--- id: "virtual-communities:case/surviving-hijab" type: "GovLab case study" title: "Surviving Hijab" url: "https://virtual-communities.thegovlab.org/case/surviving-hijab" date: "2021-02-23" summary: "More than 900,000 women are supporting one another to overcome hardship" source: "The GovLab (virtual-communities.thegovlab.org)" licence: "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)" --- # Surviving Hijab **More than 900,000 women are supporting one another to overcome hardship** - Founding year: 2014 - Group size: 917, 828 members of the private group - Location: Egypt - Part of: [The Power of Virtual Communities](https://virtual-communities.thegovlab.org/) ## Introduction On March 25, 2019, a group of 14 women raised a banner reading “Surviving Hijab” over Mount Everest base camp.[1] The women who made the [eight-day trek](https://www.thenational.ae/uae/women-climb-to-everest-base-camp-to-show-unity-in-face-of-anti-hijab-rhetoric-1.848657) up the mountain’s south face were members of the Surviving Hijab Facebook group, a community created by Manal Rostom, a 40-year old Egyptian online influencer, marathon runner, and freelancer who is based in Dubai. Rostom is a trainer and brand ambassador for Nike, and is also widely known for [testing and modelling](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/fashion/nike-pro-hijab-muslim-athlete.html) Nike’s “Pro Hijab,” a headscarf designed for athletic use. She created Surviving Hijab in 2014 to provide a safe space for women to discuss their experiences being a woman in a Muslim culture and choosing to don the hijab. The group’s [purpose](https://www.facebook.com/groups/631337350298622/) is to “urge those who are veiled (and those who are considering in these hard times) to continue to hold on…despite the hardships.” Rostom led the Everest expedition to bring greater attention to the group’s mission: “What I wanted to achieve was to raise awareness about tolerance, inclusivity and equality for women,” [she told the Emerati daily](https://www.thenational.ae/uae/women-climb-to-everest-base-camp-to-show-unity-in-face-of-anti-hijab-rhetoric-1.848657), *The National*. ## How it All Started As Rostom says, every woman who wears the hijab has a personal motivation - a “why” that reminds them of their faith. Rostom’s “why” came in 1999, when she was 19 years old. While on the way to a summer vacation at the Red Sea, the bus Rostom and her family were riding on blew a tire and crashed. Her cousin, with whom Rostom had switched seats only a few minutes earlier, was paralyzed and died a few months later. Miraculously, Rostom was unharmed. Feeling blessed by God, she decided to put on the hijab and has worn it ever since. Rostom [created Surviving Hijab](https://darpanmagazine.com/people/newsmakers/manal-rostom-the-surviving-hijab-story/#:~:text=Later%20in%202018%2C%20Rostom%20won,efficiently%20through%20the%20required%20resources.) in 2014 as a community for women who wear the hijab to support one another through the personal, political and societal struggles that come with wearing the veil. An additional goal was to bring visibility to Muslim women, who Rostom says still face discrimination in both the Muslim and non-Muslim world. The rules of some sports leagues, for instance, do not allow athletes to wear the hijab during competition, forcing them to choose between their faith and sport. “We all have a voice - we just need to feel empowered to use it,” Rostom told us. ## Leadership Surviving Hijab is run by a team of 10 [admins and moderators](https://www.facebook.com/help/901690736606156), most of whom are young women in the United Kingdom and Egypt. Moderators have to speak Arabic and English and be willing to put in the work - moderators spend up to six hours a day on the group encouraging the nearly 1 million members to post and engage with one another and enforce the rules of the group. Per the group’s rules, members are not allowed to tell another woman that her manner of dressing is not hijab. No bullying, “extremism,” re-posts, or off-topic posts are allowed. To protect members’ privacy, members are not allowed to share others’ posts outside the group. Rostom interviews the candidates for a moderator position to make sure they are not religious extremists and have a genuine interest in the community, which is pro-hijab and embraces both religious identity and social integration. Surviving Hijab is a forum for support. Women ask each other for advice and support as they consider wearing the hijab or when they struggle wearing it. In one recent post, a woman who was considering removing her hijab posted veiled and unveiled photos of herself and asked for others to pray for her. The post received over 13,000 [reactions](https://medium.com/facebook-design/reactions-not-everything-in-life-is-likable-5c403de72a3f) and over 3,000 comments - some encouraging her to wear the hijab, others in favor of removing it - within hours of its upload. Fashion is another popular topic. When sorted by topic, “Fashion” and “Styling” represent the majority of tagged posts. These posts include a picture of a member’s outfit and ask for feedback, often with a variation of “What do you think?” as the caption. At the time of writing, members are participating in a challenge where a woman posts a picture of a princess alongside a photo of herself wearing the princess's outfit, usually adapted to include a headscarf. The picture challenges seem to be designed to emphasize that a woman can be whoever she wants to be in a hijab and that making an outfit out of it should be fun. Women also ask for modesty tips, such as recommendations for wrist coverings. Beyond fashion, members celebrate important milestones within the group. Frequently, posts are about users’ birthdays, engagements and weddings, or anniversaries of their time wearing the hijab. ## Participation As of October 2020, Surviving Hijab has more than 900,000 members, with more than 30,000 members added from September - October 2020. As a private group, people must request to join. Non-hijabi and non-Muslim women are allowed to join so long as they have a genuine interest in learning about the community. Men are not permitted. People participate to connect with others around the treatment that hijabi women face. “Due to all these little incidents that accumulate at the back of your head, you don't feel like you fit in, and you don't feel like you belong anywhere,” she told us. Women participate because the group provides a sense of belonging and a place where they feel safe sharing their experiences. ## Action Surviving Hijab is very active online, with members sharing political, fashion, religious, and motivational content. The group has organized around specific causes related to the hijab. For instance, when members reported that hotels and resorts across the Middle East were discriminating against women who wore the [burkini](https://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/fashion/the-rise-of-the-burkini-how-the-modest-swimwear-has-gone-global-1.921794) - a hijab-compliant women’s swimsuit - other members began to call out those establishments on their Facebook and Instagram pages using #NoBurkiniBans and #NoHijabBans. Rostom says a few resorts and hotels reversed their burkini bans as a result of the campaign. Surviving Hijab has also held meetups in real life. In July 2019, for instance, they [held an event](https://egyptianstreets.com/2019/07/07/womens-rights-movement-surviving-hijab-organizes-first-event-in-cairo/) at Greek Campus (an event space in downtown Cairo) with panel discussions, workshops, and beauty/makeup tips for group members. ## Challenges As such a large group, Surviving Hijab often experiences interpersonal conflict. “When an argument breaks out, it’s hell,” Rostom told us. Rostom says that a common dispute starts when a member of the group posts a picture to show off her outfit, and has the fringe of her hair or her ankle exposed. Another member will call her out, saying her outfit does not count as hijab. Moderators try to catch these comments as soon as they are posted, to prevent the argument from escalating. “If I let the comment stay for more than five minutes, then it will just turn into a fire,” Rostom says. For this reason, the group takes a tough stand on rule breaches. Moderators remove anyone who posts “this is not hijab” comments, as well as anyone who “likes” them (and is assumed to share those views). “It’s like a ‘bad apples’ theory,” Rostom explains. “If you leave one bad apple, it’s just going to ruin the whole group.” Some members have also expressed frustration about the group’s focus on fashion, which they feel overshadows the goal of empowering women to succeed in other areas, such as their career. One member posted a comment that while clothing and modesty are important topics, the group needs to be more focused on highlighting certain aspects of their lives as hijabi women.[3] These criticisms sometimes become overwhelming. Rostom says that members of the group are attacked both by stricter members of the community and by outside critics, who [stereotype](https://www.adl.org/education/resources/tools-and-strategies/myths-and-facts-about-muslim-people-and-islam) them as old-fashioned, extremist, or uneducated. “We have sad stories of women who left the group because it was too much for them,” Rostom says. “Or somebody annoyed them or that one hurtful comment left a scar and they couldn't get over it and then they ended up taking off the hijab.” ## Future Prospects One of Rostom’s priorities is to make the group more financially sustainable. Surviving Hijab currently runs advertisements, mainly on its Instagram page, to raise money to pay the group’s moderation team. However, Rostom says that group leaders are often asked by Facebook and third parties to participate in interviews, events, and media appearances, which occupies a lot of their time without compensation. In 2018, Surviving Hijab [won a USD $50,000 grant](https://darpanmagazine.com/people/newsmakers/manal-rostom-the-surviving-hijab-story/#:~:text=Later%20in%202018%2C%20Rostom%20won,efficiently%20through%20the%20required%20resources.) through the [Facebook Community Leadership Program](https://communities.fb.com/). However, Rostom says that processing the grant also brought a lot of work that was difficult for the group to handle. “As beautiful as it was, it was so stressful,” Rostom told us. “We did a lot of projects, and it grew our community, but where will this take us?” She would like to see some sort of retainer program or advertising credits to compensate leaders for the work they do with the group on a daily basis in order to make running the group more sustainable. ## Outcome and Impact Surviving Hijab’s greatest impact has been helping its members to weather the personal challenges that come with being a woman who wears the hijab. Members report that the group has empowered them to take a stand against workplace discrimination. Others say they were considering taking off the hijab, but discovering Surviving Hijab inspired them to continue wearing it. “For us, for our religion and culture, to help women at that level is huge,” Rostom says. Other women have contacted Rostom and said that her leadership has inspired their daughters to continue playing sports. “Representation matters,” Rostom told us, “and showcasing my story to these little kids will help them feel the freedom of being whoever they want to be.” ## Lessons learned - **Remember the group’s purpose** \- The sensitive subject matter of Surviving Hijab has made the group a target of criticism. As the group’s public face, Rostom says she is often criticized for the decisions she makes, while also dealing with her own struggles over being a hijabi woman. She says she presses onward because she remembers what the group means in her life and in the lives of its other members. “I can shut down the group anytime I want, right?” she said. “...but I will never do that because Surviving Hijab is my baby. The women hold on to this group like it’s their life sometimes.” - **Set rules and stick to them** \- Running an online group gives Surviving Hijab’s moderators the ability to control the group’s activities and conversations in a way that would not be possible offline. Rostom points to the quick and consistent enforcement of the group’s rules against members who are judgemental or hateful. “The sense of security that we offer online is the option to immediately block and delete these haters - I don't think this exists and will ever exist offline,” Rostom told us. “In traditional communities there will always be this toxic group who's just trying to pull the group down, but I feel like with online we have a lot more control.” ## End notes 1. Please note that “hijab” [can refer](https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/24118241) both to the dress code that many Muslim women follow as well as a type of headscarf used to comply with this dress code. Both meanings of the word are used throughout this case study. 2. Comment posted on September 30, 2020.