{"id":205061,"date":"2025-06-22T12:10:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T12:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/205061\/"},"modified":"2025-06-22T12:10:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T12:10:12","slug":"i-cover-my-face-because-its-empowering-its-my-choice-not-the-governments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/205061\/","title":{"rendered":"I cover my face because it’s empowering – it’s my choice, not the government’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Liverpool Hope University student hopes to become a solicitor and said she feels comfortable wearing the niqab in the city\"ImaanImaan Ahmed and her husband Bilal.<\/p>\n

A 23-year-old woman who started wearing a niqab two years ago says it’s “empowering” – even though she’s been told she looks like an “executioner” and a “liar”. Imaan Ahmed, a law student at Liverpool Hope University, grew up Muslim but wasn’t “close” to the religion until she went to Mecca in 2022. She started wearing the head and face covering, so people outside her home can only see her eyes.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin asked Keir Starmer if he planned to follow other European countries and prohibit burqas – and Kemi Badenoch called for bosses to be able to ban the garment in the workplace. Imaan said this step would be “taking away a woman\u2019s right” and her choice should be accepted.<\/p>\n

The niqab conceals the face but leaves the eyes uncovered while the burka is a full body covering. Imaan claims she was once told she “dresses like an executioner” – but she\u2019s proud to cover her face. She said: \u201cYounger people, they\u2019re accepting of it because, you know, you\u2019ve got LGBTQ, no-one\u2019s the same anymore.<\/p>\n

“So at university I\u2019m really comfortable in it. But I get the train and it\u2019s middle-aged people and older people you get funny looks from.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in Manchester city centre one day with a friend and this guy, [a YouTuber] came up to us with this camera and he says, \u2018What would you say to people who say you dress like executioners? You cover your face because you have something to hide, you\u2019re a liar, he was saying.<\/p>\n

“And I was just like, that\u2019s the first time someone\u2019s actually come and said something me. I didn\u2019t say anything, we just walked away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was on one of his YouTube videos. Someone sent it to me but I didn\u2019t watch it.”<\/p>\n

\"ImaanImaan Ahmed and her husband Bilal<\/p>\n

Imaan said this experience was the exception. She said: \u201cWe\u2019ve had some really nice interactions as well, from people saying, you look beautiful.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does feel nice when they say beautiful, because even though we cover our face, the girls might wear a nice colour, a pink hijab or a nice pattern. It\u2019s nice when someone compliments you. The majority of British people have been nice, honestly.”<\/p>\n

Imaan added: \u201cIf they do ban the burka, they\u2019re really setting themselves back. Because you\u2019re taking away a woman\u2019s right. If someone chooses to cover or not cover, it should be their choice, not the government\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people have the misconception that Muslim women cover themselves because of men, because they\u2019re told to by their father or their brother. My mum doesn\u2019t wear niqab or even hijab. My family\u2019s very open-minded, it\u2019s a choice I wanted to make, and the same with a lot of my friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s empowering. Before I wore this, I was just a regular young girl. I was always just really insecure, I followed trends. I looked at influencers and thought, oh my god, I\u2019m not skinny enough.<\/p>\n

“When I started wearing the face covering I felt more confident. It\u2019s like, I don\u2019t need to worry about anything, I don\u2019t need to worry about, like, fitting in with society.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s so much stigma around saying that all the people who wear this, someone\u2019s told them to, they\u2019re oppressed. Which, yeah, in some countries that\u2019s the case for some women, but it\u2019s a small percentage who that\u2019s the case for. Most of us are doing it out of their own choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re thinking they\u2019re giving women more freedom by saying, don\u2019t cover, but really you\u2019re controlling us because you\u2019re deciding how we dress. So it\u2019s doing the opposite of what they think they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ImaanImaan Ahmed and her husband Bilal<\/p>\n

She added: “As a teenager I didn\u2019t wear anything, not even the head covering. I was born Muslim, but I was never really that close with the religion. Then in 2022 I went on Umrah, the pilgrimage you go to in Mecca.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I went to Mecca, a lot of Arab women wear it in Saudi Arabia and around there. And I literally just thought, oh my god, it looks so nice, because everyone was wearing it. I just bought it and wore it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came back to the UK I wore it some days, and then I had this attachment to it. I became closer to the religion after Umrah and I started wearing the headscarf. And then I just moved a step further.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got a few Niqabi friends as well. I met them through social media. I posted, like, if any Niqabi people are living in the Manchester area, message me. And now we have this group.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the girls, their families wear them. Some they choose to themselves. And some people wear it on some days if they feel like it and some days they don\u2019t, they aren\u2019t that strict with it. In our religion it\u2019s not an obligation to wear it. I wear it all the time now, but I didn\u2019t used to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imaan lives in Burnley, Lancashire, with her husband Bilal, and commutes into university. She didn\u2019t wear the niqab when they met.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cWe\u2019ve been together since very young, I was 15 and he was 16. We met on social media, typical.<\/p>\n

“It wasn\u2019t an arranged marriage as a lot of people expect it to be due to our young ages\u2013we just both wanted to be together so we decided to get married.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we got married I was 18, he just turned 20. So we\u2019ve been together for a long time now, but married five years in July.\u201d<\/p>\n

About her choice to don the face covering, she said: \u201cI kind of wore it slowly, so it was never like, I wore it one day and he was like, woah. He doesn\u2019t have a huge opinion towards it, because it\u2019s just what I want to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really annoys me when people say we\u2019re made to wear them. Since I started wearing it, even some of my family members who are Muslim have said, like, are you sure you really want to wear it? I\u2019m the first person in my family to wear it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Imaan is in her first year studying law at Liverpool Hope University and hopes to be a solicitor one day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Liverpool Hope University student hopes to become a solicitor and said she feels comfortable wearing the niqab…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8815],"tags":[748,393,4884,82637,378,179,33512,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-205061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-liverpool","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-hope-university","12":"tag-in-the-news","13":"tag-liverpool","14":"tag-muslim-communities","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114726949724258568","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}