format_quote Originally Posted by
Faithq8
Hello,I am 31 years old and I have been wearing my hijab since I was 8. My parents made me wear it and the time I didn’t understand what I was doing but as I got older I resented it because I didn’t have a choice, I was always the odd one out and it made me so bitter sadly that I did not pray as I should.Now, as an adult and mother, I am realizing that only when I let it go will I be at peace with my faith and observe islam as I should. I am not against the idea of hijab but for me it symbolizes my choice (I might chose to wear it after all but the choice should be mine so that I will respect and understand it). I also have a chronic illness called fibromyalgia that is giving me hot flashes and many symptoms that makes life with the hijab very difficult and I have reached a point where I need morphine every few days to manage. Morphine is addictive and can be fatal so I am thinking surely god is the most merciful and would want me to take care of my health and my spirituality more than my hijab in this case? I am so conflicted and the judgement I get is making me hate it more: eg I am being told to shave my head quit my job and stay home as I can ‘survive’ that way without appearing infront of non mahram men. Why not just kill myself and get it all over with? I depend on myself for my financial stability and that of my children. It is not even an option. Please svare your wisdom.
Assalamu Alaikum,
I can understand where you're coming from dear sis, but you also have to recognize that a lot of what you're saying is more emotional than it is logical. It's not always easy wearing hijaab, even without any type of illness, especially today with a lot of distractions towards beautifying ourselves and exposing our modesty. Furthermore the hot flashes and your symptoms from the fibromyalgia will not go away when you take off the hijaab because hijaab is not the cause, and I'd even argue that there hijaabis who go through a lot and still hold tight to their hijaab because illness is a reminder that life is short and we are never in control of it. In the end our return is to Allah.
The point of wearing hijaab is to please Allah solely and perhaps you weren't fully aware of the purpose when you were younger and therefore did not build the pride for wearing it, but over the years you should have been more intentional since you were already in the habit of wearing it instead of allowing your heart to grow resentment towards it. You also do not need to remove it to fall in love with it and gain the feeling to wear it. It seems that more of what you're going through has to do with feeling like you missed out on certain experiences of expressing your beauty or some unsettled trauma from your childhood (needing a sense of control over your decisions and having resentment towards your parents). At the end of the day it is always your choice, but trust me when i tell you that if your imaan is already at a place where you are justifying taking it off, then it will be difficult for you to improve your imaan after you remove it because in the end you are still disobeying a commandment from Allah to pursue whatever your ego/lower self is pushing you towards. Your parents did the best that they could with what they knew, and you should learn from their wrongful methods and be a better example in how to teach your kids to love what Allah commands us. There's nothing that Allah tells us to do that harms us in the end. Ever. And if you should feel something stirring in you inside that tells you to move you away from something which Allah loves, then you have to check yourself and know that there's something wrong.