AURAH AND IKHTILAT
Being a girl, you’ve been told to walk a certain way, to talk a certain way and to act properly. You feel obliged to create a perfect image in front of your parents. But in your heart, you feel caged, trapped – like you’re in a skin that you don’t even know belongs to whom anymore. The question now is, when do YOU decide to cover your aurah? When is it that you’re ready?
I learnt the hard way that covering had to be my choice. I learnt that being a girl, you’re definitely responsible for yourself but your dad gets the blame. When I was little, I made this grave mistake of making my hair super straight. It always looked nice after going to the saloon, all blown out, soft and bouncy as compared to my normal curls. Straight after, I didn’t really follow proper protocol of the hair care treatment and so you can imagine, my hair was frizzy and well, ugly.
Every Friday, my school encouraged us to wear the hijab since we would read the Yaasin together. But it depends on us to wear for the rest of the day or not. Since then I kept wearing that hijab everyday for a while. The day my hair got better, I took my hijab off right after my parents would send me to school. It was like living a double life. Don’t get me wrong, my parents supported me to wear the hijab but they never forced it on me. Only grandmas do that. To be fair, I was really young. I didn’t really like people telling me what to do and during that time, I was being bullied so the only defence I knew was to turn into one of the boys. That’s the short version of how I started to dress like boys, sweaters, dark t-shirts underneath and the constant same black bawal hijab daily.
One day, I left something at home and thankfully my dad hadn’t left for work just yet, and so he came to school and sent it to me. I forgot that I wasn’t wearing the hijab but as I was walking up the stairs, I remembered that he saw that I opened my hijab. That evening, when I went out to help him with his stuff, he said that if I wanted to cover up, I should do it. Not do it halfway because he would take half the blame too. From that day on, I made sure I wore my hijab as properly as I knew.
I know some people don’t agree with some way of wearing hijab and I know there’s not support or relevant reason why we should allow it. But if they wore it for all the wrong reasons, what’s the use? We are taught that we do everything with the niah for Allah Taala, and yet people still judge because some are still on their training wheels. Its great that others are beyond in the covering aurah department but everyone has their own pace. All someone can ask for is a little understanding and patience for us to keep up.
At first I wore my hijab to hide my flaws. Then I wore it for my dad. Now, I wear it for me. I know it seems a little selfish, but think about it, without following the trends etc. – you’re actually inclined to do something when it’s just for yourself. But usually that’s the last decision. There’s always people influencing you, but make sure if you do something good no matter what the first niah was, you’d eventually stick with it.
Covering aurah for girls are always debated day by day but at the end of it, its something we need to do. Something we owe to our dad at the very least. I know you’d be expecting a full on Islamic Review but that’s the truth. People don’t usually easily get revelations just by staying selfish; you start seeing things differently when you see from someone else’s eyes. You open up. Eventually, you see that you’re also the one that’s benefiting the most. At the end of the day, it was your decision and everyone benefits from it too.
