I am tired of having to explain to grown men that random, unrelated women do not want your opinions and judgements on the choices that they make in their lives. Not unless they ask for it. That accosting and deriding a woman for her choices cannot be explained away as “enjoining good and forbidding evil”.
I hope the day will come when you will be free to hold your head up and claim what you believe or support without fear of being “dragged”. I pray for the day when being a Muslim woman – especially being visibly so – is not seen as an open invitation for others to have an opinion on how we choose to live our lives. Until that time, and unless you choose other
As I got more and more responses that detailed joy in ibadah, in our hijab, in serving our family and friends, in helping, in giving back; and very few responses about joy for the sake of it or finding the same emotions in things that revolved about us, were about us; I do wonder. Are we truly this altruistic and giving, or have we been taught that our worth was in the value we bring, so much so that we can barely find joy in ourselves, for ourselves, and just because? Do we really not feel joy outside of these roles or are we just scared of owning that, possibly of being judged as not Muslim enough?
