Some sisters struggle with it while some easily adopt it without any doubts or questions. Some may wear it as a fashion symbol and many wear it for the sole purpose as worship and because it is what Allah wants from them. Some even wear it for cultural purposes! Some don’t wear it and some beautify it.
I know where my thoughts stand on the topic of modesty and the hijab and I want to point out something. I’m not a scholar not even a student of knowledge, but I do know one thing from what I’ve learned from my own personal experience of being at one extreme end of Islam. I used to be one of those who used to look down on those who don’t cover or who beautify the hijab. I used to be harsh and displayed arrogance towards those who didn’t cover properly.
I realized, everything is from Allah and not from my own self. For those who cover correctly and do it as worship to please Allah, this is not from your own hands. This is a blessing from Allah so you shouldn’t display yourself to be better than anyone else because Allah can change your heart literally in a heartbeat and the roles can reverse.
You may become like those you are criticizing and dehumanizing. May Allah protect us from that. But what I’m trying to say here is, instead of pointing out the obvious importance of hijab and covering and telling everyone who doesn’t cover what they probably already know, we should be addressing the core issue.
And what is the core issue? We don’t know Allah as well as we think we do. It is knowing Allah, tapping into your fitrah & purifying your heart. Emaan doesn’t grow in the heart and stay there. When it grows it will show through our actions. When it shines through, hijab will be easy, Salah will be easy and every worship will become easier. Because when you know and love Allah, all worship will become easier, you will just want to do it. Why is it easy to show love to your kids? Why is it easy to sacrifice things for the ones you love? Because it comes from the heart.
Worship stems from love for Allah. So if you see sisters not wearing hijab or not covering properly, instead of stating what is already obvious, try to share more things like what is the true meaning of loving Allah, how do we learn to love Allah? How do we learn to know Allah? We also need to learn to know ourselves and love ourselves in the process. The relationship between you and Allah and you and yourself needs to be fixed and needs to grow in order for everything else to work.
Purifying our hearts, unlearning what society has ingrained in us, introspection, self dialogue are some ways to start tapping into knowing yourself and knowing Allah.
We need to address the heart before we do anything because actions are by intentions. If the heart is not sound, the intention will not clean and it will show through our actions.