 Mae rhoi i mi llawer yn ffawr, a fawr gilydd i chi yw Hijab yn eu cysylltu. A oedd yn ymdau, os yw'n gwneud o'n ddylch chi'n gweithio'r ffasgwyd hijab. Efallai ddod yn gweithio'n gwybod bod yn ymddangos i gyd yn ddau'r gweithio'n gweithio'r ffasgwyd. Rwy'n gweithio i'n gweithio'r ysbryd, mae'r rhai'r mwyaf, mae'r rhai yw ysbryd. Alaykum Salaam. Alhamdulillah. Thank you. Alhamdulillah. Alhamdulillah. So, basically, with our topic of World Hijab Day, what do you personally think about it? Do you think it's a good way of expressing and explaining the hijab to non-Muslims? I think it's an amazing initiative. I think not only the actual day itself but how it came about. There's a huge lesson to be learnt from that. I don't know if your viewers know the background, but can I just go into the background a little bit? Of course, yes. So, there was a girl called Nazma Khan, I think her name was. She came to America to the West at the age of 11, not knowing very much English, not knowing very much about the Western culture and so forth. She says that she felt very alone. She was very much picked on. She wore the hijab and people didn't understand it. They didn't obviously try to understand it. All her schoolmates would pick on her, spit on her, abuse her, try to pull off her hijab. She had a lot of negative experiences from wearing the hijab. What I think is amazing from it is that nowhere in her story does she talk about taking it off. Or letting the bullies win. She goes on to say that when she left school, she did really well in school and high school and so forth. She started some sort of internet forum for hijabies on how to wear fashionable hijabi clothes and so forth. She got a lot of emails talking about other people who had negative experiences in wearing hijab in different parts of the world, not only in the West, but in different parts of the world. She thought to herself, there must be something that I can do. I think that's amazing, not to be the victim, but to stand up and say, there must be something I can do. She came up with this idea of World Hijab Day. Her thinking was, if people can wear the hijab for one day and just step into my shoes, then one, it will make them realise what I go through on a daily basis. Two, it opens up conversations. A lot of bullying, a lot of intolerance happens because of lack of understanding, because something is so different to what you know and what you're comfortable with. So, what she was doing is trying to normalise the hijab. I think it's beautiful. I think there are so many lessons we can learn from the sister in how to stand up for myself, how to not be a victim, how to do something that will not only help others who are in the same situation. Obviously, the initiative is amazing because it's getting Muslims who don't normally wear the hijab to try it for a day, non-Muslims who've never worn the hijab to try it for a day, whether they're Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Atheists, whatever religion or no religion, it doesn't matter. It's just put it on for a day and just live the way I live for a day and just experience it, and then let's talk. That's incredible. I didn't know how that was set up. Subhan Allah. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. It's amazing the fact that it's showing non-Muslims that we're not that much different. Just because we wear a scarf on our head and you rather wear it around your neck, it doesn't make us that much different. When you do step into our shoes, you can understand why we're protective over it and why also we deserve to be looked out for and protected by fellow men and women in society. I suppose though one thing with World Hijab Day is you might have some people turn around and say but we should be doing more than just having a dedicated day where we talk about the hijab. Can you sympathise with that point of view? Yes, I think as hijabis I think we should constantly be doing more. I think we should open ourselves up to inviting conversations about my hijab, about my religion, about who I am and why I choose to be who I am. Also it's not just about conversation starters but it's about my achlach. Again I think it's important to realise that when I put on the hijab I'm a symbol of what Islam is. People look at me and decide this is what Islam teaches. Now if I'm not going to be a very good ambassador for Islam then people turn away from Islam because of me then I'm going to be held accountable for that. Again that's not an excuse not to wear a hijab so I can't say I'm not going to wear a hijab because I'm not ready to be an ambassador for Islam because yes everyone is ready to be an ambassador for Islam. Understanding that the hijab actually makes you want to be a better person, makes you want to be a better human being, a better slave of Allah, a better Muslim. I remember my children used to actually tell me that, my daughter once told me that wearing the hijab actually is so amazing because it just constantly reminds her of Allah. There are certain things that she would never think of doing because she wears the hijab and therefore she said to her brother once I remember she said it's so much easier for me to stay away from certain sins because of my hijab and I'm so lucky that God's given me that. It's such a beautiful way of looking at it. It is a really lovely way of thinking about it. I know it myself though I've been tempted to go in places which aren't appropriate for a Muslim to go into. The thing that has stopped me is just feeling that scarf on my head and just like no, I've been given this responsibility by Allah SWT to be an ambassador and flag bearer of Islam. It's really important. I keep saying when people look at me they're not going to look at, oh Masma did this, oh Masma didn't do this, it's like oh a hijabi did this, a Muslim woman did this, a Muslim woman didn't do that. So it's really important that we stand up for what is right and stand against what's wrong and ensure that we're actually showing what Islam is about and actually living Islam rather than just superficially just wearing the clothes of Islam. Yeah, exactly. I mean how many sisters they wear the hijab and their hijab is perfect but unfortunately inwardly their character is just not good. They're being unjust and unfair to people. Now of course with the growing popularity of World Hijab Day unfortunately there has been a sort of response to that with the idea of no hijab day and it's, correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was the idea of like an ex-Muslim woman Yeah, who wants to encourage sisters to stop wearing the hijab and to be free and liberated as such and the thing that interested me with this in particular was the fact that there were some hijabi sisters who love wearing the hijab and wear it every single day even they were taking off their scarves and posting selfies online in solidarity with these sisters that had done that and we laugh about it but it's incredibly saddening definitely. I mean how do we respond to such an attack? Again I think it's lack of understanding and you feel very sad for these people especially for the sister who's initiated it. Obviously her experience of the way that she wore the hijab if she ever did was not the correct way. I don't think she ever understood what hijab was and I think it's funny because it's like Nazmar Khan started World Hijab Day on the 1st of February officially making that World Hijab Day and you have 140 countries who have signed up for it and it's happening all over the world. It's amazing and I think whenever you have something amazing happening there will always be someone who wants to put the spanner in the works and try to stop that amazing thing and it's just a matter of I know what it feels like not to wear hijab. I don't wear hijab in my house. I don't wear hijab when I'm with women so it's not something that I don't know what it feels like. The idea of World Hijab Day is so that I can empathize what it feels like to wear hijab which I would not normally as a non-Muslim or as a Muslim. A lot of the times for example a Muslim who doesn't wear hijab may put it on for that one day and think hang on a minute this isn't that difficult. I made it bigger in my head than it really is maybe I can do this and they'll give her that push to actually start wearing all the time. For non-Muslims it may actually get them to question what it is about the hijab, make them feel a little bit of what we feel, that confidence that we feel, that closeness to Allah that we feel. Even if they don't feel that it's just sort of going about in your day to day life wearing something that is different and maybe getting a few stairs and realizing hang on a minute why are people staring at me? Why do they have to look at me just because I'm dressed a little bit different and just changing that mentality and making them also realize that they're still the same person although they're dressed differently. I think again not so much now but even now you still have it but not so much before when I used to go out and be introduced automatically the minutes some people see you in hijab they automatically think that you're a little bit slow or you're not educated or you don't know how to speak the language and because I've studied dentistry and I'm a qualified dentist I can use the word doctor so I don't work as a dentist anymore but I know when I used to go into these environments I would actually introduce myself as Dr Masa Majafah just to sort of let them know hang on a minute I am educated I have been to university I'm like you are normal it's just a piece of clothing that you're sort of making a huge assumption on the person I am because of the way that I'm dressed. It's so crazy and then this concept of no hijab day it's like what next? No still our day? So are you going to tell me to stop praying for a whole day? That's a fair point actually. I don't know like no Ramadan month or something. Who knows honestly. It's like you can see the thinking of Nazmah Khan when she initiated world hijab day. Where is the thinking behind no world hijab day? It makes no sense. It shows it's just a reaction to a negative experience that someone has had as a child and they want to now move past that by doing something so crazy. Yeah absolutely. The way that we present hijab to the world is the most important thing because I remember as a non muslim the first ever lecture I listened to about hijab it was talking about the fact that if an uncovered woman goes out in public and a man looks at her then she carries the sin of that man as well. And I was just like oh my god. It was like fire and brimstones and I was just like. So he's not responsible at all? No it's always the woman's fault you know. Yeah it was just like it's like you're pushing us in a corner with like I don't know like with some fire and you're just like if you don't do this you're going to hell. I think that's the sad part. I think a lot of the times hijab, the physical hijab of the clothing is talked to girls from the perspective of a man telling them or a mother or someone else telling them who resents wearing it and where is it because she feels she has to rather than wearing it out of love and passion and understanding. I think that's where we go wrong. Absolutely yes and it's amazing that like just such a small thing of a non muslim putting a scarf on their head for the day like how much it could potentially change them. You know it goes back to what our prophet sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi said that you know just an hour of reflection is equivalent to 70 years of worship and when we think deeply about these things like we see that actually like so many of our thoughts are just irrational and detrimental almost. I don't think a lot of the times we're even aware of what our thoughts are. It's like our minds just taken over and we have a lot of negative thoughts going on and on in our mind and something as positive as hijab can actually just get you to question why someone would wear that and why they would choose to do this. Even if it doesn't get you to question I think that building that sort of solidarity and that unity amongst human beings is really really powerful. It's like you know what I'm not going to wear it. I don't agree with it but I'm going to try out just to show you that I'm with you and that's beautiful because it's not that we're telling them to do something that is against their values and their principles. It's doing something that is just going to stand side by side with you for a day and I think that's really amazing and I think if we as human beings can come together then imagine what an amazing world this would be. Oh, subhan Allah. That would just be incredible, wouldn't it? I'm really sorry, sister. We're going to have to end it there but once again thank you so much for this wonderful discussion. Up next, my dear viewers, we'll be answering your fit questions regarding the salaf, inshallah.