Saturday, February 2, 2013

Hijab for a Day

Most of our readers in America probably didn't notice, but yesterday, February 1 was the first annual "World Hijab Day".  For those of you who don't know, the hijab is the headscarf that Muslim women wear.  World Hijab Day was an opportunity for non-Muslim women to try out a headscarf.

The BBC ran a nice article on their website (the link is here), talking to women from New York, from California, and from the UK.

The article is an interesting read - and also features a nice graphic about halfway down the page that explains the differences between the hijab, the burka, and other forms of the headscarf.  Most Westerners use these words interchangeably, but they actually mean quite different things.

Here in the Gulf, women generally wear the "shayla" (not a "burka" or a "hijab").  Here's a picture of Cindy with her mother - not celebrating World Hijab Day - but just trying on the shayla when we visited a the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi a year or two ago.



We hope you enjoy the photo and the article (here's the link again).  Happy World Hijab Day.

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