In this episode, I speak with Urooba Jamal, a Canadian journalist of Pakistani heritage and Muslim background. Growing up in a religious family, Urooba followed her parents’ path and began wearing the hijab as a teenager in Canada. But years later, she made the decision to remove it—a choice that came with personal and family challenges, particularly with her father. Taking off the hijab was not just an external shift, but a deeper transformation. It opened the door to new experiences, like dating and exploring different styles of clothing.
Though she removed her hijab, Urooba remains vocal about rejecting the notion that Muslim women or women of color should be boxed into one narrative. Her journey is one of resilience, nuance, and self-exploration. In our conversation, we discuss how the West often reduces women’s freedom to a simple binary: wearing the hijab = oppressed, taking it off = liberated. We unpack why this perspective is problematic and how the freedom of women of color, especially those from Muslim backgrounds, is far more complex than just a piece of clothing.
It’s been 10 years since Urooba removed her headscarf, and she says her journey has come full circle,
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