veiled4allah: a Muslim woman athlete, and hijab

The BBC profiles Nassim Hassanpour, a nineteen year old woman who is a member of Iran's Olympic sporting team and the only woman on Iran's Olympic team.

Nineteen-year-old Nassim Hassanpour concentrates hard on the target in front of her. Her arm is still and her grip on the air pistol is steady. She fires and the bullet passes through the middle of the target. Her face remains impassive as she reloads. In the weeks running up to the Games, Ms Hassanpour was working on her skills for more than six hours a day. The burden on her shoulders was huge.

Not only is she the only Iranian female taking part in the Olympics, she is also the youngest competitor on the team.

"Because I am representing Iranian women I feel special. I just want to deserve to be there and to achieve a good result. If I do, it might inspire other Iranian women," she says.

Her coach Javad Kuhpayezadeh says she has the qualities of a future star.

"Marksmen and women have to be able to have good levels of concentration, otherwise they cannot be successful. They also have to be physically fit and self confident," the coach explains.

"She has all these qualities. She is also a gymnast so her body is well trained. We have high hopes for her at the next Games in China in 2008."

Most of the article deals with the difficulties faced by Iran women pursuing athletic careers. As a female golfer quoted in the article notes, you can't deny that that the Islamic dress (headscarf and long coat) gets in the way of athletic participation. Iran has been taking steps to develop events like the Islamic Games, which are closed to male spectators so that the women athletes can wear normal sporting attire.

I see two different issues here. First, Iran requires all Muslim women to wear the hijab in public whether they want to or not. I've addressed the question of such laws before (follow the links in that entry for more) so I won't go over it again here though I hope you'll take the time to read what I've written in the past. The second issue is women who voluntarily choose to veil.

A lot of non-Muslims seem to have a hard time understanding or accepting that women can or would voluntarily choose to observe modest dress, even though we are supposed to be a society that respects people's freedom of choice. I've even encountered people who seem to feel that my choice of dress is somehow an aggressive action against them or a threat. At times, the West seems almost obsessively focused on the hijab as the symbol of Islam and it seems to favor a very narrow view of what the choice of hijab means for the woman who chooses it.

I sincerely believe that the hijab is a religious commandment within Islam and I feel that women who are committed to following the rules of Islam in their lives should seek to the best of their ability to wear hijab. To me, this is similar to my belief that prayer and fasting are religious commandments within Islam and that Muslims who are committed to following these rules should seek to the best of their ability to undertake the religiously-obligatory prayers and fasts. Living life according to these rules may mean giving up some things that we may want to do. In reality, a lot of life in the real world involves making compromises and giving up on some things we want to do in order to meet obligations that we have taken upon ourselves.

I'm not particularly athletic (in fact, I'm a bit of a klutz) so giving up sports is not a hardship for me, but there are other changes that I've made in my life to accommodate the hijab and other religious obligations. I believe that what I can gain in the world and in the Hereafter through my religious observance is greater than what I am giving up and that someone who gives up something when it is difficult for her to do so, for the sake of God, will be rewarded by Him. I wish that more people were willing to take an open-minded look at the issue instead of trying to impose their own ideas and values on Muslim women.