Nazma Khan’s World Hijab Day website proclaims a religious cause, but it’s okay for it to be practiced in public schools for cultural and liberal reasons of inclusion.
It would follow that a Christian Day, or Jewish Day, in a public school, focused on a religious practice like baptism or wearing a yarmulke is not okay, because the Judeo-Christian majority thing makes everything different.
A closer look at Khan’s website on the World Hijab Day movement demonstrates the liberal event reasons for involving public schools lack sense if schools are consistent in not indoctrinating and promoting religious practices during school.
World Hijab Day, scheduled February 1, is an administration and faculty-promoted event. It takes place during the operation of school hours, involving class-room activities also.
Khan said in a video posted prominently on her website that her creator made wearing the hijab a matter of law, and the faithful wearing of a hijab uniform makes one Hijabi.
“I chose to cover up to obey my creator and to make a statement about my identity as a Muslim woman,” Khan said.
She said further that she faced persecution, called names like Batman and ninja, and she was even spat upon. She used a boy’s entrance to her public high school because the girls were especially fierce.
She was eventually confronted by a group of boys also, she added.
This was intensely more uncomfortable in college, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, Islamic terror attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania that killed thousands. She felt the ire every day.
“Being a Hijabi is a direct sign saying that she is a Muslim,” Khan said.
She graduated and opened a Hijabi clothing business, selling hijab while promoting her World Hijab Day website: inviting all to try on the uniform of the Muslim faith for women.
Khan said that with great success, World Hijab Day helps Muslim women to embrace faithfulness to the religious practice of daily Hijabi – making a lifetime commitment.
“This is an apologetic form of self-expression,” Khan said.
One participant that Khan’s website celebrates is interviewed as sharing her conversion to becoming Hijabi.
“By next World Hijab Day, I will be proud to say I have been Hijabi for a whole year, insu-Allah,” she said.
Others interviewed noted that they were Christian, but “love our Muslim sisters,” and Pagan, but vow with friends to wear the hijab for a full year.
Also cited: Omar Suleiman; the Islamic sheikh assured the properly religious that World Hijab Day is not heretical or wrongfully innovative – noted as religious “bidha.”
the hijab is a part of true religion, and this is simply an opportunity to invite people to try it
It would be if it were a religious act, but as an act of religious advocacy, the invitation for non-Muslims to participate for a day is “dawah,” a form of proselytizing for the faith.
“The hijab is part of true religion, and this is simply an opportunity to invite people to try it,” Suleiman said.
Ismail Menk, an Islamic Mufti, said, “Like we have weekend street dawah once a month, or more or less, there is nothing wrong in doing this.”
They approve Khan’s efforts, placing Islamic authority behind her as “dai” – a declared promoter of Islam – for she invites or summons outsiders to true religion (dawah).
That declaration of her status is certified in part with the noted invitation on the website:
“We ask non-Muslim and non-Hijabi Muslim women worldwide to observe Hijab for a day.”
If the religious nature of being “Hijabi” were not clear enough, Khan offers added statements.
“The purpose behind her hijab is to obey her creator,” she noted. “God (Allah) legislated hijab to free her.”
She also stated, “He ordered hijab as an honor and sign of dignity for women.”
Numerous leaders and political authorities endorsed World Hijab Day on Khan’s website as a means of declaring solidarity with the religious practice of hijab, stating further their agreement with the movement to reduce religious bigotry and persecution against Hijabi.
When they serve snowballs in hell ..
Christian kids do have every year, and cannot be forbidden, Rally around the flag pole for early morning Christian prayer. And there is a Bring Your Bible to School Day that cannot be forbidden.