Voices behind the veil Unravelling the hijab debate in Singapore through the lived experiences of hijab-wearing Malay-Muslim women

• Published in: South East Asia research Vol. 25; no. 2; pp. 107 - 121
• Main Authors: Zainal, Humairah, Wong, George
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications Ltd 01-06-2017; SAGE Publications; Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: Discourses; Health care industry; Health services; Intersectionality; Narratives; Negotiation; Nurses; Positioning; Race; Secularism; Social mobility; Women; Working women; Singapore; hijab; secularism; Healthcare; Singapore; multiracialism
• ISSN: 0967-828X; 2043-6874
• DOI: 10.1177/0967828X17699919

This article critically examines the hijab debate in Singapore by drawing upon the lived experiences of Singaporean Malay-Muslim women whose daily lives are fraught with a constant negotiation between their identities as veiled women and the institutionalized constraints that impede their social mobility and voices in the public arena. Drawing upon publicly accessible data and findings from in-depth interviews with Malay-Muslim nurses, the article explores the everyday lived struggles of women working in Singapore’s public healthcare sector organizations. These struggles illustrate a decade-old public debate on the hijab. We show how these women’s narratives reflect their intersectional subjectivities, which unravel dominant state discourses on multiracialism that claim the incompatibility of the hijab with secularism. We argue that a re-positioning of the existing debate beyond its dominant association with race is crucial in overcoming the political inertia that continues to plague the hijab issue in Singapore.