The Surprising Lessons of the ‘Muslim Hipsters’ Backlash

“See you, Mama—tonight is the playoff game…” I mumbled as I hopped on my skateboard toward the soccer fields. I pinned my hijab extra tight and pulled a pair of my team’s mandatory shorts over sweat pants as I arrived—finally outside of the vantage point of those in my immediate universe.

Meanwhile, the other teenage girls uniformly hiked their shorts and their ponytails up high, two rituals that I was never able to indulge in given my Islamic dress code. The referee did her routine pre-game piercing check and ordered all of us to bare our bellies. She walked past taped piercing after piercing before she stopped in front of me. “Can she wear that on her head?” she asked my coach. My nervous coach gave the referee a look of scorn and received an equally discontented look, and the referee carried on.

I scored three goals that night, including the