If you were a Muslim woman, would you wear a hijab?

[Crumpets]

Most likely. I'm uncomfortable unbuttoning below the top button of my shirt, so I imagine I'd dress pretty modestly regardless of my religion.

[they don't love you like i love you]

OK a few points:

-As stated, I have some deeply held principles about how I don't care about my culture or heritage and just want to do things my way. That's something that would likely be consistent no matter how I was raised (also why I know I wouldn't follow Jewish rules if I was born Jewish, barely any Jews in the region here do, so why would I of all people be the exception?)
-I actually converted to my current religious affiliation, I wasn't born into it. So me converting to it from something else isn't a stretch.
-I grew up in a conservative part of North Dakota and still ended up "all liberal all the time". So I'm not a product of my environment in that sense.

[Classic Conservative]

I would a) never in a million years become a Muslim and b) never in a million years become a woman.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

OK a few points:

-As stated, I have some deeply held principles about how I don't care about my culture or heritage and just want to do things my way. That's something that would likely be consistent no matter how I was raised (also why I know I wouldn't follow Jewish rules if I was born Jewish, barely any Jews in the region here do, so why would I of all people be the exception?)
-I actually converted to my current religious affiliation, I wasn't born into it. So me converting to it from something else isn't a stretch.
-I grew up in a conservative part of North Dakota and still ended up "all liberal all the time". So I'm not a product of my environment in that sense.

Do you understand that people can be products of their environment through their inclination to take the opposite stance of their environment?

[pikachu]

OK a few points:

-As stated, I have some deeply held principles about how I don't care about my culture or heritage and just want to do things my way. That's something that would likely be consistent no matter how I was raised (also why I know I wouldn't follow Jewish rules if I was born Jewish, barely any Jews in the region here do, so why would I of all people be the exception?)
-I actually converted to my current religious affiliation, I wasn't born into it. So me converting to it from something else isn't a stretch.
-I grew up in a conservative part of North Dakota and still ended up "all liberal all the time". So I'm not a product of my environment in that sense.

Not that I agree, but I can see how all those things might hold true for a white person, though in my experience it doesn't all that often. However, if you were born a Muslim in this country, you're most likely  a non-white or likely your parents or grandparents are from a different countries, and more likely to be part of the 'other' than any white person (especially if you're a stigmatized other). That stuff makes a big difference in how view culture and religion.

[they don't love you like i love you]

That's true yes, but also why I added the caveat of being from a very assimilated family.

Honestly I think the main reason I have such difficulty taking talk of how there's way you can know seriously is because my anecdotal personal experience has shown some things people act like are widespread rules here are nonsense. Things like that no one EVER leaves Catholicism because the cultural ties are too strong or even that it's less common than for other Christian denominations or that all ethnic Jews care a lot about the culture and practices even the secular ones. Because not only are those things not even remotely true amongst my social circles and my entire life, they are so far off I was pretty shocked to hear that anyone actually thinks that way...

[Хahar 🤔]

Good for you. You make this exact post at least twice a week.

[IceSpear]

I would a) never in a million years become a Muslim and b) never in a million years become a woman.

I don't believe this thread was giving you a choice in the matter.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

[they don't love you like i love you]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

Excuse me!? *slap*

[SWE]

I would a) never in a million years become a Muslim and b) never in a million years become a woman.

I don't believe this thread was giving you a choice in the matter.

"If I was a Muslim woman I would stop being a Muslim and a woman"

[they don't love you like i love you]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

Excuse me!? *slap*

Arab and especially Persian women usually have beautiful hair though. Obscuring that with a hijab is pretty wrong and repressive. Not that most Arab and Persian-American women do of course.

[Devout Centrist]

Probably, mine would be covered in polka dots.

Who am I kidding, I have no g clue, I'm not a Muslim woman.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

Excuse me!? *slap*

Arab and especially Persian women usually have beautiful hair though. Obscuring that with a hijab is pretty wrong and repressive. Not that most Arab and Persian-American women do of course.

I'm not fond of arguments that hijab is oppressive in general (although I also don't buy that it's intrinsically liberating; it strikes me as one of those things that is what you make of it), but at least such arguments tend to be more valid than 'if part of a woman is physically attractive, it's wrong and repressive to cover it'.

To answer your question, I honestly don't know--not because I'm not willing to engage the question or imagine how my basic personality might shake out in a different environment, because I very much am willing to do those things, but because I don't know how my reasons for my actual religious views and tastes would apply to that situation. As things actually stand, I rebelled against the spiritual-but-not-religious post-hippie MTD that I was raised with by becoming a small-o-orthodox Christian with very pompous and ceremonious aesthetic and liturgical preferences and a penchant for imitating what limited understanding I have of my ancestors (when I'm away at divinity school I keep a photo of my CCD teacher grandmother in my room when I'm studying). I don't know if I would rebel in an assimilated Muslim environment by rejecting the assimilation (and thus becoming a more conservative Muslim and probably more inclined to observe hijab) or by rejecting the Islam (and probably becoming some sort of Eastern Christian).

[afleitch]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

Excuse me!? *slap*

Arab and especially Persian women usually have beautiful hair though. Obscuring that with a hijab is pretty wrong and repressive. Not that most Arab and Persian-American women do of course.

I'm not fond of arguments that hijab is oppressive in general (although I also don't buy that it's intrinsically liberating; it strikes me as one of those things that is what you make of it), but at least such arguments tend to be more valid than 'if part of a woman is physically attractive, it's wrong and repressive to cover it'.

To answer your question, I honestly don't know--not because I'm not willing to engage the question or imagine how my basic personality might shake out in a different environment, because I very much am willing to do those things, but because I don't know how my reasons for my actual religious views and tastes would apply to that situation. As things actually stand, I rebelled against the spiritual-but-not-religious post-hippie MTD that I was raised with by becoming a small-o-orthodox Christian with very pompous and ceremonious aesthetic and liturgical preferences and a penchant for imitating what limited understanding I have of my ancestors (when I'm away at divinity school I keep a photo of my CCD teacher grandmother in my room when I'm studying). I don't know if I would rebel in an assimilated Muslim environment by rejecting the assimilation (and thus becoming a more conservative Muslim and probably more inclined to observe hijab) or by rejecting the Islam (and probably becoming some sort of Eastern Christian).

If anything that explanation; drive towards aestheticism, tradition, need to reclaim some familial identity that isn't necessarily your inheritance would probably motovate you to consider it. You might end up making the connection (that many women do not) that the hijab is a cultural dress; it's alien to a Pakistani or Bangladeshi heritage for example and that it's essentially Saudi cultural colonialisation. So reject it. And knowing you you'd over think it to get to that point

[Antonio the Sixth]

To answer your question, I honestly don't know--not because I'm not willing to engage the question or imagine how my basic personality might shake out in a different environment, because I very much am willing to do those things, but because I don't know how my reasons for my actual religious views and tastes would apply to that situation.

The point in my response (and, I assume, in those of Xahar, Crabcake and others) was to say that there is no such thing as a "basic personality" independent from one's life experiences and (possibly, to a limited extent) one's genetics. Thus, for me, the impact of having been raised as a White male in a vaguely Catholic household between Italy and France is as much an integral part of my basic personality as the attitude I'd take toward any cultural context I could have been raised into.

That's not to say thinking about these hypotheticals is never worthwhile. It's just that the change in life experience that BRTD is describing is so drastic that it would be hard for me to identify what part of me would stay the same. At the very least, he should have been more specific in that respect.

[DavidB.]

For me it isn't that difficult. I grew up with a fully assimilated Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father and ended up being quite traditionally Jewish. It's not unreasonable to expect that if my mother were Muslim, I may have ended up becoming a traditional Muslim. For me an important turning point in self-identifying as a Jew was being confronted with anti-Semitism. It wouldn't have been very hard to be confronted with anti-Muslim sentiments either (disregarding the theoretical dissimilarities between anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiments here, but I doubt it really matters; it's more a matter of perception). I am also quite the contrarian/rebel, so I think that if my upbringing and personality were relatively similar and I were a Muslim woman, I may be wearing a hijab. At the same time I care very much about my personal freedom, perhaps more than halacha permits, so if I were a Muslim woman and I had the feeling a hijab would be infringing on my freedom, this would be an important reason not to wear it.

[Torie]

I have trouble imagining myself as being religious in any way. I would have to have a total brain transplant. I am just not wired that way. So I can't answer the question. Same with sartorial standards set by others. I ignore them where practicable.

[Ban my account ffs!]

I'm not a Muslim woman so I can't possibly answer this question. I do, however, love your ability to construct hypotheticals imagining yourself in different situations where somehow nothing about you changes at all.

[Figueira]

I'm Jewish, and I don't really follow Jewish laws, so presumably a Muslim woman version of me would have a similar outlook.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

Excuse me!? *slap*

Arab and especially Persian women usually have beautiful hair though. Obscuring that with a hijab is pretty wrong and repressive. Not that most Arab and Persian-American women do of course.

Stepping *out* of character for a second: there's no intrinsic value in beauty or universal for such. Moreover, you minimize individual agency by assuming that this system in place is only one of men telling women to follow these rules.

Stepping back *into* character, I, as a beautiful Persian woman, can choose what standards my appearance and dress shall be judged by, and they certainly won't be yours!

[Mopsus]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

Excuse me!? *slap*

Arab and especially Persian women usually have beautiful hair though. Obscuring that with a hijab is pretty wrong and repressive. Not that most Arab and Persian-American women do of course.

I'm not fond of arguments that hijab is oppressive in general (although I also don't buy that it's intrinsically liberating; it strikes me as one of those things that is what you make of it), but at least such arguments tend to be more valid than 'if part of a woman is physically attractive, it's wrong and repressive to cover it'.

Human beauty is an expression of God's goodness, and teaching people that they should be ashamed of their beauty is immoral.

Is that a more valid argument?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

If I were a Muslim woman, I'd be too busy being absolutely beautiful to join this useless forum and answer your inane questions.

That's actually a pretty good answer. Although it also implies that you wouldn't wear one.

Excuse me!? *slap*

Arab and especially Persian women usually have beautiful hair though. Obscuring that with a hijab is pretty wrong and repressive. Not that most Arab and Persian-American women do of course.

I'm not fond of arguments that hijab is oppressive in general (although I also don't buy that it's intrinsically liberating; it strikes me as one of those things that is what you make of it), but at least such arguments tend to be more valid than 'if part of a woman is physically attractive, it's wrong and repressive to cover it'.

Human beauty is an expression of God's goodness, and teaching people that they should be ashamed of their beauty is immoral.

Is that a more valid argument?

The ridiculous relativity of "beauty", I'd think, would make this claim invalid.

[they don't love you like i love you]

Seeing as how there's documentation of writing of the beauty of Persian women going back millenia from all cultures that interacted with Persia I'd say it's rather universally held.