Last Friday, the "Hijabi Monologues" held its first production in Washington, DC, to give Muslim women a forum to explore the intricacies of their lives and share their stories.

The "Hijabi Monologues" began in 2006 with three friends who lamented the lack of space for Muslim women to connect with other women, share their stories in their own words, and shed light on the things that make them tick and tick them off. The three friends were Sahar Ullah, Zeenat Rahman and Dan Morrison, all three of whom met while organizing a concert at the University of Chicago, where they were graduate students.

At first, Morrison, who is not Muslim, began asking simple questions to Ullah (who wears a head scarf) and Rahman about why women wear a headscarf. As time progressed, Dan's simple questions for Ullah and Rahman became more complex and their question-and-answer sessions turned into storytelling gatherings where Ullah and Rahman stopped giving answers and instead began sharing their experiences with Dan about being a Muslim woman in America.

Morrison became more and more fascinated not only by the two women's stories, but by how helpful they were in allowing people who are not Muslim a way to better understand the experiences of Muslim women and in particular those who wear a headscarf.

For many Muslim women in America, the hijab can have a double effect. It can have the intended effect of obscuring a woman's full physical features in an observance of outward modesty, but it also can have the unintended effect of obscuring the full complexity and nuance of Muslim women’s lives.

Founders of the "Hijabi Monologues" said the power of the production comes from its central component, storytelling, which they hope will uncover important facets of Muslim women’s lives that are obscured by misconceptions and preconceived notions.

"It is about creating a space for American Muslim women to share their voices; a space to breathe as they are; a space that does not claim to tell every story and speak for every voice. Through the power of storytelling, generalizations and categories are challenged. Through stories, strangers touch and connect. Through stories, the story-teller and listener are humanized."

The Friday production consisted of Ullah and Al-Hassen, a Muslim woman from Los Angeles, performing 10 monologues in character. To create each monologue, Ullah gathers stories from Muslim women and puts them into monologue story form. And unlike the "Vagina Monologues," where sexuality and sexual organs are the focus, the monologues are never actually about the head scarf, but rather about the experiences of Muslim women who wear one.

Stories ranged from the lighthearted such as one monologue that recounted the many ways men attempt to flirt and ask out women in hijab to the heavyhearted such as one about a pregnant Muslim teenager who tries to remain strong after her community rejects her and the teenage boy she became pregnant with leaves her.

"'The Vagina Monologues' take something that's really private and personifies it by giving it a voice: 'my vagina is angry.' But we don’t say my hijab is angry because people have already infused so many meanings into the hijab—as if it speaks when actually it’s about a woman’s experience," Ullah said in a 2008 interview. "So we take what’s so public and people have given a voice and we push it out of people’s figurative faces by allowing a person who has a captured audience to give women a voice."

Posted on January 14, 2008