Unveiling Choice/ by Maryam Lee

• author: Maryam Lee
• publisher: Gerakbudaya
• published in: 2019
• language: English

'What people need to understand is that the hijab can be both liberating and oppressive, depending on the situation and context. The problem is not the hijab per se, but the social conditions that compel a woman into or out ofher hijab.'

'Muslim women, hijabi or not, in considering whether the hijab is compulsory in Islam, must agree that their common enemy is disingenuous men who insist on telling women what to wear.'

'How could a person who was only taught that orchids are white make a meaningful choice between white orchids and orchids of other colours? How could a person who was never taught that orchids of other colours even exist, make a choice for other-coloured orchids at all?'

Maryam Lee is an activist who starts the important conversations that others don't want to. She promotes discourses which are marginalised in the mainstream narrative. Her first book, Unveiling Choice, is about her long process of dehijabbing, which is meant to inspire empathy and compassion towards women like her who went through a journey that meant making decisions that sometimes go against cultural norms. She does not believe in waiting for society to be "ready': in fact, she believes that the harder the conversation, the bigger the change (that needs to happen).