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This content has been automatically translated. View original in Arabic
Often, when you speak with some parents about the obligation of their adolescent daughter wearing hijab, the stock response is: “I want her to wear it out of conviction; I don’t want her to pretend for my sake—put it on in front of me and take it off behind my back.” While this response may appear, on the surface, to be tender and caring, it reveals a major pedagogical and methodological problem.
First, we must recognize that if a girl is raised before puberty with an understanding of modesty, the sanctity of her body, and the fact that Allah Most High loves concealment, then she herself will seek hijab as she approaches the age of legal responsibility. If, however, she reaches that age and still views hijab as an alien burden or a constraint, the real problem began years earlier in the style of her upbringing.
Second, some people err by treating hijab as though it were a “family suggestion” open to discussion: “Dear daughter, what do you think? Are you convinced?” In truth, hijab is Allah’s law, and Allah’s law governs us all—father, mother, daughter, and the entire household.
Allah the Exalted says: “It is not for a believing man or a believing woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decided a matter, that they should [thereafter] have any choice about their affair.” (Quran 33:36)
When Allah decides a matter, the believer does not say, “Let me first be convinced” or “I’ll choose whether to obey or not”; rather, he says, “We hear and we obey.” As parents, we explain, we endear, we nurture, and we embrace—but we do not present Allah’s command as an open option left to whim.
As a father, when you enrolled your daughter in school, did you say, “I won’t force you; I want you to go out of conviction”? When you took her for vaccinations, did you consult her? When she fell ill, did you say, “Take the medicine out of conviction”? No—because you are utterly certain that it is in her worldly interest.
So why, when the issue concerns one of the major sins and a fire in the Hereafter, does that same fear and concern not appear in your eyes? Indeed, parents may even share in the sin when they allow her to go out unveiled, buy her clothes that do not please Allah, and accompany her while she is immodestly dressed.
The matter is not merely about hijab; it is deeper than that. It concerns the very “concept of surrender to Allah.” When your daughter sees in your eyes the surrender and reverence for Allah’s command as you say to her, “Wear your hijab, my dear,” that reverence is automatically transmitted to her—especially if you yourself live in surrender to Allah. If, however, you speak to her with weakness and hesitation, she will likewise become weak and hesitant like you.
By Allah’s grace, neither I nor their mother have ever needed to tell any one of our four daughters, “Wear your hijab,” in a harsh command or weak choice. The correct formulation is not: “Dear daughter, think it over if you want hijab,” but rather: “What a blessing—you’ve grown up and are approaching legal responsibility; let’s together prepare the clothing that will please Allah about you.”
This is said with love, with care, and with firmness all at once. If she says, “I don’t like it,” we tell her: “Dear daughter, a believer does not say about Allah’s law, ‘I don’t like it’; rather, we say, ‘My Lord, help me, and make faith beloved to me and adorn my heart with it.’”
As for the claim that “she might remove it behind my back,” the fact that she commits the error away from you while feeling that she is wrong actually brings her closer to guidance and repentance than if she goes out with you while immodest and you remain silent and approving.
Hijab does not begin with a piece of cloth placed on the head; it begins with nurturing a heart that learns to say to Allah, “We hear and we obey.”