She Took Off Her Scarf So She's Going To Hell

Meanwhile, you are married man who ate another man’s bumbum yesterday.

I am stuck in Luanda, waiting for my connecting flight.

There is not much to do but sleep but the iron benches at airports are not built for comfort so I cross my legs and settle in for the 8-hour wait.

I whip out my phone and instinctively open Instagram, the unloaded feed reminds me that I don’t have internet connection but one photo (which probably loaded the last time my phone was connected to the internet) stops me from immediately closing the app.

It’s a selfie-style picture.

A woman with very chubby cheeks is the one taking the selfie. A wide smile is plastered across her face, she’s squinting probably due to the sun as the sunlight bounces off her hair, highlighting the brown streaks. An unbranded cup of coffee is in her other hand and sitting on the grass in a park.

To the normal eye, she’s just a girl enjoying her cup of (hopefully cold) coffee on a hot day but I know a little bit more about her. Let’s call her Sarah.

I have been following Sarah on Instagram for years because I was intrigued by her. She used to wear a full niqab (a religious dress covering everything but the eye). Until the day I stumbled on her page, I used to think muslim women, especially the ones who had gone the extra mile to wear a niqab had to be demure, to be silent. Barely seen and never ever heard.

However, Sarah was different. She had a bubbly personality. She made videos where her voice was loud and animated. I especially liked that she wore colourful sneakers under the niqab. There was no way her personality could be covered. She made sure of that.

I liked Sarah and I was fascinated by her.

Credit: iStock

Even then, I would sometimes see comments criticising her for being too loud for a muslim woman. Sometimes the comments would be deleted and other times, she’d just not respond.

This went on for a long time until Sarah posted a picture that suggested she had gotten married. Sarah disappeared from Instagram shortly after that and I forgot about her existence until one day when she showed up online without her face covering. She still had the full hijab, just not the niqab anymore.

Credit: Wallpapers.com

And with that came all kinds of comments. Some genuinely curious about why she took it off, some offering prayers hoping she found her way back to the niqab and others just outrightly insulting and threatening that she’d spend her afterlife in the pits of hell.

I was not new to this. These unkind comments were a norm whenever a woman decides to take off the hijab but in this case Sarah had not taken off the hijab, only the niqab so I was shocked at the unkind comments. I didn't add to the vitriol but I didn’t speak against it either. I just scrolled away.

Months later, Sarah would go from the full hijab to a smaller one and then a scarf, a cap and one day, boom, we saw her hair. My mouth fell open. I think it was because if someone like me (who uses a scarf the way I do) decided to take it off, it would not be as surprising as seeing someone go from the niqab to showing hair.

My shock turned to concern and confusion when I checked the comments. Sarah who had been averaging 200 comments online now had about 10k comments from people spewing vile, unbridled hate towards her. She was called everything under the sun. Some even threatened violence. If her comments were like that, I didn’t want to know what her private dms were like.

As someone who has experienced very toxic cyberbullying, especially from muslims, I knew she was in hell.

Credit: BenderLeadership

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Sarah’s evolution took about a year but she would later come out to say that she had been without her scarf offline for months before being brave enough to show it online.

I’ve heard many muslim women say this as well. Preparing themselves offline for the backlash and terrible unkindness from fellow muslims online.

The point of this newsletter is not to dissect Sarah’s decision. It is to understand the rationale behind the unkindness people hurl at muslim women.

Sometimes, someone is battling so much that they start to question their entire existence and identity but here comes Mr. Bolaji from Marketing who saw their open hair and started to rain curses on them. Meanwhile, Mr. Bolaji is a married man who ate another man’s bumbum yesterday.

Or Halimah who is telling someone they are going to hell by showing their hair but is secretly battling a drug and gambling addiction.

This is not to call out anyone but to state that nobody in the religion is perfect. In fact, according to the teachings of the religion, the only perfect person is The Prophet so why do we all go around acting like we are paragons of perfection? Why do you think you have the right to judge another person? Or lead the person into depression for a decision they made in their lives. Don’t you think that makes you a weirdo?

Nobody is saying you can’t gently try to guide someone back to what you think they should be doing but you also have to be aware of the fact that it is their path and they will walk it at their own pace.

Kindness is preached as being a huge part of religion yet unkindness remains the order of the day.

There is a story about a prostitute who gave a cat some water and for that singular act, she was admitted into heaven. If that prostitute were alive in 2025, they would have almost taken her life plus the cat’s life too because why cat dey associate imself with ashawo?

People just need to be kinder and stop acting like weirdos.

And lowkey, if you’ve hurled insults at a woman for trying to find her way in the religion, you need to check yourself. And remind yourself of the log in your own eye.

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Anyway, I leave you with a song that a man introduced me to.

Bless The Telephone by Labi Siffre.