User: TraceyInSkirts

This poll is a female-only space and it was disrespectful of you to intrude. I do hope that at least you didn’t vote. My husband monitors my email access very closely so I had to own up to him that a male had intruded. To my surprise he told me to post a reply.

We now live in my husband’s family home, a small gulf emirate, after he decided that moving to a conservative Muslim environment with very traditional attitudes towards women and girls would be good for a new convert. I guess he’s right: wearing abaya and niqab is easier when all adult woman and teenage girls are covered up - back in the UK other girls running around in tight jeans and T-shirts drove me CRAZY! Of course it is a massive change for a girl who grew up as a tomboy and something of a feminist to adapt to a quiet daily cycle of childcare, housework and religious observance. What is important though is that only Islam provides a 100% safe environment for woman and children. I’m 100% protected from crime, alcohol, drugs, s*x abuse, bad language, pornography etc and I can concentrate 100% on being a good housewife and mother, which as our religion teaches is my correct life’s role. I do find our dress code onerous, but where women display themselves to non-mahan men this tempts us into immorality. Far better to put up with the discomfort and inconvenience of abaya, niqab, long skirt, stockings, gloves etc, even in 45 degrees of humid heat. Our religion teaches us that the fires of hell are hotter still so don’t feel sorry for me! My femininity is reserved 100% for my husband which is what all wives should want, shouldn't they?

Only last year I was an independent career girl with a great job and a fun social life. Then I married a Muslim… Welcome to my new world trapped in the home with a gaggle of ignorant, ultra-religious females. They’ve taken away my beloved skinny jeans and dress me in frumpy knee length skirts, thick, itchy brown stockings and clingy nylon slips. They set me to housework from dawn till dusk – day after day of chopping and pealing in the kitchen, scouring pots and washing dishes, scrubbing floors, making beds, endless yucky cleaning, mountains of laundry and ironing, and the same yucky food every day. Booze, needless to say, is 100% forbidden. I have to prostrate myself in prayer 5 times every day. My mother-in-law is a real dragon and bosses me around ALL THE TIME. If I answer back she tells my husband and I get punished. And last but not least, I’m only allowed out COMPLETELY shrouded in a horrible black VEIL – face, hands, ankles, every inch.

Confinement in a head-to-toe black veil is ever so hard to bear for a girl who is used to freedom. I hate the isolation, discomfort and indignity. I feel a bit desperate but I’m swiftly punished if I try to rebel. My husband has become very dogmatic and I’m afraid of provoking his temper – it’s safest to do as I’m told.

Muslim men use the veil to discipline and control their wives. It is calculated to instil full respect and obedience. You can’t maintain your dignity when you’re disguised as a big, black $%!@roach and I can testify to its coercive power. It makes it 100% clear that I’m wholly owned by my husband. I’m not allowed any contact with other men and my veil enforces this prohibition very effectively – they can neither me see nor hear me – I’m quiet as a little mouse once I’m veiled.

Being veiled is uncomfortable and inconvenient and demeaning so I no longer ask if I can go out unless I really need to. My husband says it keeps me at the ironing board and the kitchen sink where I belong – he says that leaving her husband’s house is a privilege not a right for a Muslim wife.

My husband says he’d be less strict if I wasn’t so pretty. By insisting I’m fully veiled he says he’s paying me a compliment! He only hides me away because I’m valuable!

My husband says that like all girls I’m naturally flirtatious and my conduct reflects on his honour and dignity. He says that uncontrolled femininity is dirty and dangerous. He says full veiling stops me from tempting other men but it doesn’t prevent me from being feminine in the right way. He is buying me lots of pretty dresses to wear in the home. He says I’m more girly now than when I wore jeans and trousers all the time!

My husband says he’d be less strict if I’d been borne Muslim. As I’m a new convert though he says I’ve got to demonstrate my sincerity by veiling myself, and I guess I do feel truly Muslim for the first time! I’m saying goodbye to one community and joining another – my veil cuts me off from all my previous friends and family except my parents and my sisters, but Muslim ladies are more comfortable with me now I’m veiled.

My veil smothers my individuality but it is kind of cool that I when I do go out people don’t know who I am!

The sight of other girls running around in jeans and short skirts drives me crazy – pure envy I guess! I try to pretend I can’t see them. I do so wish they had to wear veils just like me – is that terrible or what!?

I’m getting used to my prayer dress and I’m starting to enjoy my prayers – they are my precious little break from the endless grind of housework.

My husband forces me to wear skirts and dresses ALL THE TIME, inside the house and out. I’m not allowed to wear jeans or trousers AT ALL. For a tomboy like me it’s as onerous as the veil. My husband says there is a constant danger of lesbianism in a segregated female environment, a vice for which he has zero tolerance. He says if I wore trousers I’d be advertising for the ‘male role’ in a lesbian relationship. I’ve never thought of myself in that way but maybe my preference for trousers is a sign of latent lesbian tendencies – anyway, there is zero chance I’ll ever be allowed to wear them again.

My husband showed me this article by a lady called Sameera who veils very strictly. He tells me to regard her as my role model. http://hijabsahih.tripod.com/1987.htm

My husband treated my like a princess before he married me but now he acts the lord and master and I feel like a prisoner. The whole family sees me as a domestic drudge and a serial baby-maker (contraception strictly prohibited). He goes to nightclubs and returns in the small hours with whisky on his breath and a woman’s scent on his clothes. His double standards torment me but I’m too frightened to challenge him.

My husband finally told me that unless I fully veiled myself he wouldn’t let me leave the house anymore. When I argued he said it was an order not a request. When I pleaded for some leniency he said that an artful girl could flirt with just her eyes or her hands. All my contact with other men had now ceased.

I raged and sulked but it is hard for a skirt-wearing housewife to rebel and I have finally surrendered. Whenever I leave the house – only with my husband’s express permission and closely escorted – I’m entombed in a mobile black prison. It’s so hot I can’t breathe and sweat runs into my eyes, I stumble on the hem of my abaya and I can’t see where I’m going.

For the record I have to wear a full-skirted black dress, itchy black stockings, clingy nylon slip, clumping black shoes, elbow-length black gloves, baggy black abaya, long black hijab and a close-fitting 3-layer niqab. I peer at a blury outside world through a filmy black screen. How millions of women put up with this I can’t imagine – I just feel helpless, trapped and isolated. I’m not a girl any more, just a dirty black $%!@roach.

My husband says it will do me good. He says I’ll get used to it. I know I shouldn’t but I hate Islam for doing this to women.

I love my new hubby to bits and want to please him, but I’ve already made lots of concessions: I’ve given up my job and I’m now a housewife. I’ve converted to Islam: I pray 5 times a day, I’m not allowed alcohol and I wear a modest hijab whenever I leave the house. I traded in all my trousers for dresses and skirts. But these were his conditions when he proposed, so even if I think they are unfair I knew in advance and can’t complain.

I didn’t agree to veil myself from head to toe as though I was his personal property, ashamed to be a woman and not to be seen in public. Why should I? Of course he is in charge but that doesn’t mean he has complete control of where I go, what I do and who I see. Of course I’m his, but it’s like he wants to control my femininity 100%.

If Muslim ladies don’t think it is necessary to wear black abaya, niqab and gloves then maybe this poll and any messages will give me moral support. But PLEASE do vote honestly. I’m a new convert and more than anything I want to know what is expected of me.

S

Please vote in my new poll

http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/490494