In this past year, there has been an epidemic of girls and young women removing their Hijab permanently (No, I don't plan to rant about this for the rest of this blog), and the question many people have been asking is- why? Lack of understanding? Being forced to observe it in the first place? Peer pressure? Islamophobic prejudice?
It's probably a combination of the above reasons and others, but a while back someone mentioned a reason that stuck in my mind, frustrated me, and so here I am writing about it. Cultural religiosity. Very often there are certain practices or values that our cultures uphold (not religion), which we force onto others. For example- a family may not allow their daughters of reasonable age to wear make-up around the house where everyone is Mahram to her. Islamically speaking, there's no problem with it. In fact, it's in a female's nature to groom herself and look good in the presence of those close to her. Culturally however, it's a different story. There's no concrete reasoning behind not allowing it, but sometimes we think we are being 'extra religious' by making something totally Halal, Haram. Same goes for other issues like clapping at Mawaleed and other happy occasions. Again- the 'extra religiosity'. The list of such practices and prohibitions goes on. The point is- they have no Islamic backing and often our jurists have already said they're halal. I actually remember times when I was very young and was taught in the Madressa, for example, that XYZ would invalidate my Salah, only to find out years later when I read up for myself, that XYZ was Makrooh, but woud not invalidate my Salah. Whether the teachers did this with the 'extra religious' mindset or whether they themselves were just unaware, I don't know, but I do know that as a child, little misconceptions like this all adding up made Islam look very difficult and demanding.
Back in the day, it may have been easy to get away with merging our culture with religion, but now in a time where the culture around us isn't Islamic, when we have no choice but to read up and research for ourselves if we want to follow Islam correctly, it's not so acceptable or easy to disallow something simply because...I said so, I don't like it, we don't do this, it's just not acceptable, what will people say? Alhmdulillah, the migration of many communities has forced a lot of us into the realm of free-thinking and self-education.
How does all this relate to the Hijab problem? Well, a lot of youth see these cultural prohibitions (and allowances in some cases) and think that this is what Islam is about. And what do they do? Run. As I mentioned before, I'm not writing about Hijab specifically- it just so happened that it was what sparked these thoughts and this blog. There are a ton of other problems where people who are brought up in Muslim families are giving up on religion because to them, to be religious involves all these totally non-Islamic practices and values. They throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Before I get attacked for shunning culture altogether- I'm not. Imam Ali (a.s) has said that there is no greater heritage than culture. Often it is culture which ends up drawing someone back into religion. What I am saying however, is that when it reaches this point where there is a 'culture overload' driving people away from religion, it's high time to make a little sacrifice and go back to the bare, Islamic basics.
