For many in the West, the headscarf (and more than that, full face covering, as in the case of Burqa or Niqab) epitomise the way Muslims look like. However, this is not always the case. Muslims come in all shapes and sizes, and accordingly, while some would think that the Burqini is an ingenious idea, others will abhor the idea of women going to swim in public, mixed sex places and other yet will abhor the idea that this might set a standard for Muslim women to dress while swimming.
Muslim women present themselves online, too, in all "shapes and sizes". I went through the pictures of some 1000 women on the online dating site Muslima.com to examine this. Even if you dismiss few of the pictures or the descriptions as false or as bad jokes planted there by non-Muslims (or critics of Islamism, like this one), most pictures and descriptions seem genuine enough. The women on the site come from all over the world, and in fact, few are not single, but continue their membership after being married, searching "friendship" with fellow Muslims. Each profile includes a variety of answers to questions about personal appearance, personal status, the level of religiosity, occupation, whether the member would want to have children, and similar questions that may be found in dating sites. Few are quintessentially "Muslims-only" questions - which Muslim denomination the member belongs to (Sunni, Shi'ite. etc.), whether they eat Helal only food, whether they pray daily, and for women - whether or not they wear hijab (head/neck scarf) and/or niqab (covering also the face or larger parts of the face). Only a few chose to answer that last question.
However, pictures speak louder than words. The pictures we choose to put on our online profiles say something about us, especially in dating sites, where it is almost a "must" to have a picture. Not having a picture on social networks or dating sites is, in itself, a statement about our personality. What we wear, where we are, how we look - these all are expressions of the image we try to reflect with our online persona. In the case of Muslim women on a dating site, the choice whether or not to upload a certain picture, and how to be dressed in the picture, is a choice of the way one is going to present herself to prospective husbands, as well as to the general public browsing through the site.
Muslima.com :the two models advertising the site, and one of the featured profiles are veiled;
most profiles aren't
On Muslima.com, a little more than 30% of the thousand photos included some sort of head or face covering, with almost all of those (28% of the pictures altogether) presenting a woman in headscarf only (who wouldn't cover her face). A vast majority of the pictures, 68%, were in fact of women without any head, neck or face covering that would identify them as Muslim women. One or two have in fact uploaded quite "revealing" pictures of themselves (in this site's standards): with tank tops, on a trip.
This seems to be similar, as much as I could see, in other Muslim dating sites. Many women have no head covering and most of those who did, had a headscarf.
One can of course claim that the 1000 photos reveal that the type of Muslim women registering in online dating sites would be also the type of women who would not wear a headscarf.
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