They think I'm a foreigner, and I've been here a long time. I wear American clothes, but I wear a scarf. The scarf changes everything. Both the Koran and the Hadith, Islam's sacred texts, say Muslim men and women should dress modestly. Dr. Jamal Badawi, chairman of the Islamic Information Foundation and a professor at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, said the accepted teaching was that a woman should cover her entire body except for the face and hands in an opaque, loose garment that does not reveal the body's curves.
Some tie scarves tightly under their chins.
Some believe only black scarves are acceptable, but others flaunt bright patterns with fringes. In some cultures, women wear a full face veil, or niqab, and a few wear them in the United States, but there is widespread disagreement over its use, Badawi said. Despite the Koranic teaching, to cover or not to cover is a personal choice even for devout Muslim women in this country, and a matter of heated discussion, not only between employers and employees, but among groups of women in mosques, on campuses and at national meetings. Then you have the ones who don't cover and half of them are negative towards the ones that do. And the third group are the ones who feel comfortable either way and don't try to pressure anybody.