An Abaya is an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic traditions to cover their bodies in public places. The burqa is usually understood to be the woman's loose body-covering (Arabic: jilbฤb),(plus the head-covering ), plus the face-veil (Arabic: niqฤb).It's also called Burqa in southern Asia while is called abaya in middle west Asia.
My idea of sharing my personal thoughts over this page is to clear the very basic idea of why a girl wears an Abaya and wearing it noway shows that you are backward or inferior. It proves that you are bothered about what people think about your work rather than how you look.
For an instance , once such topic came forth and the debate started off between me and my classmate who doesnot prefer wearing an Abaya.She started the topic saying," Abaya doesnot prove you are good because I see many girls roaming about in the local parks with unwanted company and use Abaya as a mean to cover themselves."And I was like Abaya is more to protect yourself from unwanted sights , comments from opposite gender ,its completely upto you as to how you utilise it.The best example of it would be a gun,suppose I give you a gun to protect yourself from beasts and the soldiers from a counter army in a forests .The thing I can do is direct you how to use your weapon and protect yourself.But if you end up shooting your ownself!
Who is to be blamed ?The gun or me?
Both were supposed to help you ...but it was you who mistook/misunderstood it and ...!
And to my muslim sisters who say they can't handle the clothing either because you feel really very sultry and hot wearing it or you just can't handle it. I would like to say "My dear sister,HELL IS HOTTER! You werenot born with the clothes you wear now.Your mother covered you with the best cloth she had , you soon got used to it and continued wearing it.The case is the same for Abaya, once you start wearing it you will get used to it in a week or so.
And the so called MODERN / WORK CLASS / POSH WOMEN , who feel women who wear Abaya are oppressed!I would like to compare this with yet another thing..A NUN ..yes , a nun..
People ,especially Asian Muslim Women who have the impression that Christians are the most modern and intellectual people and everything they do is copied with a tag called 'posh/hi-fi'.A nun covers her body in order to devote herself to the Almighty is tagged as noble , holy , pure ,and what not by those people.Then how does one dare to say a muslim women is OPPRESSED!
A muslim hijabi women covers her face too , instead of honouring her with a prestigious word decent and devoted , few of the not so well educated people surprisingly call her oppressed!