Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Pambazuka News, 22 February 2007
‘The concern is not my oppression, but the inaccessibility of hijabi bodies and a general discomfort with those who have no problems with visible signs of cultural and religious difference’, writes Kameelah Janan Rasheed in recounting her personal experience of wearing the hijab.
I have spun myself into a web of non-stop, albeit non-linear, intertextual journeys and discursive shadow boxing matches towards a coherent narrative about hijab. I feared that in writing about hijab that my thoughts would be so reminiscent of previous works, that my narrative would be surrendered to the museum of embalmed anachronisms and clichés. This fear kept me running as far as my short legs could carry me away from the oppression versus liberation paradigm, and hiding in a dark corner away from self-hating confessionals about the ugliness of Islam.