WTH?! Say what? So I took off my hijab and was just sitting around smoking shisha????

This is a rant of a rather personal nature. All those not involved please forgive.

If I could remember exactly which villa is yours I would drive up to your house and confront you thus:

How dare you slander my friend and myself and say you saw that we had taken off our hijabs and were sitting around smoking shisha. What a load of bull crap, excuse my plain English.

Anyone who knows me even a little, even those who have no great love for me, know how ridiculous that accusation is, knowing what the two of us went through to wear hijab in our own country.

Insulted almost daily, seen as suppressed women of inferior understanding despite our education, my friend had boiling hot water thrown on her, we both lost many job opportunities, and of course our non-Muslim parents will never treat us with the same closeness as before, and still we supported our decision fiercely and with smiles.

We love our hijabs so much so, that the way that you and your daughters wear it IS an insult to us, you with all your freedom to wear it with ease and support. Wearing it as you do, incorrectly in a cultural rather than Islamic manner, what nerve you have to sit around and gossip about others. What you said of us was in no way true, but I imagine that if you lied about us so lightly it is no trouble to you to judge others. Beware such habits. As you judge, so shall you be judged. That is why Islam tells us to cover the sins of others.

I remember one of your daughters sitting around and having a laugh at being at the top of the Eiffel tower in Paris and a French Muslim girl coming up to her to tuck your daughter's fabulously styled bangs back into her stylishly thrown-on scarf. If you knew what that French girl goes through to wear her hijab, forbidden from attending school as she is because of her beliefs, or enter government buildings, you wouldn't laugh at the joke that is the cultural form of hijab that you are all so okay with while deriding how she and I are dressed.

I never took off my hijab while staying with your family. I have never taken it off since I started wearing it actually. I have never been tempted untuck even one strand of my fringe. I didn't even take off my niqab while staying with your family. I wore it my own non-Muslim country for God's sake! I didn't take it off to get a job that I wanted so desperately, so why would I take it off in a Muslim country to go smoke a shisha?!

I wore it in a non-Muslim country…

So did your daughter in law, once upon a time, better than your daughters have ever worn it in a Muslim country.

And I have never smoked in my life. Not shisha, not tabacco. My friend, also, being the health nut she is, would never touch shisha or any other kind of poison.

I know you don't respect the niqab, being that alot of women of your nation wear it to make harrakaat. I too have known women who wear niqab and are prostitutes, and have heard tell of women who wear abaya raas and are pimpettes. But I wear it because I try to keep Um Salamah, Aicha, and Asma bint Abu Bakr as my examples, and I don't care what anyone else thinks as long as what I am doing is good and right. With that line of thinking, I was totally okay with non-Muslims who don't understand Islam and the role of Muslim women coming up to me and insulting me over my veil, but I was never prepared for you, a Muslim woman, and the mother-in-law of my bestfriend, to insult me thus. To this day, your words, said with a smile but tongue meant like a knife, cut me: "Little ghost." Meaning, the veil makes me look ghastly or half a person. Which it cannot. No amount of fabric in the world can change the person I am or cover what I want the world to know about me. Your words revealed all I ever wish to personally know of you, beyond the prayer that God guide you, forgive you your slander as I now will having ranted enough, and that you change.

You know what? I remember your daughter in law. She was the kind of woman strong in her own Islam, when I knew her. In fact, it was her who taught me to seek the knowledge that makes me so adamant in my own hijab. Her time surrounded with the rather hypocritical like of yourself and others changed her, into someone I now worry over, but alhamdulilah she is doing alot better now that she is away from ya'll. I can't hold you responsible for all that, but I want you to know you had a part in breaking down one of the strongest and best people I have ever known. And your lies about my friend and myself will never affect me beyond making me feel sorry for you. Even your own son never believed you because he knows what kind of women we are, and what strength we have in us.

Allah guide you, and help protect you from your own tongue.