Hijab Is Not Choice But Obligation In Islam, Says Ex-Bollywood Actor Zaira Wasim Who Quit Acting For Religion

Former Bollywood actor Zaira Wasim made headlines on Saturday after she shared a long post through her social media handles criticising the hijab ban in educational institutes of Karnataka. She called the ban unjust and a harassment.

With her public views, she has become the third Bollywood personality to jump into the hijab controversy after Javed Akhtar and Sonam Kapoor.

Akhtar said he did not support hijab or burqa for women while Kapoor criticised the ban.

For close to two months now, some Muslim students in Karnataka have been insisting on wearing the veil inside educational campuses. After the state government issued orders prohibiting the veil inside classrooms, some students petitioned the Karnataka High Court against the orders.

The matter was heard for the first time on 8 February and is currently sub-judice.

On Saturday evening, Wasim shared screenshot a post on her Twitter and Instagram accounts.

The post said:

“The inherited notion of hijab being a choice is an ill-informed one. It’s often either a construct of convenience or ignorance. Hijab isn’t a choice but an obligation in Islam. Likewise, a woman who wears the hijab is fulfilling an obligation enjoined upon her by the God she loves and has submitted herself to.

"I, as a woman who wears the hijab with gratitude and humility, resent and resist this entire system where women are being stopped and harassed for merely carrying out a religious commitment.

"Stacking this bias against Muslim women and setting up systems where they should have to decide between education and hijab or to give up either is an absolute injustice.

“You’re attempting to compel them to make a very specific choice that feeds your agenda and then criticising them while they're imprisoned in what you've constructed.

"There is no other option to encourage them to choose differently. What is this if not a bias with people who confirm it acting in support of it? On top of all this, building a facade that all this is being done in the name of empowerment is even worse when it is quite exactly the opposite of that. Sad.”

It may be recalled here that Wasim quit acting as a profession after featuring in at least three successful films that included Dangal, Secret Superstar and The Sky is Pink. She ended her Bollywood career saying it was at odds with her faith.

On 30 June 2019, she posted a long post on her Instagram account, declaring her retirement from the Bollywood film industry. She said she has decided that her profession would distance her from Allah and Islam.

She concluded that statement by saying that all she had done over the previous five years was a result of her lack of knowledge.