Robin McGonigle
University Congregational Church
June 5, 2022
My Neighbor’s Faith: The Hijabi Monologues
I Cor. 11: 4-6, 13-15
This morning, we are starting a new sermon series, “My Neighbor’s Faith,” which will compare the faith of our friends and neighbors. Instead of telling you about a different faith each week, Paul and I want to share some experiences that people of various faiths have with one another. We think it will help us all understand each other better. I believe that we can be enriched by one another’s faith and wisdom and insights into the ways of God.
When I was a teenager, I sang solos for the Christian Science congregation every month. I was a member of the United Methodist congregation. My mom was a Presbyterian. I studied various religious traditions. These religious traditions taught me that mutual love and respect was key.
While we are using a book entitled “My Neighbor’s Faith,” which is a series of essays by fifty-three different authors, we are drawing from only a few of those essays as well as our own experiences. Interfaith dialogue is an important aspect of understanding one another. It is also an essential part of understanding one’s own faith! Until we know what others believe, it is difficult to distinguish our own beliefs and truly know why we believe what we believe. Jonathan Edwards said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough religion to make us love one another.”
The truth is that at its roots all religion speaks of the Mystery of Life that seeded all of us into life, that holds the cosmos in Being, that is the ultimate End of all our hope. It is the Unity for which we seek, the Oneness of Life that has many faces and speaks in many tongues. (From Joan Chittister)
Several years ago, when I was on my annual trek to Maine, my cousin and I were intrigued by a play at the University of Maine in Augusta, called “The Hijabi Monologues.” A hijabi is not an Arabic word but is a part of the Muslim American lingo and refers to a Muslim woman who wears a headscarf. The monologues are based on true experiences of Muslim women in North America – not just their head coverings.
Many religious traditions have a custom of head coverings – for women or men, or both. In fact, the practice of people wearing head covers and veils for religious purposes is an integral part of all three monotheistic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), as well as other faiths and cultures. The first records of women wearing head coverings dates back to 13th century BCE in Assyria. Women of nobility began wearing head coverings in order to set themselves apart from women of lower social status.
- In the Roman Catholic church, veils are part of the habit worn by some orders of nuns or religious sisters.
- Veils come in assorted sizes and shapes depending on the religious order. The wearing of chapel veils was part of the early Christian tradition. It signified humility and modesty. Of course, many brides of both Protestant, Roman Catholic and non-religious traditions still wear veils. The tradition is not to be seen as a woman displaying inferior status to men. Rather, the veil covers what is sacred and cherished.
- A Kamilavka is a cylindrical hat worn in Eastern Orthodoxy by men and women and is also covered with a veil.
- Bishops in the Roman-Catholic Church wear a miter. It is a tall, peaked hat with a deep cleft on both sides. And two ribbons at the back symbolize the Old and New Testaments.]
- A sheitel is a wig worn by Jewish women to cover the head.
- A Tichel (literally meaning, cloths) are scarves that are worn either over a wig or their own hair by Jewish women. The word Tichel is Yiddish in origin. Jewish women are obligated to wear a tichel in synagogue.
- The practice of men wearing yarmulkes is an ancient tradition for Jewish men and boys that honors God’s presence. Jewish law requires men and boys to cover their head when they pray, at synagogues or Jewish cemeteries, and while studying Judaism.
- Sikh men and women view the dastar (a type of turban) as an article of faith representing honor, self-respect, courage, spirituality, and piety. Wearing a dastar is also practical because it keeps long, uncut, and unruly hair covered.
- Amish women of cover their heads with a simple white or black organdy head bonnet. They pin their long hair up underneath these prayer head coverings, removing them in the evening. The style, shape, and color of the cap varies by community. Amish men always wear a distinctive type of straw hat when they are out of the house.
When we, as Americans, are critical of Middle Eastern women covering their heads and assert that it is sexist, we show our ignorance about head coverings in many other religious traditions for both men and women for millennium. We would not say the same of a Jewish man who wears a yarmulke or an Amish man who wears a straw hat or a Jewish woman who wears a wig. All of these head coverings are for the purpose of honoring God and showing self-respect, courage, and piety.
This is our traditional word from I Cor. 11: 4-6 & 13-15: But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of Christ. Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head shames his head,but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled shames her head—it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved. Judge for yourselves: Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled? Does not nature itself teach you that, if a man wears long hair, it is dishonoring to him,but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.
The Hijabi Monologues is a series of monologues by Muslim women, some who wore hijabs, one who wore a burka, and a couple who did not cover their heads. The play opened my eyes to the experiences of Muslim women in America; not simply why they veil or do not, but who they are inside and what their faith is about. The stories are sad and funny; and represent the experiences of older and younger women. I remembered my friend, Nabil Seyam, when I asked him why some in the Islamic Society of Wichita, had women who wore a hijab and others did not, responded, “Robin, do all of your parishioners practice their faith in exactly the same way?” And I snorted my response. I realized that my question to him was an ignorant one indeed. Of course, Muslim people have a variety of ways to express their faith – some are more observant and exacting with their practices than others.
The Hijabi Monologues begins with a monologue called “I’m Tired.” It is a story that expresses the frustration of feeling that one is constantly called upon to represent all people of the Muslim faith because she is the only Muslim people in her circle know. She also feels the pressure of having to always be a model citizen. It is a daunting role, especially when people ask questions of her – expecting an answer that characterizes the whole of Islam – as if she knows what every Muslim believes or thinks about any given topic!
The next monologue is “The Football Story.” It is a tale of two young women in college, one with a cloth that covers her face, who attend a major college football game and they end up praying in the ABC sports new trailer during the game when the time of prayer comes!
I was reminded of this powerful play when I was preparing for our sermon series. So, I looked and found the monologues! Of course, it would be inappropriate for me to perform any of the monologues for you as a white American Christian. But I want to tell you about one of the monologues. It is titled “The People You Meet.”
The woman on stage (who wears a hijab but is clearly an Islamic American) starts by exclaiming that she has met some people she will never forget – for the rest of her life! And she wonders if it is random or if there is some greater purpose in the meeting. Then she names the type of people she has met. The first is the liberal integrationist! She met them in a modern British poetry class and found it inspiring to see them fascinated to study poetry for the sake of poetry. But at the end of the semester, they approached her to say what a pleasure it had been to meet her with these words, “My dear, your accent is simply excellent. It is so American. Keep it up!”
The next person she is describes she calls the Democratizing-Women’s Rights-World Peace Activist! She says she met this woman right after Afghanistan was bombed by the US and some people were feeling guilt about freeing Afghani women from the clutches of what she describes as “evil brown men.” This woman approached her in a parking lot. “Honey, honey, I have to tell you something!” “Honey, you’re free!”
“What?”
“Honey, Mullah Omar can’t get you!”
“But, ma’am, I don’t know Mullah Omar…?”
She looked confused, “But you are free! Talibans and Afghans are free!”
She was incredibly sweet, so the Hajabi woman politely noted, “I’m sorry, Ma’am; I don’t know Mullah Omar.”
“Where are you from?”
“Fort Lauderdale”
“Oh… Fort Lau-der-dale?” she said it slowly while looking up and down and wondering if it was a city in – perhaps – Saudi Arabia.
And then there was the Cultural Anthropologist. He walked behind her for several minutes before asking, “So, could you tell me. I have been so curious. I notice some girls wear black coverings. But you are wearing purple. Is it a cue of tribal interstitial kinships? An artifact of a cultural paradigmatic shift? A sacrificial ritualistic positioning of power within your ingroup? Really, why purple?”
“Uhm, well, I guess because it matches with my…. Dress?”
“Oh. It matches…”
Finally, there was the creepy Neo-Nazi. They were standing together at the train stop and he offered her a cigarette. She declined. He followed her onto the train once it stopped and asked, “So, what do you think of that problem over there?”
“Over where?”
“You know, over there. The Jews. The Muslims.”
She says she felt her scarf sticking to her sweaty neck.
“What do you mean? Are you referring to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?”
Then he told her that he thought Jews should be exterminated.
She noticed then, when she looked down at her own brown hands and then glanced at his hands that he had a small swastika tattooed on his wrist. She stepped off the train at the next stop.
However, she offers, sometimes you meet that human being who is also in search of meaning and looking for someone who might understand. When she was in the library one morning, someone put a note beside her. A young, heavy-set woman quickly walked away, wiping tears from her eyes. She picked up the note, unfolded it and read what was written inside to her: “In these times when women are confronted with intense pressure to conform and achieve impossible standards of beauty, you have made the choice to be different. Thank you for being an inspiration. You make me realize there’s hope.”
And, she noted, these were the moments that made all the others pale… and give her hope.
Resources Used:
“My Neighbor’s Faith” edited by Jennifer Howe Peace or N. Rose & Gregory Mobley. New York: Orbis Books. 2021.
“The Hijabi Monologues Project Manual and Script.” Sahar Ishtiaque Ullah. 2009. https://serendipstudio.org