“You touch her,” Sari said, “and you answer to me.”
After the bully slunk away, Maya whispered, “That scarf makes you look like a superhero.”
“You’re changing,” Maya said coldly at their usual bubble tea spot. “Next, you’ll ask for a separate lunch table because my food isn’t halal certified.”
“It’s what you represent now,” Maya shot back. “In this country, the jilbab isn’t just a scarf. It’s a political flag. When you wear it, you side with the identity politics that burn churches in Aceh and bully non-believers in West Java.” video jilbab mesum
Her mother handed her a different jilbab—a rough, hand-dyed indigo one from a pesantren (Islamic boarding school) in East Java. “This belonged to your great-aunt. She was a nyai (female religious teacher) who led a farming co-op. She wore this while arguing with village elders about irrigation rights. The jilbab didn’t silence her. It protected her from the sun.”
At her high school in Bintaro, the social hierarchy was drawn in shades of hijab. The hijrah girls—the “cool Muslims”—wore oversized, pastel jilbabs with Korean-style pleated skirts and chunky sneakers. They had 50,000 followers on TikTok, reciting verses from Ar-Rahman over lo-fi beats. They called Sari a “mundur” (backward) for not covering.
“They’re both wrong,” Ratna said, stroking her hair. “The guard at the mall forgot that Indonesia’s first female president—Megawati—wore a kerchief when she needed to and took it off when she didn’t. Your grandmother forgets that in the 50s, the jilbab was banned in public schools because Sukarno thought it was ‘feudal.’ Maya forgets that in my reformasi days, we fought for the right to wear anything —mini skirts or cadar —without violence.” “You touch her,” Sari said, “and you answer to me
Sari removed the jilbab that night. She cried into her mother’s lap.
The second issue came from her own grandmother in Yogyakarta. “Finally!” the old woman wept over video call. “You won’t bring shame to the family at the pengajian (Quran recitation).” Sari felt sick. To her grandmother, the jilbab wasn’t faith; it was a family honor badge, a tool to police female bodies against the male gaze.
Sari laughed. “No. It just makes me look like me.” It’s a political flag
The first social issue hit her at the mall. She wore the jilbab for the first time to buy a new laptop. The security guard at the electronic store followed her, not because she looked suspicious, but because he assumed a berjilbab girl couldn’t afford an Asus ROG. When her father’s credit card cleared, the guard’s face flushed. “Maaf, Bu,” he muttered. The assumption: Jilbab = poor or traditional.
The next morning, Sari wore the indigo jilbab. But she paired it with a t-shirt that read: “Critical Thinking is also Fardhu Kifayah.”
At school, she didn’t sit with the hijrah girls or the vapers. She started a debate club called “Jilbab & Justice.” The first topic: “The economic hypocrisy of the hijab industry —why does a ‘modest’ silk jilbab cost a month’s salary for a ojol (online motorcycle taxi) driver?”
But for Sari’s generation, the jilbab was never just fabric.
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