Hijab, “empowerment” and “choice”—the sunny side

In my previous post, I said that my (now ex-) husband did not force me to put on hijab. In the ’80’s, that was quite true. If anything, he resented the fact that I wore it, partly because he thought that it made him look like a fundamentalist. (While he was certainly growing into one day by day, he wasn’t ready to publicly announce it through his wife’s clothing; his immigration status was tenuous, and he was worried about what might await him if he ended up having to return to his homeland, where Muslim fundamentalists were often suppressed by the government.) Sometimes, he’d refuse to be seen with me in public if he thought that my attire was too conservative-looking.