jewish counterparts in Babylonian and later Greco-Roman society. According to rabbinical precepts, married Jewish women must cover their hair. Fadwa El Guindi says Jewish women were veiling their heads and faces when Christianity began.

  The best-known Christian view appears in 1 Corinthians 11:4-7, which says that "every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head." Early Church Fathers wrote that Christian women should wear a headcovering while men pray bareheaded. They included Tertullian of Carthage, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus of Rome, John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo. Archaeological evidence shows headcovering among early Christian women. The practice continues today, especially among Anabaptist Christians and certain Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Reformed Christians. In the Indian subcontinent, some Hindu women cover head and face with a veil in a practice known as ghoonghat.

  In Arabia itself, the available evidence suggests that Muhammad did not introduce veiling. It already existed there, particularly in the towns, though probably less widely than in neighbouring Syria and Palestine. As among Greeks, Byzantines, Jews and Assyrians, it was linked with high social status. The practices of the Greek, Persian and Mesopotamian empires and the Semitic peoples converged. Veiling and seclusion appear to have settled among Jews and Christians before reaching urban upper-class Arabs and then the urban masses. In rural areas it was common to cover the hair but not the face.

  Leila Ahmed argues that the rigid norms of veiling in Christian Byzantine literature were influenced by ancient Persian traditions. She says they differed significantly from actual practice. She also writes: "Whatever the cultural source or sources, a fierce misogyny was a distinct ingredient of Mediterranean and eventually Christian thought in the centuries immediately preceding the rise of Islam."

  Islamic law told a free Muslim woman to veil herself entirely except for her face and hands. The awrah of slave women was defined differently, and they covered only the stretch between navel and knee. Slave women were visually identified by their dress and often showed themselves unveiled. The gap grew sharper under the Abbasid Caliphate. Free upper-class women faced more sex segregation and harem seclusion, while the qiyan slave artists performed unveiled in male company.

  During the Arab conquests, the practice was borrowed from the Byzantine and Persian elites, where it signaled respectability and high social status. Reza Aslan argues that "The veil was neither compulsory nor widely adopted until generations after Muhammad's death, when a large body of male scriptural and legal scholars began using their religious and political authority to regain the dominance they had lost in society as a result of the Prophet's egalitarian reforms." Because Islam identified with the monotheistic religions of the conquered empires, the practice came to be seen as an appropriate expression of Qur'anic ideals of modesty and piety. It spread to upper-class Arab women and then to women in cities throughout the Middle East.

  Under Ottoman rule, veiling became especially pervasive as a mark of rank and exclusive lifestyle. Istanbul in the 17th century showed differentiated dress styles that reflected geographical and occupational identities. Rural women were much slower to adopt it because the garments interfered with work in the fields. For working women a veil was impractical, so "a veiled woman silently announced that her husband was rich enough to keep her idle."

  By the 19th century, upper-class urban Muslim and Christian women in Egypt wore a garment with a head cover and a burqa, a muslin cloth over the lower nose and mouth. The garment's name, harabah, derives from early Christian and Judaic religious vocabulary, which may point to its origins. Up to the first half of the twentieth century, rural women in the Maghreb and Egypt put on a form of niqab when they visited urban areas, "as a sign of civilization."

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• 6. The Modern Return

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  In the 1960s and 1970s, Western clothing largely dominated fashion in Muslim countries. In Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, some women wore short skirts, flower-printed hippie dresses or flared trousers. That changed after a military dictatorship in Pakistan and the Iranian revolution of 1979, when the abaya, jilbab and niqab made a comeback. In March 1979, demonstrations broke out in Iran after a hijab law decreed that women must wear scarves to leave the house.

  In Egypt, the hijab had declined for a long time under westernization. Then, in the mid-1970s, some college-aged men and women began a movement to rededicate themselves to the Islamic faith. It was named the Sahwah, or awakening, and it raised religious feeling that soon showed in the dress code.

  The young female pioneers adopted a uniform called al-Islami, meaning Islamic dress. It paired a jilbab, an unfitted, long-sleeved, ankle-length gown in austere solid colors and thick opaque fabric, with a khimar. The khimar resembles a nun's wimple. It covers the hair low to the forehead, comes under the chin to hide the neck, and falls over the chest and back. Some women added a niqab with only eye slits, plus gloves and socks, so that no skin showed.

  The movement soon moved beyond the young and became a wider Muslim practice. Women saw the dress as a way to announce their religious beliefs publicly and to reject the Western influences of the day. Many also saw it as protection from harassment and unwanted advances. In this view it desexualized women in public life so they could claim equal legal, economic and political status. A serious demeanor was part of showing that modesty.

  Critics called the practice oppressive. Men and women of both Islamic and non-Islamic backgrounds questioned whether women chose it freely or were coerced. As the awakening gained momentum, its aims shifted from promoting modesty toward a political stance. That stance favored Pan-Islamism and symbolically rejected Western culture and norms.

  After the September 11 attacks, debate about the hijab in Western nations intensified as Islamic traditions came under greater scrutiny. The Harvard University Pluralism Project describes the range of practice: "Some Muslim women cover their head only during prayer in the mosque; other Muslim women wear the hijab; still others may cover their head with a turban or a loosely draped scarf."

  A 2014 opinion poll by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research asked residents of seven Muslim-majority countries which style of women's dress was most appropriate in public. The countries were Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia, Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. A majority in Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia and Turkey chose the headscarf. In Saudi Arabia, 63 percent preferred the niqab face veil. In Pakistan, the niqab, the full-length chador robe and the headscarf each drew about a third. In Lebanon, half of the respondents, in a sample that included Christians and Druze, chose no head covering at all.

  The survey found no significant difference between men and women, except in Pakistan, where more men favored conservative dress. Women more strongly supported a woman's right to choose how to dress. University-educated respondents were less conservative, except in Saudi Arabia.

  In the West, a 2016 Environics poll found that 73 percent of Canadian Muslim women wore some sort of head covering in public. Of those women, 58 percent wore the hijab, 13 percent the chador and 2 percent the niqab. Head covering had increased since the 2006 survey. A 2011 Pew Research Center poll found that 36 percent of Muslim American women wore hijab whenever in public. Another 24 percent wore it most or some of the time, and 40 percent never did.

  Some fashion-conscious women have turned to non-traditional forms, such as turbans. Some regard a turban as a proper head cover. Others argue it is not a proper Islamic veil if it leaves the neck exposed.

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• 7. Mandates And Bans

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  In 1936, Reza Shah's government in Iran ended the widespread custom of veiling. It ordered an unveiling act known as Kashf-e hijab, since the hijab was considered incompatible with modernization. In some cases police arrested women who wore the veil and forcibly removed it. The policy had popular support but outraged Shi'a clerics, to whom appearing in public without a cover was tantamount to nakedness. Some women refused to leave home for fear of assault by the police. In 1941, the compulsory element was abandoned.

  Iran then moved in the opposite direction. By 1980, veiling was required in government and educational settings. The 1983 penal code set 74 lashes for failing to observe the hijab, though the exact requirements were unclear. Regulations in 1984 and 1988 clarified the standards, and the current penal code prescribes fines or prison terms without detailing the form. Ruhollah Khomeini maintained that women need not wear a full-body cover. He said they could choose any attire that covers them properly, as long as they wear a hijab. His successor, Ali Khamenei, said the hijab does not hinder participation in social, political or academic activities.

  Enforcement in Iran has swung between strict and relaxed, fueling debate between conservatives and reformists such as Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani vowed to rein in the morality police, and their street presence decreased in his term, but conservative forces resisted. In 2017, Tehran's police chief, General Hossein Rahimi, said, "Those who do not observe the Islamic dress code will no longer be taken to detention centers, nor will judicial cases be filed against them." Mandatory reform classes in Tehran replaced imprisonment.

  After Ebrahim Raisi became president, hijab laws were imposed strictly, and he announced the use of facial recognition on public transport to enforce them. Mahsa Amini died in the custody of the morality police after her arrest under the stricter laws. Her death led to widespread protests. In 2024, Rouhani criticised the reinstatement of the morality police and the "Noor plan." He said a hijab law approved by the Guardian Council "aligns neither with the Constitution, nor with justice, nor with the Qur'an and Islamic culture."

  During the First Intifada, religious conservatives such as Hamas campaigned in Gaza to impose the hijab on women. In 1990, the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising declared that it rejected any hijab policy. This was argued to have come too late, because many women had already yielded to avoid harassment. After taking the government of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Hamas imposed the hijab on women at courts, institutions and schools.

  In 2001, Indonesia's central government granted the province of Aceh the right to impose Sharia, in a deal meant to end the separatist movement there. The province encourages Muslim women to wear the hijab in public. Saudi Arabia formally requires women to cover their hair and wear a full-body garment, though enforcement varies. Its religious police once faced criticism over a fire in which schoolgirls' lack of hijabs was reportedly a factor in 15 deaths. Under the Taliban in Afghanistan, the hijab was mandated and extended to covering the face.

  Turkey took the opposite course in the 1980s, with a headscarf ban at universities. The ban targeted the türban, a head covering pinned neatly at the sides, which a growing number of educated urban women adopted. As of the mid-2000s, over 60 percent of Turkish women covered their heads outside the home, but only 11 percent wore a türban. A 2008 attempt to lift the university ban was overturned by the Constitutional Court. In December 2010, the government ended the ban in universities and schools, and the civil servant ban lasted a few more years.

  President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan later addressed headscarf-wearing judge and prosecutor candidates at an appointment ceremony. He said: "Regarding our headscarf-wearing judicial members… It may take some time, there may be some difficulty in accepting it, but God willing, everyone will accept the new Turkey where freedoms are applied equally to everyone." The case is sensitive because a judge's religious symbols may raise questions of judicial neutrality.

  Tunisia banned women from wearing the hijab in state offices in 1981, and more restrictions followed in the 1980s and 1990s. In June 2024, Tajikistan's parliament passed a bill banning "foreign clothing" and religious celebrations for children during Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The upper house, Majlisi Milli, approved it on the 19th of June, after the lower house did so on the 8th of May. The bill specifically targets the hijab. Since 2007, the Ministry of Education had banned both Islamic clothing and Western-style miniskirts in schools, and the policy was later extended to all public institutions. Minister of Culture Shamsiddin Orumbekzoda told Radio Free Europe that Islamic dress was "really dangerous."

  In the former Soviet Union, a broad atheist campaign called Hujum targeted female veiling in Soviet Central Asia. The Communist Party aimed to remove every manifestation of gender inequality there.

  On the 15th of March 2004, France passed a law banning symbols or clothes through which students conspicuously display their religious affiliation in public schools. The Belgian city of Maaseik has banned the niqab since 2006. On the 13th of July 2010, France's lower house of parliament overwhelmingly approved a bill to ban the Islamic full veil in public. France became the first European country to ban the full-face veil in public places. Belgium followed in 2011, covering places such as parks and streets.

  In September 2013, voters in the Swiss canton of Ticino approved a ban on face veils in public areas. In 2016, Latvia and Bulgaria banned the burqa in public places. Austria made face veils illegal in October 2017, and the ban also covers scarves, masks and clown paint so that Muslim dress is not singled out. Denmark passed its own full-face ban in 2018. In 2016, Bosnia-Herzegovina's supervising judicial authority upheld a ban on Islamic headscarves in courts, despite protests from the Muslim community, which is 40 percent of the country. In 2017, the European Court of Justice ruled that companies may bar employees from wearing visible religious symbols, including the hijab.

  In 2016, more than 20 French towns banned the burqini, a style of swimwear intended to accord with the rules of hijab. Dozens of women were fined, with some tickets citing the lack of "an outfit respecting good morals and secularism." Some were verbally attacked by bystanders. Media reported that in Nice the police forced a woman to remove part of her clothing on a beach. The mayor's office denied this, and the mayor condemned what he called the "unacceptable provocation" of wearing such clothes after the Nice terrorist attack.

  In 2019, Austria banned the hijab in schools for children up to ten years of age, and parents faced a fine of 440 euro. The Austrian Constitutional Court overturned the ban in 2020. That same year Staffanstorp Municipality in Sweden banned all veils for pupils up to sixth grade.

  In India, Muslim women are generally allowed to wear the hijab or burqa anytime, anywhere. In January 2022, however, a number of colleges in the state of Karnataka stopped students wearing the hijab from entering campus. The state government then issued a circular banning religious clothes in educational institutions that prescribe uniforms. On the 15th of March 2022, the Karnataka High Court upheld the ban, arguing that the practice is non-essential in Islam. Officials in the United States, Bahrain and Pakistan condemned it, as did Human Rights Watch and Malala Yousafzai. A study by the People's Union for Civil Liberties reported that the ban widened the social divide and increased fear among Muslims in Karnataka.

  Some feminists argue that attempts to impose or to ban the veil stem from the same desire to control women's bodies. They say unveiling has historically been a colonial strategy of domination. Itziar Ziga holds that discourses claiming to emancipate Muslim women from the veil are part of an Islamophobic framework.

  In Xinjiang, the Chinese government has banned women from wearing veils as part of a crackdown on what it sees as religious extremism among Muslim Uyghurs.

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• 8. Pressure And Prejudice

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  In Srinagar, the capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, a previously unknown militant group called Lashkar-e-Jabbar claimed responsibility in 2001 for acid attacks on women who did not wear the burqa. The group threatened to punish women who ignored its vision of Islamic dress. Women of Kashmir, most of whom are not fully veiled, defied the warning. Prominent militant and separatist groups condemned the attacks. In 2018, some women in Jordan reported unofficial pressure to wear a hijab.

  In 2015, authorities in Uzbekistan organized a deveiling campaign in the capital, Tashkent. Women in hijab were detained and taken to a police station. Those who agreed to remove it were released after a conversation. Those who refused were sent to the counterterrorism department and given a lecture. Their husbands or fathers were then summoned to convince them to obey. An earlier campaign had run in the Fergana Valley.

  After Shavkat Mirziyoyev was elected president in December 2016, Muslims could express their identity more openly, and hijabs became more widespread. In July 2021, the state allowed wearing the hijab in public places. In Kyrgyzstan in 2016, the government sponsored street banners to dissuade women from wearing it. Kazakhstan has no official ban, but women who wear the hijab report that authorities use a number of tactics to discriminate against them.

  Louis A. Cainkar writes that women in hijab, rather than men, are the predominant target of anti-Muslim attacks, particularly after terrorist attacks. The data suggest this is not because women are more easily identified as Muslims. It is because attackers see them as a threat to the local moral order they want to defend. Some women stop wearing the hijab out of fear or perceived pressure from acquaintances. Many refuse to stop out of religious conviction, even when urged to for their own protection.

  In the workplace, the hijab makes Muslim women more identifiable than Muslim men, especially after the September 11 attacks. Women who wear it face overt and covert discrimination in job applications and on the job, and covert bias often brings more hostile treatment. Some take off the hijab to avoid further prejudice. Others in interviews said they chose not to wear it at all out of fear of future discrimination. In the United States, hijab-wearing Muslim women worry that following their religion could cost them employment.

  A study by Ali and colleagues in 2015 found a relationship between discrimination Muslims face at work and their job satisfaction. An experimental study on hiring found no difference in overt discrimination between Muslim women who wore traditional Islamic clothing and those who did not. But women in the hijab met covert discrimination and were treated in a hostile and rude manner. In observing hiring among 4,000 employers in the United States, researchers found that employers who self-identified as Republican tended to avoid interviewing candidates who appeared Muslim on their social network pages.

  One case that some view as workplace hijab discrimination reached the United States Supreme Court. In EEOC v. Abercrombie & Fitch, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission used its power under Title VII on behalf of a young woman. She had applied for a job and was rejected because her headscarf violated the company's longstanding policy against head coverings and all-black garments.

  Place matters too. South Asian Muslims in the United Arab Emirates perceive less discrimination than their counterparts in the United States. South Asian Muslim women in both places describe their experiences as subtle and indirect. Women who do not wear the hijab reported more perceived discrimination when they were around other Muslims.

  In Belgium, psychologists ran two studies, with 166 and 147 participants. They asked whether discomfort with the hijab and support for banning it in public life came from defending autonomy and universalism or from xenophobia and anti-religious sentiment. Subtle prejudice, values and religious attitudes all predicted stronger anti-veil attitudes, beyond the effects of age and political conservatism.

  Perceived discrimination harms mental and physical well-being, yet it may also relate to more positive well-being. A study in New Zealand found that Muslim women who wore the headscarf did experience discrimination. These negative experiences were overcome by much higher feelings of religious pride, belonging and centrality.

  Each the 1st of February, World Hijab Day carries the argument into 140 countries. It was founded in 2013 by the Bangladeshi American Nazma Khan.

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