My Freedom

It’s Pakistan. Not covering my head and face would make me a Non-Muslim, an unashamed, unsavory reputed girl. Would it? That’s what people in my particular university think. Not all, but yes, majority do.

6:47 am bus. Every morning I stride in and see all the seats occupied but no faces to be seen.
I enter my college and see girls all covered up, dressed in black waving at me. I smile. Wave back. Thinking hard, who was she?

I enter my classroom; see a lady in velum getting cozy with a boy at the back seat. After 2 minutes, I enter the auditorium, sit next to my ‘male’ classmate, say hello, I am the one barbed that why did I talk to the boy sitting next to me and that I should ‘cover myself properly’.

Our Pakistani society is not directing us to the right path. It is forcing us. This forcing is leading many young women to frustration, which in my case holds true.

Covering myself will not make me more sanctimonious, upright neither honest, neither it would give an impression to others that I pray 5 times a day.

I don’t need to prove to anyone that it’s a cloak that makes me a good person or a girl who has a faith in Allah. I am not degrading the Muslim attire that it is dire. It just doesn’t show others who I really am. I’m not comfortable wearing 2 layered cloth in the sweltering heat and covering my nose and mouth at the same time, and die of suffocation.

I am a young Muslim woman. Dressing up civilly and decently is my duty, which I am fulfilling.

It is essential to point out that our religion Islam does not strictly, on gunpoint asks us to cover our heads.

Why does our society throttle girls to wholly cover ourselves in black? Why not men?
My questioning doesn’t challenge the requisites and conditions laid by our religion. I am questioning this world, my world that is MY choice.

A Veil liberates. It represses. It is a prayer. It is a prison. It protects. It obliterates? Rarely a piece of cloth has been assigned so many roles, what am i to believe? Is it really freedom of choice for me? Who will decide?