Zarqa Nawaz: My hijab rebellion

A funny excerpt from her book (she was one of the starts in Little Mosque in the Prairie):

I had turned my faith into endless rules. They had given me structure. They had helped me torture my parents. And now they were being thrown back at me.

My father had heard enough. “My daughter is right. We have to be more flexible when it comes to faith. We can’t be extremists when it comes to Islam.”

And in one fell swoop, my father dismissed the meeting and said I could go to summer camp as long as I wanted. His relationship with Uncle Mahmood soured. But as far as my father was concerned, Uncle Mahmood was a crazed religious nutjob. Halal meat was as big an issue for my father as it was for Uncle Mahmood, but he ruled in my favour because he knew how much I loved summer camp.

In that moment, I decided not to take Islam so literally. Religion had been my weapon of choice to break my parents’ hearts. But then it came back and almost broke my heart. Maybe God had sent me a sign through those Chicken McNuggets — my parents were good Muslims and it wouldn’t kill me to become a little more like them. After all, even though I had a strange haircut and paraded around in my hijab like I was the pope, my father still stuck up for me because I was his little girl.

Zarqa Nawaz: My hijab rebellion