Hijab: (Arabic) Veil.

A philosophy that has originated in urban centers.  A transnational movement of modesty and subversiveness.  A response to misconceptions that Muslim women, and especially Muslim women who veil (or who hijab), are submissive, passive, victimized and the worth of two bearded goats (on a good day).  A response to Oprah pulling the burqa off of a brown woman on stage at Madison Square Garden circa 2002.

Burqa: (Pashto) A full-body veil that covers the face.  Seen in Queens during celebrations at Flushing Meadow Park.  Seen lifted up during the post-Taliban years in Afghanistan.  Seen torn off by American women (and in one comic book, by Wonder Woman as well).

Hijab Punk styles… too numerous to count. But some examples are: Hijab combined with green nails, pink sneakers and an affinity with Rainbow Brite; Goth hijab girls who thrive on their mother’s kajal collection; Hijab with safety pins and Sid Vicious references on their t-shirt… the list goes on.

Ultimate Hijab Punk story to read: “Misli Midhib, Punk Rock Hijabi” by Cihan Kaan about a girl named Misli who is dropped down to the earth via a meteor and who covers her cosmic skin with a full hijab and performs Sufi whirls to disrupt the narratives of Muslim women.  One of the stories in the forthcoming short story collection titled: Halal Pork. Here is an excerpt from the story:

A nameless lightning bolt hit a magical Afghan carpet from a distant star,  carrying on it a wandering babushka caught in a world between the skies.  Drifting space rocks, a homeland memory that dropped her through our atmosphere onto the Central Asian steppe of Coney Island, New York. She walked the rustic shores, lived in broken amusement parks and worked silently inside sideshows.

Ultimate Hijab Punk artist to follow: Princess Hijab, a young woman based on the streets of Paris, who interweaves the philosophy of Adbusters and the Hijab.  (See photo above from Princess Hijab website). She describes herself as:

This is the story of a young woman fighting every day for a noble cause: she wants to “hijabize” advertising. Princess Hijab knows that L’Oréal and Dark&Lovely have been killing her little by little… When she was a teen, she heard about movements such as Adbuster; but since 9/11, things have changed… Princess Hijab will go on, veiled and alone, forever asserting her physical and mental integrity. By day, she wears a white veil, symbol of purity. By night, her black veil is the expression of her vengeful fight for a cause (custom ad). With her spray paint and black marker pen, she is out to hijabize advertising. Even Kate Moss is targeted

Cihan Kaan author of Halal Pork (forthcoming, Up-Set Press)

Incorporating this concept of Hijab Punk, or the more popular (and more macho) Muslim Punk (which draws origins from punk garage bands and from the writer Hanif Kureish, the Pakistani/British novelist) into a standard Muslim Diaspora course at a college was the best thing I ever did as an academic. Not only was it “snooze proof” because Punk aesthetics is always so confrontational, brutally honest, and anti-establishment (which is what makes the term Muslim Punk so controversial), but it introduced a discussion of fashion, music, and film in the construction of one’s hybrid and sometimes transnational identity.  Its the fluidity of Hijab Punk or Muslim Punk that appealed to my students and myself.

Students listening to Kaan read.