What It Means - Day 354

I don't know if we've discussed the concept of hijab before, although I think we did, at least in passing. Now that we're about ten days from completion of this year long reflection I truthfully have forgotten some of my earlier posts. Hijab is sometimes in the popular imagination turned into nothing more than a piece of cloth that women have to wear, when it is also a concept that applies to both sexes based on modesty. Sadly, the patriarchy has all too often turn this into something that applies only to women, although men are also directed to be modest in their attire (but all too often they don't). At the mosque you will often see men cover their head during prayer, although, again, it is not universal. I've thought about covering my head at the mosque, not all the time, but during Friday prayer, but I didn't know what to wear. Many brothers who cover their head wear cap from their country of origin, and, while I own some of them, I thought I would be even more of a poser than usual for wearing one of them. When I ordered my prayer mats from Amazon a few years ago they threw in prayer beads and a skull cup, but it was too small for my big old head (to quote the old SNL routine). On the upcoming trip to India we're visiting a Sufi shrine and the men are required to cover their head as well, so I decided to go and finally order a Taqiyah from, yes, Amazon. It took some research, but I ended up getting a couple that fit very comfortably. So, I finally wore them last Friday, and a couple people looked at me like a poser, so I guess you can't win.

And special thanks to our office manager Linda for using a tape measure to calculate if one size fits all actually is true - thankfully the reviews helped answer that question.