The Headscarf Goes Pink

Janmohamed says she struggled with publishers since she didnt fit into any of the boxes they had reserved for Muslim women such as oppressed,liberated,or terrorist. Her tale,instead,was of an Oxford-educated hijabi Muslim marketing professional who,at the age of 13,dreamt of Hollywood actor John Travolta arriving at her North London flat,falling in love with her,converting to Islam and marrying her. Of course,Shelina never met Travolta. Instead,she baked samosas every weekend as prospective grooms and their families came visiting,she searched for suitable matches on websites and went for speed-dating till she fell in love with a man she met through a common friend and,soon,married him.

A Muslim chick-lit,you would say,but Love in a Headscarf which is yet to arrive in India is not limited to being the diary of a single woman finding her Prince Charming (Shelina calls him Muslim Man Travolta),bonding with girlfriends over the lack of good men and workplace woes. The book swings between Shelinas blind dates and anecdotes about the lives of Islamic prophets and their wives,as well as the meaning of Quranic verses. After every bad date one guy tells her shes too short,another keeps her waiting in a café for two hours while he watches cricket at home Shelina reflects on Islamic teachings and how they could help her find a spouse. But the focus of the book is the headscarf how it becomes an object of political discussion after 9/11 and,more importantly,how it becomes an obstacle in her getting Mr Right. Most men turn her down because she wears a headscarf. They told me they wanted to show off a pretty wife to their friends. A hijabi woman would never meet such an expectation. Nor would she ever want to, she says. Other men,says Shelina,were embarrassed about their religious identity being exhibited if they had a hijabi wife. Its a mystery that even as many Muslim women in Europe and the US are taking to the headscarf,the men are afraid of being open about their faith, she says,Its their choice. But when they ask hijabi women to forego the headscarf,they infringe on their freedom of choice.

The headscarf got her many tags walking-talking religious text,boring,dull and old-fashioned by suitors and matchmaker aunties; and oppressed and terrorist by the western media. Public discussion on Muslim women rarely includes the voices of Muslim women themselves. Since I wear the headscarf,I am considered too repressed to speak for myself and,in fact,complicit in my own subjugation. Only Muslim women who have rejected Islam are allowed to be part of the discussion, she says.

At work,her white male colleagues ask questions about her hair what its colour is and if it gets squashed under the scarf. I had withdrawn a visual cue by which they could define me. I didnt find their questions offending,in fact,their curiosity was amusing, she writes in her book,adding that hijabi women love their mane as much as other women do. We kept it styled,trimmed and coloured,just like everyone else, she writes. And so,they have their good headscarf days or groundhog days. The headscarves are mostly pink or purple or light green. Boys like pale colours. And green is the colour of attraction, she writes.

Besides her Muslim and British identities,Janmohamed looks at her South Asian roots. She laments the hypocrisy of South Asian Muslims who dub their ideas about women as being sanctioned by religion. She would climb the Kilimanjaro mountain and when the Aunties protest that good girls dont climb mountains she tells them that Prophet Mohammed first wife Khadija had indeed climbed one.