I gave myself a deadline about taking off the hijab, it's basically after my finals when I'll not be in the same friend group anymore (for context everyone in my friend group is a hijabi) soo my finals are so close, I'm freaking excited, nervous and overall a mess, idek how to explain this feeling, I'm gonna dye my hair and take the hijab off and go to uni, it's easier said than done, but I am excited and very scares icl.
I know this is kind of off topic, but I genuinely do not want to marry an "Islamic" man.
We're always told that we should be looking for a man who's "on his deen", prays 5x, hafiz, all that jazz.
But personally, I don't see myself with someone like that at all. Sure, I do want someone muslim, but not someone who makes religion their whole personality.
I don't want a man who has "gheerah" and polices my clothing. I don't want a "traditional" muslim man. I don't want someone who thinks everything is haram.
I find most religious muslim men insufferable. They are almost always deeply patriarchal, emotionally stunted, and judgmental.
People act like religiosity automatically translates to kindness, emotional intelligence, or compatibility. It doesn’t. A man who prays 5 times a day does not automatically make him marriage material. I wish we would stop pretending it does.
I know, I know, not every religious man is like this. But I would rather marry a non-muslim over a "religious" muslim man any day.
It's so hard to find a progressive muslim man.
To be completely honest, it is very hard to stay Muslim as a woman. Especially when you are constantly reminded that you are less than a man, or seen as immoral just because you don’t cover your hair.
And before people rush to say it: yes, I know the lines already.
“Islam is perfect, Muslims are not.”
“It’s culture, not Islam.”
But when there are literal hadith, legal rulings, and centuries of scholarship that place restrictions on women in ways men will never experience, it becomes very hard to unsee. At some point, you have to acknowledge that some of the problems are coming from the religion itself. Or at the very, very least, the way the religion has historically been interpreted and enforced.
What hurts most is that women are expected to carry this burden silently. If you question anything, you are accused of being weak in faith, influenced by “the West”, emotional, rebellious, arrogant, immodest, ungrateful, all the adjectives.
My faith has just been hanging on a thread lately. I really wish I did not feel this way. I really do. But it comes to a point where it becomes emotionally draining trying to convince yourself over and over that you are equally valued while constantly being made to feel otherwise.
I know some people will dismiss this immediately. But I also know I am not the only Muslim woman who feels this way.
In the past, I genuinely couldn't understand why a woman would take off hijab.
To me, it was either you wore it or you were sinning. No ifs or buts.
But as I've grown, I've realized it's not so black-and-white.
Needless to say, life really humbled me.
Is it just me, or do I find modesty very performative?
For example, my mom expects me to wear a scarf or cardigan over an already fully covering loose top because the extra layer is supposedly “more modest.” The scarf barely covers my chest. It’s just for show. But somehow, a lower neckline + cardigan/scarf is considered more “modest” than a plain loose full-coverage shirt by itself. Make it make sense.
I find modesty as a whole performative. As long as you wear hijab, you are automatically seen as a “good” muslim/person even if you do every other sin under the sun. Meanwhile, someone who doesn’t wear hijab could be a good person, but will always been seen as “less than”.
I also feel like it’s easy to hide behind hijab and not improve yourself, because you’re already seen as the pinnacle of muslim woman.
To be honest, I sometimes miss wearing hijab.
Now that I don't wear it anymore, I have to constantly worry about my hair. I have curly hair, so it's a lot to manage.
It would be nice to wear a hijab sometimes just for convenience. And honestly, I think it looks nice.
But at the same time, I don't want to give people the impression that I'm planning to wear hijab full-time again. I don't want to become a "hijabi".
I wish it were socially acceptable to wear it on and off, like any other piece of clothing. Like, if I want to wear a hijab one day, and then shorts the next, that shouldn't be such a big deal.
I just hate how all-or-nothing hijab is.
Does anyone else feel this way?
I have diagnosed ocd and when i wore the hijab it was out of compulsion. When i gout of it i regrettes immediately because i went from 0 to 100 a year later and i still regret it. Now that i want to take it off i’m scared i will be taking it off and on out of compulsion evertytime. it’s like a fight with my mind everyday
so i got this app to talk about my situation and to see others perspectives on it.
im 20years (turning 21 in a month) and i wear the hijab (forced) since i was 13. at that time i wast practicing “religion” or praying. i did had to go to Mosque every Saturday to learn the Quran and Arabic. this all happened in summer time. my niece (who already wore the hijab) was about to transfer schools and come in my class after summer break. during that summer we were very close and hang out a lot. so every time i saw her, i would see her father, my uncle. and since it was clear that she would come to my class he would say that i need to wear the hijab once she joins me. at first i was like no?? but every single time i would see him he would say it more aggressively and it made me very uncomfortable. this would go on the WHOLE summer.
fast forward to the night before school started: i did not sleep that night. i did not deserve to feel the way i did back then. all that kept me awake was “what is he going to do or say if he sees me without hijab”. i was young and scared of what people would do or say to me if i didn’t put it on. my relationship with my sister wasn’t really great so all she said was that it was my choice and i shouldn’t listen to him. and there was i, a 13year old, who didn’t practice the religion, in a hijab on the first day of school.
at school i was well known as a crazy girl. i was very social and extroverted. but since the day i put the hijab on, everything in me changed. i became depressed and all i was thinking about was death. there was no joy left in me and at that time i didn’t think it was because of the hijab. i was young and come on, what do u expect from someone with no to little life experience. i’ve lived with my depression (still am but doing better) for a long time. i wrote every feeling down, i didn’t want to do anything other than rotting in bed. lets keep going.
as years went by i started to find myself and religion. i realised that the problem was never just the hijab itself. It was the way I was pushed into it. I never truly chose it for myself. Every time I put it on, it reminded me of fear, pressure and the feeling that I had no control over my own life. Instead of bringing me closer to religion, it made me feel disconnected from myself and from everything around me. I tried forcing myself to love it because I thought I had to, but deep down it only made me feel trapped.
October 2025 i was about to take it off. i almost told my whole family on my mother’s side that i would. the reactions i’ve had weren’t as bad as my mother’s and sister. “u showed me that u worship shaitan instead of God” “ur uncle did a great job, i don’t see nothing wrong with it” “i wont see u as my sister if u take it off” “ur ruining our family name” etc. obviously these words get to my cuz these are my closest people to me? why are they like this? on the day i wanted to take it off, they manipulated me into keep wearing it. also, because i was done with all the comments and just dragging down words, i kept it on. i still hate myself for keeping it on. i just had to do it right there and then.
even after all these months, i still feel the same. im deconstructing religion right now and trying to relearn islam based on what God actually gave us instead of cultural or man made rules. i’ve been thinking about taking my hijab off again, but this time without warning anyone. they’ll just see me without it one day. i can’t lie and say im not scared of what my family will say, especially my sister because her words really stayed with me. but at the same time, i dont feel guilty for wanting to take it off. my relationship with God still matters deeply to me and i still pray, communicate with Him and try to keep that connection strong.
I don’t know exactly what will happen next, but I know I deserve to make this choice with peace instead of fear. BUT HOWWW, im constantly overthinking about what my closest family would say or do
I certainly didn’t.
If you told me five years ago (heck, even two years) that I was going to take it off, I would’ve never believed you.
I actually never had any qualms about taking it off the whole time I wore it.
But hey, life happens. 🤷♀️
Did any of you guys ever think you were going to take it off?
I’ve been wanting to write this for a while.
I started wearing the hijab very young because I developed alopecia. I didn't know I had other options at the time, and over time it just became part of me.
People in my life don’t even know I have alopecia. I’ve been covering it since I was a kid, so to them it’s just “me wearing a hijab.” So there’s a whole layer of my reality they’re completely unaware of.
Now I’m 27 and I don’t want to wear it anymore. I really can’t handle it mentally anymore. But the alopecia is still there, and my hair loss got even worse to the point that all the usual things people recommend don't work for me, so I started looking into wigs. And that's where it gets even harder.
Taking off the hijab is already something I know I’ll be judged for. But taking it off and then wearing a wig? That’s seen as really strange. I already feel like people will think something is wrong with me, or that I’m sick.
I’m honestly scared of being seen as “the weird girl”, the one who took off her headscarf just to start wearing wigs.
If it was just about taking it off, it would still be hard, but more straightforward. This feels like double exposure: first being judged for removing it, and then again for how I deal with my hair. And on top of that, having the struggle of whether my wig looks natural or not.
I've already started taking off the hijab and wearing a wig a few times and despite feeling extremely self-conscious, it still felt better than wearing the hijab.
I also feel really alone in this. I’ve never come across someone in a similar situation, either online or in real life. Someone who took off the hijab but then had to rely on wigs because of hair loss. It makes it feel like I’m the only one in the world dealing with this.
I don’t really know what I’m asking for. Maybe just if anyone relates in any way, or has gone through something similar.
Thanks for reading
I know a lot of us want to take it off because we don’t believe it’s mandatory.
But besides that, why else do you want to take it off?
For me, I simply outgrew it. I couldn’t imagine being a very specific way for the rest of my life. Especially when it was a decision I made as a child. Frankly, we’re going to grow and change as people. It’s unrealistic to expect a decision you made as a child to continue into adulthood.
Honestly, even if it was mandatory, I still would’ve taken it off, either because my relationship with religion changed, or because I just don't want to do it anymore. I don’t think you should be forcing yourself to do something just to please others.
Both my parents keep sending me videos abt how i’m going to hell for taking off the hijab and they’re being so cold to me. How do i deal with this? I obviously expected this, but it honestly hurts more than i imagined.
So this whole dilemma that I have has began more than a year ago. I’ve never felt like my real self in hijab and since ALL of my friends have removed their hijab in the past couple years I’ve been thinking about it more seriously. I live in Iran and here we are thought from a very young age that Islam is the best and the “only” true way to be a good person. A good Muslim girl should wear her hijab properly and I vividly remember how our teachers used to describe the tortures sinners will go through in hell if they don’t obey. I never really thought about if I really wanted to be a Muslim or not since it was the only thing I ever knew, but especially after protests against obligatory hijab began in my country in 2022 (after a girl named Mahsa Amini was killed by police forces because she didn’t wear her hijab properly) I’ve been thinking about what hijab really means to me. I don’t really see myself as a religious person but I do pray and had my hijab like all the time. I don’t feel the deepest connection with my religion but it’s the only way I know how to calm myself and how to talk to god. So if you guys don’t know the government of Iran is an Islamic republic and wearing hijab is mandatory. If you don’t do it you will go to jail, yet our brave women have removed their hijab for the past three years and been expressing themselves much more openly. The very devout fans of the Islamic regime make me feel sick to my stomach. All I see every day is how these people can be THIS ignorant to all the things this government has done to its own people. and I know I shouldn’t be confusing this whole situation with the real Islam, but when it’s the only thing you see every day you can’t help yourself. I started researching about whether the hijab is actually mandatory for women in Islam and I can’t really wrap my head around a single answer. Conservative Muslims say it is while progressive one say it isn’t. I’m currently reading Women and Gender in Islam by Leila Ahmed and it’s really eye opening but I’m not sure if still it’s the right decision for me to remove my hijab.
Hi everyone! Even though I plan to take off my hijab for grad, I don’t want to cause a fuss with my family. For that reason, I’m trying to buy a modest graduation dress. Do you girls have any recommendations? Everything I’m finding is either 200$ or just plain ugly and matronly. Please help a girl out!!!
I told my family six months ago that I stopped wearing the hijab. I had actually stopped wearing it even earlier, but they didn't know.Now, I am nervous about seeing relatives who don't know yet. At the same time, my parents and my husband’s parents keep pressuring me to put it back on.How should I handle these meetings and the pressure from my family?
I don’t know if anyone else can relate, but I’m in a weird position because I’m the oldest.
I got a lot of shit for being the oldest and taking off hijab. Especially since my sister wears it. I was supposed to be the “role model”. I’m now seen as a “bad influence”.
My sister told me she feels awkward with me not wearing it while she does.
Even now, I’m still forced to wear it sometimes because it looks “awkward” if my mom and sister wear it, but I don’t. Needless to say, I don’t like going out with my family anymore.
I find this incredibly unfair. As if I’m not allowed to be my own person outside of my family and my role as the oldest.
I saw someone compare wearing hijab when you don't want to to gender dysphoria. And that is SO true.
Every time I wear hijab now, I feel so much distress and anxiety. Like I'm pretending to be something I'm not. And it's even worse since I still live with family, and am forced to wear it sometimes because my family wants to hold onto the "hijabi" version of me.
Even when I don't wear it, I'm still expected to perform and be something I'm not. I feel like I'm not accepted for who I am.
I wish I had the privilege of not caring what my family thought of me. But that's really hard when you are still dependent on them.
I fully believe that emotional stress eventually affects you physically. And I definitely feel that. I'm chronically stressed and anxious, and I can never fully relax. The only time I feel good is when I'm away from my family.
For me, moving out is not just about independence. But also my health.
Does anyone else feel this way? The mismatch between who you present as and who you really are? Does anyone feel like they cannot fully express themselves?