Ihsan

Letting Go - Your Kids Making Choices

Salam all,

So you know, if you hang out in Muslim spaces on the internet, that one of the hot topics is what girls wear on their heads (or don't). Boy, are people interested in this. Boy, do people get hot under the collar about it. The girls are pulled back and forth by pundits making points out of them.

To conservatives, they are never doing enough. "Girls in the Middle East (where I live) are trying to have it both ways by wearing some sort of thing over their head along with heavy makeup, skin tight jeans, high heels and chiffon blouses. They use the scarf to show piety while they don't even pray. They wear makeup and the scarf! They wear the scarf while dancing!" etc.

To liberals, they are doing way too much. "Girls in the Middle East follow Amr Khaled! This shows they are being led by the nose by Salafis! Girls choose the Hijab and then it's socially impossible for them to take it off! Girls are being pressured! Girls are not really making their own choice!"

My question is: Do none of these people remember being young? The feeling of wanting to be different than your parents? The feeling of wanting to be accepted by your peers? Why is the scarf thing all that different than getting a perm was for me in the 80s?

It's hard to let our kids go. My husband is having a big problem with the idea of our 13 and 14 year old kids possibly attending college in the US or somewhere else outside Egypt. But he'll have to adapt. Because whether you want them to or not, your kids are biologically designed to drive you crazy once they hit the teenage years. It's God's revenge on us for what we did to our own parents.

posted by Anna in PDX at 3/17/2005 06:03:00 AM