Many scholars have written about the “resurgence of the veil” and how the Islamic Revival in various Muslim-majority countries could be marked visually in the obvious change of dress of many Muslim women in the ‘70s and ‘80s. The change marked an uptick in religious practice, and a re-identification with Islam as not only a force of spiritual guidance for individuals, but also a distinctly modern faith relevant to every aspect of modern life: politics, anti-imperialism, women’s rights, sexual conduct, cinema, music, and even clothing. The hijab and the jilbab did not only indicate inward spirituality but also set one apart as distinctly urban and university-educated. On the other hand, in a community like my own, most university-educated Muslim American women would only be caught in anything resembling a jilbab on one of their “lazy” days or when going to a funeral in the mosque.

Of course, there is always an internal discussion within the Muslim community in America, especially in the comments sections of hijabi Instagrams, on whether dress should be considered an indicator of one’s spiritual state – and that whatever our state of dress, Muslim women should not be considered more or less religious because of the way they dress. It is an important discussion to have, and certainly in a much more complex way than we are having it now.

I remember having a conversation with a professor of mine when she asked me, “But do you want to wear your beliefs on your sleeve like that? Don't you mind that people would project their conceptions of religiosity onto you? I would never want someone to box me in like that.”

And her question is in its place. I do not want people (Muslim or otherwise) to project their ideas of what my hijab stands for on me, but that is irrelevant because they do.

One of my friends had this to say about wearing the hijab: “Honestly, I wear it because it's a spiritual obligation; I don’t attach any other significance to it.” I don’t know if that is true of me. For a long time, I thought I would wear the hijab whether or not I considered it a spiritual obligation because I wanted to differentiate myself. I want to be “other” because I am not interested in reinforcing a default. But the hijab isn’t just “another,” because you can’t be born with hijab, as my friend says, and it isn’t something you can easily say is “part of the fabric of America.” In the U.S., hijab is more often than not a conscious choice a woman takes that sets her apart from most other women and indicates her religious affiliation, thus tying her to the community of people her observer necessarily associates her with. A visibly Muslim women’s individuality is often stripped from her at first glance by a stranger.

I was a high school teacher at an Islamic School for a little over two years – and I think I would have gotten in more trouble than I did for some of the things I did in class had I been someone else: had I not been the daughter of my visibly religious parents, and had I not dressed in the almost “excessively” modest way I do. I say this because I register the shock on people’s faces when I say something “too liberal,” whether the person I’m speaking to is Muslim or not. My friend put it in the best way when she said, motioning to the people around us in the cafe, “Do you think any of these people expect us to be talking about this? To be talking about Sartre and Existentialism? Or about the differences between the American and the European left?”

I told her that one of the reasons I chose to make gender a secondary interest in my personal statements was because too many academics don’t take Muslim women’s interest on gender seriously, and especially not visibly Muslim women. Because, the logic is, if I have accepted hijab as a spiritual obligation, and dress in wide leg pants and maxi-skirts and oversized jumpers, then people assume I must have a very specific idea of what is “right” and “wrong,” and I must have plans to promote that agenda and promote Islam at the expense of critically engaging with texts in both the Western and Islamic traditions. Obviously, I can’t be an objective scholar who grapples with different intellectual movements and writes seriously about them because, well, my opinions on everything have already been made and are wrapped around my head. This is frequently the assumption made, however inaccurate.

It would be dishonest to say that this doesn’t happen inside our communities. The impression exists, by other Muslim women, that the Muslim woman who wears her hijab a certain way is more “traditional” (read: narrow-minded, judgmental, dull, conservative) and that another is more worldly and stylish (read: relevant, “breaking stereotypes,” beautiful).

The fact is, we contribute to the “good Muslim, bad Muslim” binary too. We need to be careful not to throw more visibly traditional Muslim women under the bus in a misguided quest for mainstream acceptance. Instead, we should be careful to check our own assumptions about women who wear hijab to make room for the greater diversity that truly exists.