Welcome to the first episode of Hijab On/Webcam Off, a Geographies of Embodiment research collective series. Hijab On/Webcam Off is a project reclaiming conversations around hijab from the mainstream where it is often the prerogative of non-Muslim, white supremacist, patriarchal and secular-imperialist narratives; or a topic of discussion among Muslim men where it becomes a symbolic reference to Muslim women.
During the COVID-19 pandemic many of us experienced the intrusion of workplace and other meetings and events into our personal spaces be they homes, bedrooms or anywhere else via webcams. With this came the expectation that our cameras should be on. For those of us who wear hijab, this created conditions where we had to put our hijabs on even within our personal or familial spaces because of intrusion from outside. This got us thinking about the line between the public and private, indoors and outdoors, as well as considering questions of performance and performativity.
This project will explore these themes and more. Primarily, as Muslim women, we are creating space to have the sorts of conversations we want to, around hijab. “Hijab” has become a term loaded with assumed meaning and assigned solely to the headscarf Muslim women wear, despite not bearing such specific or singular meaning within the Quran or sunnah. One outcome of this reductive focus is that Muslim women are made to live our journeys with Islam and relationships to Allah in exceptionally public ways that often have punitive repercussions from wider society and the state’s surveillance mechanisms. Visit our webpage here.
We invite you to contribute to the conversation, too, by sending in a voice-message reply through the Anchor.fm website or app.
