World Hijab Day is to recognize Muslim women who choose to live a life of modesty, and was first started on Feb. 1, 2013, according to the movement’s official website.
The movement was founded by New York resident Nazma Khan who wanted other women –Muslim and non-Muslim -to be tolerant and to go through the experience of wearing Hijab for one day.
For many people, the Hijab is considered a sign of oppression, which ledKhan to start this initiative to show people why women to choose the Hijab, a choice which often causes controversy.
Khan was inspired by herexperience of wearing the Hijab since she was brought up in the New York CityBronx and suffered from discrimination for wearing it. She was called batman in middle school for example, and when she went to college after 9-11she was called Osama Bin Laden.
Shebelieves the only way to stop discrimination is to ask other women to go through the experience of covering up for a whole day.
All in all, 116 countries are set to participate in the day and Khan aims at getting one million women to take part. Among women who showed support of World Hijab Day are Miss Universe 2013 Carole Lee, and Amina Sambo, wife of the vice President of Nigeria who will be a guest speaker for World Hijab Day in Nigeria.
The Cairo Post spoke to Sally Zohney, one of the co-founders of the Uprising of Women in the Arab World movement, about World Hijab Day. Zohney said the Hijab is a personal freedom, although she emphasized that this was her personal opinion and did not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other founders of the movement.
