Her right to wear a hijab,

Is just as important as her choice to take it off,

For you all judge what this Muslim woman wears,

In Britain –

A multicultural place that cares,

Yet why do you look angry?

As though her scarf reduces her humanity,

Don’t realise it is a choice,

Or perhaps you are too ignorant to think twice,

Before you stare,

And make her children feel like they don’t belong anywhere,

Picture how nothing can make you immune to the glares,

An Iranian woman, supported,

To take hers off,

On a camera or in the streets,

To dance around feeling free,

With the Arabic music playing in the heat,

‘Repost, repost’ blinded by reality,

Of how a government has weaponised,

A symbol of dignity,

So people think

Fuck it let her be free.

You don’t understand the damage it creates,

The hatred it seeps,

How women go home and weep,

Called a pa-ki,

With zero shame,

By that drunk man down the street,

He thought she looks like a fat piece of brown meat,

A father that does nothing,

Migrated to this country,

Told to feel grateful, or should he?

A mother who can only say,

‘I know, been there before,

It is to Allah, whom we must pray,’

A brother’s heart aches:

‘I promise, I’ll deal with it’

– But she hastily says Bahi, ‘what will people say?’

Silenced into submission,

An unspoken reality deemed illegitimate,

But this scarf holds so much dignity,

That no one can take away,

Despite all of the pain,

For so many Muslim women,

In this ‘modern’ day and age.