Hijab On/Webcam Off
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 amongst men where it becomes a symbolic reference to Muslim women.
During the pandemic many of us have experienced the intrusion of workplaces 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. 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 (the practices of the Prophet SAW). 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.
Moreover, such reductive conversations around hijab hide the expansive nature of the term and the possibilities it holds for us to think differently about our boundaries and interactions with one another more broadly. For example, we find حجاب in the Quran referring to a barrier or separation between Paradise and Hell; between Allah and mankind; between the Prophet SAW when he recites the Quran and those who disbelieve in it, and more. Often it is in reference to a barrier unseen to the human eye, sometimes it is not. All of the possibilities these various manifestations of hijab hold are of importance and interest to us. Through “Hijab On/Webcam Off” we want to think through not only such questions – but the hegemony of secular knowledge itself.