My (earnest, irate) thoughts

…was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Do you find it as fascinating as I do… how far regular people will go, how completely they will give up their soul, in order to have a steady income?

I take for instance a recent experience with my insurance company, UnitedHealthcare, and specifically its pharmaceutical division, Medco. I had the pleasure of speaking to Maria.

Some background: I have been battling a pretty severe chest cold for about two weeks (my own fault for not listening to my husband and getting more sleep, wearing socks, wrapping my neck with a dry towel, eating yogurt and drinking hot tea when it was just a little cold — thus, there blossomed thick phlegm and a heaving, hacking, awake-all-night cough). After a few days of the really bad symptoms, I went to my doctor. He listened to my lungs and peered into my throat and called it “bronchitis.” He wrote prescriptions for a powerful antibiotic, and a cough suppressant/expectorant that was supposed to loosen the mucous in my lungs allowing me to have “productive” coughs, but also suppress my body’s urge to have dry (unproductive) coughs.

When I took these two prescriptions to CVS, I was charged $97. For exactly 28 antibiotic pills, and 14 cough pills. For 42 pills over 7 days, $97. That’s like $2.30 per pill. I asked twice if they had run my insurance. The pharmacy tech assured me they had. But over the next seven days, in the swirling delirium of illness — including the fact that after all my pills were gone, I was still coughing violently, albeit productively — I became incensed. Righteous indignation is my usual state of mind, so it’s natural I would return to it when I was feeling better, kind of.

First, I was angry at the doctor for prescribing me this exorbitant medicine that clearly didn’t work. I went to him after 10 days had passed and told him I’d had to drop $100 on his last two prescriptions, and could he please find something cheaper this time. He was horrified. He didn’t come right out and say the pharmacy hadn’t run my insurance, but he seemed so shocked that I started to suspect just that. (Plus, my mom had spoken to a friend who is a nurse practitioner, and she outright said the pharmacy couldn’t have run my insurance.) He wrote me a prescription for a generic Z-pack, which meant five more days of even more powerful antibiotics — and instructions to eat yogurt to replace the good bacteria, and drink tea with honey — and thrust several free samples of prescription cough syrup and nasal spray at me.

By then I was thrilled with my doctor, and filled the ($10) prescription at Walgreens. Naturally I became convinced that CVS had stolen from me by charging me full price for the medications. I went back there and huffily demanded they check and see. A different pharmacy tech typed for about 10 minutes on the computer and then printed out the prescription labels again. He pointed out where “UnitedH” had paid for their part of the medicine. He said my co-pay was $60 for each medicine, which is why I’d had to pay $60 for a $100 antibiotic, and full price ($37) for the cough pills. I asked, “Is that normal?” He said, “No, a $60 co-pay is pretty outrageous.”

By then my fury toward the pharmacy faded, and got channeled into my insurance company. This is when I had the chance to speak with the lovely Maria. I won’t call her a dolt, but I will quote her below:

Me: Maria, could you be a dear and explain to me exactly why I had to pay $100 to cure my bronchitis?
Maria: Well these prescriptions are Tier 3, and that’s why—
Me: Tier 3? I’m sorry? Could you explain to me in regular English exactly what that means?
Maria: All prescriptions are divided into different tiers. Yours are Tier 3.
Me: Yes, but what does Tier 3 mean?
Maria: Prescriptions that fall under the Tier 3 category are Tier 3 if prescriptions are single-source prescriptions with no generic. (Yes, this is exactly how she talked.)
Me: Augmentin Rx doesn’t have a generic, so it’s Tier 3.
Maria: Yes. Tier 3 medications only have one manufacturer. So Augmentin Rx is a Tier 3 medication, and Tier 3 medications have a co-pay of $60.
Me: So if a medicine is new or hasn’t been copied by someone else, it’s considered Tier 3. And the co-pay for Tier 3 is $60.
Maria: Yes, that’s right.
Me (after a pause): Maria, doesn’t it strike you as slightly outrageous that a person would have to pay $100 to cure bronchitis?
Maria: Well, Tier 3 medications have a co-pay of $60. So with Augmentin, which costs more, you had to pay $60. But with your other medication, the price was $37, so you had to pay $37, not the co-pay. Because we can’t charge you more than the medicine costs.

She had me there.

Me (with a hint of sarcasm): I should hope not… Listen, Maria, can I ask you an honest question?
Maria: Yes, ma’am.
Me: What can I do to avoid this in the future? I mean, what do you suggest I do to avoid Tier 3 medications and $60 co-pays? Will my doctor know what ‘Tier 3′ is?
Maria: Well, you can call us when you’re at the pharmacy and we can tell you what your co-pay is.
Me: I think my pharmacy can handle telling me the price I’m responsible for. What I’m talking about is avoiding the problem of being prescribed something expensive in the first place. Do you understand my point?
Maria: Oh.
Me: Do you have a list of Tier 3 medications or something?
Maria: Oh! Yes, we can send you a guide in the mail.

I’m not even going to get into how stupid it is that we allow insurance personnel without medical degrees to dictate health care decisions.

And despite how this may seem, I’m really not trying to single out Maria as like, the most offensive company-policy apologist ever to work the phones. For me, Maria is just the latest in a long line, part of a much larger trend that I’ve noticed whenever I have a problem with anything — from a credit card bill, bank statement or cell phone bill with a mysterious “fee,” to health and dental insurance companies having myriad “reasons” for not covering something.

American capitalism has devolved into outright thievery. Sure, they call it a “maintenance fee” and it’s only $1.50, but my $1.50, times 2 million customers, equals $3 million. Three Million Dollars in nonsense “fees” that, correct me if I’m wrong, have no basis in real services and amount to stealing. And it works, and it works well, because it’s over the phone or it’s in the mail, there’s no face-to-face interaction or accountability.

So it’s easy to understand the mindset of the company. What I’m trying to understand is the perspective of the person who’s actually talking to me, and how they can sleep at night, knowing they are aiding and ebetting theft from regular folks like themselves. Do they justify it with the corporate rhetoric they hear in the orientation video and company memos? Are they brainwashed into thinking their company is actually fulfilling the needs of its customers?

Probably they are just average folks, reading off a little sheet Scotch-taped to the wall of their cubicle that explains all the appropriate non-response responses for every situation. When customer says: ‘Why do I have this maintenance fee on my bill?’ You say: ‘Company policy blah blah blah…’ They don’t think about it too much, justifying it with how they have kids and a mortgage and how answering phones is better than working outside in the heat. But at least bricklaying, or whatever, is honest. It’s a respectable and decent way to support a family, doing something tangible to justify the bread on one’s table. What do these corporate parrots actually do to earn the bread they eat and the roof over their heads? Less than nothing, because they attempt to justify the insatiable greed of the insanely wealthy. To me, their actions are about as bad as those of the insanely wealthy themselves, who are undoubtedly deeply unhappy and probably suicidal because they’re all-too-aware of what they actually are. Their wealth is its own punishment, because it’s empty, and they’re empty, and they know it.

But what about the middle-class automatrons who help the rich get richer, and call it “working for an insurance company” while they steal pennies from their friends and place it directly into the hands of the greedy pigs at the top? I’m not pretending to be horrified that this happens. I mean, people have been stealing from each other since the beginning of time. What bothers me is that regular people choose to work for corporations who pay them a pittance to say that what those companies are doing isn’t theft, and that we who are stolen from often don’t understand what just happened.

If this were Medieval Europe, these people would be one of the king’s men, the guys on the horses who rode around collecting the “taxes,” which mysteriously went up every time there was a war that had to be funded. And they terrorized the feudal peasants, burning their thatched roofs, stealing their cows, and worse. But at least they knew they were thieves, and those they stole from knew they were thieves. But now, because it’s all done in a very pleasant tone of voice, and it happens over the phone or with a politely worded, vaguely confusing letter in the mail, we don’t call it stealing? Hogwash.

When I used to watch my brother play Grand Theft Auto III, I remember an SUV commercial on one of the radio stations. It ends with a woman saying, “So what if it gets 3 miles to the gallon? I’m a mom, not a conservationist!” Here is the commercial in its entirety:

“Phil and I just had another kid. So of course we need a bigger SUV. Being a mom is hard, with soccer, football and lacrosse practice, so we bought the new Maibatsu Monstrosity. It’s so big we lost little Joey in the back and couldn’t find him for and hour! When I’m rushing to the mall, or talking on my cell phone, I know me and my family are safe. The Maibatsu Monstrosity has 4-wheel drive, and in amphibious mode, it can cross rivers. So far I’ve only hit a few puddles, but it’s good to know it’s there. With the time I save taking shortcuts through the strip-mall parking lot I can focus on the important things. Like gazing longingly at the pool boy or buying more exercise equipment off the TV. So what if it gets 3 miles to the gallon!? I’m a mom, not a conservationist!”

I haven’t seen my brother play that game in ages, but the memory of that woman’s breezy dismissal of everything real still kills me. I used to die laughing at those commercials. And I would wonder about the people writing them, and wish I had a job like that, where I could tell the truth but make it palatable with absurdity — a la Jon Stewart — and people would laugh, and then recognize themselves, and possibly one day change.

Gasoline is $3 a gallon where I live, which is still way cheaper than most anyplace on earth. On my 10-mile trek to and from work on two- and four-lane roads, there are SUVs, Hummers, trucks and minivans — at least as many of these as there are of regular cars. These behemoths are usually holding exactly one person. And because I live in the outlying asphalt sprawl of a large metropolitan area in a totally mountainless state, that person is hardly ever doing weekend off-roading in a scenic red-rock vista.

To make it clear, I’m not one of these people who wants more rules and regulations. Recently my editor wrote a story about how our county is doing a pilot program for red-light cameras. He asked five people if they supported cameras at traffic lights that would be able to photograph cars running red lights, and then warnings and ultimately tickets would be sent to the drivers. I was stunned — stunned — that four out of five thought the cameras were “a good idea”. People want nonstop cops. They want Big Brother watching them and keeping them safe. Personal liberty be damned!

So I’m not one of these people who’s calling for our government to step in and “fix” this problem with a large gas tax. I want people to fix themselves. Why does our government have to tax a short-sighted behavior before we’ll change it? Why do we have to hit peak oil before we reform the way we use fuel? Why does the government have to set emissions standards before we desire more clean, fuel-efficient vehicles? Why are we relying on our government to head off the ecological and fiscal crises that we are incurring with our choices? Why do we have to trap enough greenhouse gasses to spur another ice age before we change our lifestyle? Why do we have to create instability and kill people in the Middle East to ensure we have enough fuel for our country’s infrastructure?

My husband says I’m vaguely ridiculous for going on and on about these sorts of problems. I have to agree, particularly right now because I’m battling a case of bronchitis. (That must be quite a sight: me, my neck slathered with Vicks VapoRub and wrapped in a bathtowel, drinking hot tea with honey, pontificating about the inherent wrongness of driving a Hummer.) Of course I agree theoretically with the words of Jesus, recorded in the Bible: one ought to remove the splinter from one’s own eye, in order to see more clearly, before trying to take out the beam from a neighbor’s eye. Islamic scholar Said Nursi said something along the same lines, that there are concentric circles in one’s life — the inner circle of self, then family, city, country and so on — and that the inner circles have to be faultless and complete before making a meaningful difference in the outer circles is possible.

But seriously (even though it rhymes): What reason could there possibly be for a person to drive an SUV?

The first thing I noticed was the color of the tomatoes. Selvi Anne had spread a breakfast feast for us on her round wooden table — chopped hard-boiled eggs heavily salted and peppered, diced cucumbers, large black olives, white cheese, golden honey, creamed butter, crusty bread and tea in tiny glasses with no handles. The tea was a beautiful rosy color, made from loose black tea in an ancient double kettle. But the chopped tomatoes were this insane scarlet color, the juice and seeds the kind that drip down your chin.

In my husband’s parents’ tiny kitchen, they have everything they need. The table is shoved next to the stone wall, between an antique turquoise Frigidaire and an open door. The room is completed with a sink carved from a room-length marble countertop, and wooden cabinets. Four short wooden stools are the only chairs, and meals aren’t necessarily eaten together at the table; rather, family members wander back and forth between the small rooms, or eat in shifts. A gas stove and a stainless steel sink are in the next room. Breakfast was unremarkable for the others, one of thousands of breakfasts they’ve chewed during the real purpose of meals — overlapping conversations. For me it was different.

Left out of the vast majority of conversations — Turkish people love so much to talk that the novelty of attempting English and laughing at themselves soon wears off and is replaced with rapid-fire exchanges in their native language — I was free to devour everything in sight. I ate, and ate, and ate, stuffing myself to the point of extreme discomfort at every meal. And I felt sorry for myself for being left out and not understanding what they were saying, though I did try to hide that. Turkish people worry and fuss over guests enough as it is.

All that eating gave me plenty of time to ponder the many differences between Turks and Americans. The modern Turkish people, descended from the nomadic tribes of the central Asian steppes, are curiously both eastern and western. Turkish people are found in Uzbekistan, where their almond-shaped eyes and glossy hair look Asian; eastern Turkey, where their features are dark; and the Aegean cities, where they are blond with light-colored eyes. Their lifestyle, coming from their early contact with Islam, is decidedly Middle Eastern, with the cultural preferences for modesty and privacy, and their society’s strong emphasis on traditional families. But they dress, enjoy meals and take vacations like Europeans. Yet they are not individualistic like Westerners, and are concerned with others in their thinking and behavior like those in the East. Like the shame cultures of Asian peoples, and the Japanese proverb: “the nail that sticks up is hammered down.”

I spent much of my time in Turkey thinking about the way cultures evolve over centuries, and how religion shapes that evolution. And when I returned home, I started reading a book that explores the theory of Jesus (peace be upon him) traveling to India during the “missing years” of the Bible, and again after he escaped crucifixion. Some texts suggest he lived and died there as an old man, being influenced by and influencing eastern religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism. It is, as it sounds, totally fascinating.

The book talks about how Westerners tends to view themselves as separate from God. As an American, I realize now that I had accepted this mindset completely, and subconsciously.

The Age of Enlightenment represented, in part, a rejection of the Church and its doctrines, especially those that were deemed incomprehensible, unbelievable or irrational — doctrines such as the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. With the exception of those philosophers who adopted Deism, most Enlightenment philosophers rejected religion altogether. That rejection was, however, more a rejection of Christianity and its specific doctrines.

This rejection of Christianity by European philosophers served to distance them from religion in general. This was ironic, because both the Church and the European philosophers — ostensibly at opposite poles of the religious/spiritual spectrum — had separated mankind from God and God from nature, the Church doing so as a matter of doctrine, and the Enlightenment philosophers doing so as a rejection of the supernatural. (”Saving the Savior: Did Christ survive the Crucifixion?” by A.B. Salahuddin, p. 81-82)

Like a typical Westerner, I even thought my conversion to Islam was entirely logical, not spiritual. In fact, I prided myself on this. I thought my decision was a reflection of my very rational rejection of irrational dogma in favor of a religion that made sense. And, in part, it was.

But my decision was also a spontaneous rejection of the flat-out wrong notion that spirituality is necessarily nonsensical, as well as a gradual acceptance of the interconnectedness of all things — man and nature and God. When I read “God is closer to you than your jugular vein” (Qur’an 50:16) I felt a spark that slowly grew into a new perspective. I felt like a child again, looking at the world in wonder and awe. Thinking about a bee making honey, for example, I could be lost for several minutes, pondering how a tiny insect spends its entire life making a delicious substance it personally will never use. I thought about its role in the divine play where all creatures are connected: Bees make sticky, sweet honey that humans eat; honey is delicious, and it also has curative properties, particularly for chest infections; bees work for God by working for man, and they are either content in this role or unaware of it. And how Western man, despite all his intelligence and progress, happily uses the honey but doesn’t ponder where it came from or why it’s there, and even may take a secret, evil thrill in killing a bee — not because it poses a threat, but because he can.

Unlike in Eastern religious philosophy where the presence of God in nature was never threatened by the introduction of ideas to the contrary, where humankind has always been viewed as an intimate part of nature, and where it is understood that a deep relationship exists between humans and nature and God, both Christianity and Enlightenment philosophers succeeded in excising cognizance of these relationships from the psyches of many Europeans, Christianity doing so through creating an external God, and Enlightenment philosophers doing so by rejecting God altogether. (Ibid., p. 82)

It sounds daft, but this made me feel better. Unlike every other book I’ve ever read that explores why Western philosophy is wrong or at least incomplete, this is the only one that doesn’t make me personally feel like an idiot. At least my perspective came from somewhere. At least we can understand why the Western world has gone this route.

This, in turn, led to the idea of nature as purely a resource to be used without regard to how that use might impact humanity, especially in the long run. As a result, science generally proceeded along the lines of a utilitarian notion of nature that precluded the idea of incorporating spiritual insights into the scientific method. (Ibid., p. 82)

The past several centuries have been dominated by the mechanistic thinking of the Enlightenment with its emphasis on the privatization and commodification of nature and man; detachment and isolation from the natural world; and a near pathological obsession with creating a secure, autonomous existence, independent of the forces of nature…

Analytical and rational modes of thinking, mechanistic views of nature, reducing phenomena to purely quantifiable standards of measurement, the neutrality of science, knowledge as power, self-interest as the motivating force in history, the invisible hand of the marketplace, and utilitarianism are among the critical intellectual assumptions that, together, provide a unified schema for the modern notion of an autonomous, secular existence. (”Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century” by Jeremy Rifkin, p. 2)

This more succinctly explains the Eastern notion of Western blindness. It scratches the surface of why the American-European rape of nature occurred and continues to occur, why our brand of capitalism has gotten so ugly, why fascist emperors continue to rise to power in our hemisphere, why science is hell-bent on conquering death and other things beyond human control, and why so many Americans and Europeans self-medicate, trying to ignore their soul’s longing for more than their brain can acquire, attempting to sidestep the human search for enlightenment.

And for me, it answers a question I’ve had for some time — why *all* my intellectual Christian friends, raised with viewpoints and philosophies similar to my own, have spun towards one of two directions: toward a rational atheism, or toward Eastern religions and philosophies. Several friends have even merged Eastern philosophy with Western religion, bothered by either extreme. And now I can better understand my own gravitation toward Turkish Islam, a perspective that is both Western and Eastern and satisfies the, I think, human need for both.

Everyone is obsessed with it. It is one of the most visible parts of a religion practiced by more than a billion people from China to western Africa, and increasingly in the Americas. Hijab, the Arabic term for the modest way Muslim women are encouraged to dress, actually refers to to more than just the headscarf. But it’s the scarf that gets all the attention.

Covered women share perhaps an unfair burden of Western curiosity about and mistrust of Islam. They are visibly different — agog eyes and agape mouths are the least of what they encounter every day in America and Europe. They are made fun of, harrassed and profiled.

They are also interrogated and mishandled at airports. I experienced this personally in the Munich airport, where the female security guard pantomimed that I should remove my denim jacket because she assumed I didn’t speak English. I answered, “I can’t take it off because it’s my shirt.” Then, even though the metal detector did not go off when I went through it, she approached me from behind as I was picking up my purse, and patted down my head. At first, I was too stunned even to be upset. But then my husband and I talked about it for an hour, both of us getting more and more worked up — “giving each other gas” as he puts it — with me feeling more and more like, “Why does following my religion make me such an outcast?”

In my darker moments, I tell my husband that he ought to grow a big, bushy beard and don a traditional robe so he can see what it’s like, being visibly Muslim. Being Turkish, he of course doesn’t think this is necessary. (Turkey began to encourage Western dress in 1925 with the Hat Law, which made the fez illegal and discouraged the veiling of women. Today, most Turks dress carefully and stylishly, favoring European fashions.)

While many Americans would say that Saudi Arabia is regressive because of its laws about women’s dress and behavior in public, you don’t often hear people calling France backward for banning the headscarf completely — a testament to that country’s total lack of respect for religious freedom. Women must also remove the scarf to go to university or hold down a government job in Turkey, which is perhaps even more appalling because that country is 99 percent Muslim. So women must choose between modesty and education, or between modesty and security, which isn’t a choice at all.

As a Muslim, I find it strange that devotion to God in the form of modest clothing offends so many people, including people who were born in Muslim countries. As an American, I cannot understand why this 24-inch square piece of fabric causes such an uproar in the allegedly tolerant and religious-persecution-free West. And as an American Muslim woman, I am simultaneously exasperated and outraged by the world’s obsession with the headscarf, and dread the day when America joins Europe in its prejudice. What’s next — laws banning a Jewish boy from wearing a skullcap or a Sikh man from wearing a turban?

Contrary to popular belief, Islam did not invent the head covering. It is simply not true that the Islamic headscarf has no counterpart in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Both Jewish and Christian religious traditions have a long history of covering women’s hair, particularly in places of worship. Here is an article, The Veil, which covers the topic pretty well. (I am not a religious scholar or expert by any stretch of the imagination, but after a few minutes Googling, I’ve already found plenty of evidence to support the ideas in the above article.)

Married women are required to cover their hair by Halacha (Jewish law). Talmudic literature even calls the covering of a woman’s hair Dat Moshe (originating from Moses’ teaching). To do so, some Orthodox Jewish women to this day wear scarves, hats, bandanas, ball caps or even wigs. The reasons were varied — sometimes it was for God’s glory, sometimes for her husband’s glory, and sometimes to demonstrate her noble status.

Christianity, too, requires the veiling of women. Catholic nuns continue to observe this, due to canonical law. Certain denominations, such as the Amish and Mennonites, continue to cover their heads as well. The basis is almost certainly Paul’s first epistle to the church in Corinth.

“Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head dishonors his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled dishonors her head — it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or to be shaved, then she should wear a veil. For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.” (1 Corinthians 11:4-7)

Again, the rationale is the requirement of women to submit to both man and God. Interestingly, there is not a single iconic depiction of the Virgin Mary, revered by both Christians and Muslims as a woman of shining character, without a head covering. Here’s a great article on the subject: Would you ask Mother Mary to remove her headscarf?

I love seeing the many things that the Abrahamic religions have in common; it reinforces my faith. It always feels like further evidence that the God of Abraham is also the God of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them all). The only real difference between the Biblical basis and the Qur’anic basis for female head covering is the underlying reason. In the Qur’an, the headscarf is for modesty.

“Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty…And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that they should not display their beauty and ornaments except what ordinarily appear thereof; that they should draw their veils over their bosoms…” (Qur’an 24: 30, 31)

And modesty is for protection.

“O Prophet, tell your wives and daughters and the believing women that they should cast their outer garments over their bodies when abroad so that they should be known and not molested.” (33:59)

It is one of the great ironies of our world today that the same headscarf — revered as a sign of holiness when worn by Catholic nuns for the purpose of showing the authority of man — is reviled as a sign of oppression when worn by Muslim women for the purpose of protection. — I paraphrased this thought from “The Veil” (cited above, emphasis mine).

The other day, walking across the parking lot near my job, a young woman was wearing black shorts so tiny I literally did a double-take, thinking she was walking around in her underwear. Her companion was an older woman in a long skirt. Her mother? Really?! Another double-take.

It brings to mind something my brother said ages ago. At the time I was not Muslim, and I was complaining about how my then-brand-new Muslim husband didn’t want me to wear jeans anymore as part of some kind of fascist religious dress code. My non-Muslim brother said something I never forgot: “Well, you know, I understand that. I think most chicks have no idea what they do to guys with the way they dress.” I remember being shocked that my non-traditional brother, an organic farmer who enjoys yoga and mysticism, would ever agree with my fundamentalist husband, whose idea of a good time is praying and reading the Risale-i-Nur.

A recent dinner at my parents’ home, with my aunt, 18-year-old cousin, and his girlfriend brought it again to the forefront of my mind. They were all dressed for the beach. Throughout our short time together, the girlfriend — who I would bet is a nice girl with a good heart — looked ill-at-ease and kept tugging at her shorts. This made me feel awkward, because I feel bad when people feel uncomfortable around me. And as you might expect, after my husband and I left, there ensued a discussion about my scandalous attire.

No one said anything bad about me. And even if they had, my mom is my biggest defender/champion. I’m sure it hasn’t been easy for her to explain my “Arabification” to family and friends. They were just curious about my strange new look. And my mom did say something genius: She said to my cousin, who opened the roundtable discussion titled Jenny’s Headscarf™: “Well, before she started covering, she’d always received a lot of unwelcome attention and comments from strangers.” She turned to the girlfriend and said, “I’m sure you know what I mean.” The girlfriend nodded eagerly and said, “I know exactly what you mean.” At which point my cousin looked back at her, dumbfounded. Then my mom continued, “And when she read that she needed to dress like this for the religion, it kind of made sense to her, because it was a way to let everyone know she’s modest and doesn’t want strangers to be too familiar with her.”

It’s very old-fashioned to feel this way, I know. I think rather a lot of girls do enjoy any attention they get for their looks. Or many of them might believe they’re not getting any attention. In that way, covering is the great equalizer of women…because every woman, no matter what she looks like, looks better all covered up. Kind of like chocolate.

But despite these arguments for wearing the scarf — showing your seriousness and piety; forcing men to evaluate you based on your mind; avoiding being visually raped and other attention from strangers, assuming you don’t want said attention — it comes across like a “hard sell” if you’re not currently a covered Muslim woman. Kind of a “see why covering is good? because this, and this, and this, and this…” until you don’t really see it at all.

The truth is, I just cover because I believe the Qur’an is the unchanged word of God.