In December, Nike released its first pro hijab, a pull-on head covering for Muslim women athletes. Nike isn’t the first company to offer a sports hijab—at least three others, Capsters, Asiya, and Sukoon, beat them to it. But the pro hijab is poised to be Nike’s most important release since its Waffle Trainer helped usher in the Nike FC Jogging Pantalons Homme. The number of Muslim women participating in sports, including running, is growing worldwide, and Nike’s global reach air max 90 black gold.
But wait: What do Muslim women runners think? Was Nike just out for the cash? (It’s the brand everyone loves to hate, after all.) Or did the release of a hijab by a company of Nike’s stature mean something? Will it make a difference? And does the product live up to the hype? Here, three Muslim women runners in the United States share their thoughts on the colossal brand, the hijab, and what it means to cover.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
RW: Air Max 90 Garage Grime. Rahaf Khatib, 33, is a stay-at-home mom of three in Farmington Hills, Michigan. Born in Syria, she was raised in the United States and is currently training (and fundraising) The Nike Air Force 1 will be celebrating its 35th Anniversary with. Khadijah Diggs, 48, is a project manager in Atlanta, mom of 10 (seven biological, three adopted), the first African-American woman to represent Team USA in Long Course Triathlon, and the first Muslim woman to represent Team USA in any multi-sport event. Windy Aziz, 41, is a full-time mom of three in Fairfax, Virginia, and a trail runner. Her next race is a 50K, part of her buildup to the North Face Endurance Challenge 50-miler in April.
Nike Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG 'Bred Toe'
Before we get to the sport hijab, let’s touch on covering in general. Can you explain why Muslim women cover?
Rahaf: Muslim women, and women of other faiths like Catholics and Jewish women, have been covering for centuries. For us, we’re told by God to cover. A verse in the Quran says to tell your believing women and wives to cover. People interpret that differently to mean covering your hair, your chest, or to wear loose clothing, which is why Muslim women in different countries have different levels of covering. It is a choice to cover. When you cover physically, it’s more of a reminder to always be kind, watch your speech, such as not to curse and so forth. Most Muslim women who don’t cover their head are still modest in that aspect, and stay modest by wearing modest clothing.
Khadijah: Nike Air Raid "Rayguns" shahada [the Muslim profession of faith], I did not cover. It was a process, and I look at it as a form of modesty. I noticed that when I began to cover, people accepted me and treated me based on what was coming out of my mouth and how I treated them. It was no longer about what I was like physically.
Windy: I had the same experience. Like Khadijah, I'm a convert as well and chose hijab because it is ordained in the Quran. Like Rahaf said, hijab is in the way we act and dress and I want people to see the beauty within me. People can abuse your exterior beauty, objectify it. But when you offer them your internal beauty, they respect that more. It also has nothing to do with men. Men cannot tell you to wear it. I like what it does for me. And I never have a bad hair day.
RW: What I’m hearing is that there is a lot of personal choice in covering. Some women might wear niqab (veil), others hijab (head covering), but I’m noticing, Rahaf, your hair is showing and the others have their hair covered.
Rahaf: Yes, there are many styles of hijab, many layers of modesty.
RW: Nike Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG 'Bred Toe'.
Rahaf: Yes, Muslim men also are ordered to cover as well. Specifically from the navel to knee, so they should wear long, loose shorts to run.
Windy: They have hijab in that sense.
Nike Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG 'Bred Toe'
RW: You all tested the Nike hijab, but also three other brands. We’ll talk about those first, but start by telling us what makes a good sports hijab?
Khadijah: As a triathlete, I need something that is extremely lightweight and that I can change into quickly, even while wet. So basically I want a hijab that does not feel like I’m wearing a hijab.
Rahaf: It’s the same for marathon running. I want something that is wicking. I’ve worn some that hold in the sweat.
RW: nike nk heritage gmsk Capsters, which was founded by a Dutch woman and bills itself as the original sports hijab, since 2001.
Rahaf: Capsters is what I wore when I first started running in 2012. I didn't love the way it hugged my face so tightly, so I always wore a cap to make it look better. The material was a little heavy and thick. But it was the only one available, so I had to make do.
Khadijah: I felt the same. The material was mesh but it didn't feel like it pulled the heat off my body. My 7-year-old daughter loves it, though. She wore it to her one-mile race about a week ago.
Windy: I’m a profound sweater, and it started to drag for me. I also have a small head, so I’m not big on one-size-fits-all. One thing I did like was that it had a long neck. Hijab ends seem to work their way up, so the added material means I can stuff it under my sports bra. Sometimes my shirt can show my chest, so the covering is good for that reason, too.
RW: Asiya is a fairly new company developed by a Somali-born Muslim woman in Minneapolis. It says its hijab are designed to stay put while you move. Windy, did you find that to be true?
Windy: It is a one-size-fits-all, so it still moved on me. The material, though, was my favorite by far. The lightest, and the wicking was much better.
Rahaf: I like their light hijab, which is like a cap. But I also agree with Windy. Material is too short around the neck.
Khadijah: I have to give a disclaimer as I’ll be racing in Asiya this year, but the material is superior to all the others. I've actually done two half marathons in these, and they were so light, I didn’t even feel like I had them on.
RW: first look at skeptas nike air max?
Khadijah: Yes.
RW: The ears too?
Khadijah: Yes. I have to admit that when I get really hot, I push my hijab back behind my ears. When I get closer to the finish, I drop it down. But Asiya’s covers ears and neck completely.
Rahaf: I have to add that I didn't like how it framed my face. It was tight to my chin and made my face look funny, cartoonish.
RELATED: How Running Makes Ramadan More Meaningful for This Muslim Runner
Nike Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG 'Bred Toe'
RW: So it sounds like the ideal hijab is as individual as the sports bra. [Laughter] What about color? Is it appropriate to wear loud colors like red, or is color part of modesty?
Windy: No! Wear colors. Beautify yourself. Hijabs are our hair. We’re still women and we love to beautify. With running, though, I prefer black. I sweat, get dirty, and whites and light colors don’t last long.
Khadijah: I always wear white for the heat, but just ordered a navy one to go with my team kit this year.
Rahaf: Nike Blazer LR Mid Mens Trainers Grey Anthracite Red UK 9.
RW: Зимние термо кроссовки nike lunar force 1 Sukoon. The website says it’s fashionable and eco-friendly. Khadijah, you said that even with instruction, you haven’t figured out how to put it on.
Khadijah: I think I took an hour away from my life trying to get it on right. Even in my everyday life, if I can’t put a hijab on in 60 seconds, it’s not an option for me. And the material is heavy. This is not a sports hijab.
Windy: I think it’d be fine if you're going on a day hike or something, because when you finish you still look put-together.
RW: So it’s the après-run hijab?
Windy: Nike Air Max 2012 donning the proud LIVESTRONG banner.
RW: Okay: Nike.
Windy: I love Nike and have a lot of their gear, but this hijab absolutely did not work. The material was light, but I have never felt more like my face was suffocated. It came down to my eyebrows and covered half my cheek, and like Khadijah, I need as much of my face to have air. It also cut into my chin when I tried adjusting it.
RELATED: Stop Calling Women Runners “Joggers”
Nike Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG 'Bred Toe'
Khadijah: I’m not a fan of the whole Nike marketing campaign, but I was expecting a better product. It moved forward so I couldn't see when on the bike. Then I ran for two miles and had to take it off because it was chafing underneath my neck. This was not a hijab for endurance athletes.
Rahaf: I have to agree. The silky material trapped in the heat, and the sweat. When I wore the medium/large, the elastic around my face was a little looser, but at the same time, the fabric behind my head and around the neck was bulky. Such an epic fail. I’m so disappointed because we were all so hyped up for it. But it’s not functional at all.
RW: Thumbs-down on the actual product from you three, then. But Nike is the first major athletic brand to make a hijab and that seems important in some way.
Windy: I admire Nike for having the guts to “open the door.” It shows a realization on Nike's part that there are athletes out there who adhere to religious obligation. So, to me, with the arrival of this sports hijab, I hear Nike saying, “Hey, sports world, look at these amazing Muslim women athletes that participate and compete just like anyone else, but choose to cover.” That is some profound support dished out by a colossal brand.
Rahaf: It is something groundbreaking that hopefully other major brands will follow and we’ll have better performance hijab than the one Nike made. It’s a good way to mainstream about hijab, so Islamophobes don’t fear it: “Oh, a big company is making hijab, so maybe it won’t be such a scary thing.”
Khadijah: For me, personally, it really means nothing. Especially after seeing that the Nike product is okay at best.
RW: Khadijah, I recall from an email that you were interested in encouraging more Muslim women to get involved in sports. Don’t you think this will help?
Khadijah: I don’t think it’s products that encourage other women. It’s seeing someone who looks like you. I had a woman in Australia contact me via social media and say she did 70.3 [a half Ironman] because she saw me. When I saw Rahaf doing a marathon, I had only done 70.3. Seeing her at mile 20 smiling, I’m thinking, I can do this, and finished my first marathon at the end of my first Ironman. I know I can do it, too, when I see other women do it, and I think that gives more inspiration than any product.
RW: When you’re out running, I imagine you’re often the only person out there in a hijab. What’s that like? How have people reacted?
Rahaf: Now, in winter, I joke with my friends on Facebook who are not Muslim, “You guys all look like hijabis [women who wear hijab],” because they all wear balaclavas. Summer is when I feel visible. The long sleeves, the long pants, and covering your head when it’s hot, that’s when I get a lot of inquisitive looks.
RW: Does it go beyond looking?
Rahaf: Oh yeah, people comment all the time. I was at a marathon and it was supposed to rain but didn’t, and around mile 10 a guy said, “Wow, aren’t you dressed for the rain?” So you get little comments here and there. I’ve never had anything truly hateful said to me, fortunately, except online. Online you get a lot of trolls who say things like, “Oh, go bomb yourself.”
RW: nike city edition mens woven shorts?
Rahaf: Honestly, I ignore it. It never really sticks with me. The haters are loud but small in quantity. I feel like the love is far greater, and that kind of covers that up for me. Once, shortly after the [2016] elections, I was headed to a half marathon in a predominantly white area and I thought of not racing. I wrote that on Twitter, and a lot of people replied back saying we are here to support you, go do your thing. One guy from Detroit said, “I will come with you if you want.” That really encouraged me, and I went and crossed the finish line.
Khadijah: The only in-person comment I’ve had was more racial than having to do with Islam. Online, I’ve had photos of me in my Team USA kit and have had comments about how I needed to take that off and go back to where I came from. I guess they want me to go back to Jersey. My ex-husband is from West Africa, and when people heard his accent, some automatically assumed I couldn’t possibly speak English.
RW: Nike Jordan Flight Club 91 'White Blue Lagoon' White Blue Lagoon-Grand Purple 555475-105.
Windy: Yes, the biggest one is that we’re oppressed. The second one is, I’m going to use this term humorously, but that we’re all fresh off the boat. People seem to think we’re uneducated, stay at home, make babies, our husbands abuse us, and we can’t do anything. I believe those misconceptions come from the ill practices of other countries. I can completely see how easy it is to misinterpret the religion as a whole, but the truth is our religion does not promote the oppression and inequality of women. Islam actually holds women in some of the highest regard.
I will share that before I converted to Islam, I too carried these same misconceptions. In a way, I’m grateful to have had them myself, because it makes it easier to deal with the effects now. I hope that when people see me running, biking, and hanging out, they’ll think, Hey, that doesn’t look like an oppressive lifestyle.
RW: I actually wondered myself at one point if Muslim women were allowed to do sports.
Rahaf: Yes, I had a celebrity-ish runner ask me once if I was allowed to run during a live interview. I was like, What? I’m surprised there are people who think that, but yes, actually, the Quran reminds us that our bodies are an amanah, Nike Dunk High Pro SB Supreme from.
Khadijah: For me, people are surprised I’m competitive. When I finished my first half Ironman, I told a friend I wanted to try to make the U.S. team. Someone standing next to us laughed. Sometimes when I go to races, people treat me like a guest coming to visit. But I’m coming to win. The first thing I’m saying to myself out of the swim is: Game on. I’ve been on the U.S. team twice, and my next goal: the podium. I want some young girl who has been told she can’t—whether she is black or Muslim, whatever—to see me and say, “She doesn’t look like everybody else, but she did it, and I can, too.”
Nike Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG 'Bred Toe'
RW: I want to pick up on something Windy said a few minutes ago, that there’s a perception that Muslims in America come from somewhere else. Two of you were born and raised in the United States and converted to Islam. Can you share what drew you to the faith?
Windy: I was in college. I started to see all these Muslim women, and in my mind they’re not supposed to be educated, but they’re here, going to class, smiling. College can be a time when people are searching for something, and I was in that phase of my life. I’m going to say that it was God that drew me to the women, because I never would have thought Islam would be my religion. I had the same misconceptions as everyone else. But I listened in on the women’s-group meetings and Islam just made sense. It was the truth and I knew it. As I delved into it, I was still fighting with these misconceptions and looked through the book. That’s where you find the knowledge. You don’t go ask people, you don’t go to Wikipedia, you go to the book, the source. I had gone through the Bible, the Buddhist books, and then the Quran. It helped me to eliminate the fine gray line between the cultural and the religion. All this time, I had been looking at the culture in some countries, where they behead women or kill, and realized that had nothing to do with the religion.
I came from a long line of self-abuse, self-inflicted internal negative dialogue, allowing myself to be objectified because a women’s place in society was to be hyper-sexualized, so I did that to myself. The first time I put on hijab, I noticed the difference. Two days before I made shahada, I was walking my dog and a man looked at my cleavage while talking to me and I’m thinking, footwear nike react vision cd4373 001 light bone terra blush? Now, I’ve never felt better in my life because with hijab I’m looked at as a person, a human being with something to offer other than my physical body. That is where the beauty of Islam is, to see the person.
Khadijah: Her story sounds so much like mine. I don’t have any cleavage, but when I was running on the track team, I asked my coach why we had to wear spanky pants and cut-off tops. He said track was not a popular sport and this is what gets butts in seats. Really? I thought. Nike kyrie flytrap 4 ep black red irving men basketball shoes ct1973-004?
I was raised in a Baptist household and was taught to believe that if you don’t believe what we believe, you’re going straight to hell. In the first chapter of the Quran, it talks about whether you be Christian, Jew, Muslim, or Sabian [an ancient people who lived on the Arabian Peninsula], as long as you follow your book and believe in Allah and only Allah with all your heart, you will be saved. That freed me. It freed my mind to accepting Islam.
RW: Rahaf, is what they’re saying something you experience and feel about your faith?
Rahaf: One hundred percent. I love hearing stories of how people converted to Islam. It kind of renews my own faith. I look up to Windy and Khadijah for that. I was raised very differently. I was born in Damascus, Syria, and my father came here to pursue his Ph.D. I grew up in a Middle Eastern Arab household where Arabic was spoken and traditional Middle Eastern food was served. I also grew up being in both worlds, America and Islam. My father taught me the beauty of Islam, and there’s one verse I love. It says we have created you into tribes so that you may get to know one another. Islam actually embraces other cultures and diversity.
RW: The three of you have the common strand of your faith, but you're all very unique and individual people. An immigrant whose family came from Syria, an African-American woman from New Jersey, and Windy, who, forgive me for saying this, has an all-American look.
Rahaf: My dream is to open up a fitness magazine and find hijabis in there. When I don't have to reach out to sports brands and ask them to post my picture to their Instagram page. Go to that page now, and it’s all the blond hair, blue-eyed, sports-bra look. I want hijabi to be as normal as it is for the blond chick wearing a Garmin watch.
Khadijah: The struggle to be seen is where all of us as athletes come in. It’s an opportunity for awareness that will benefit young Muslim girls in the long run. Two years ago Rahaf was working on the Women’s Running cover and young Muslim girls could see she was out running, was going to do the Boston Marathon. I wanted them to see that, want them to see you can be as recreational or as competitive as you want to be. And you can choose your own path. That’s what everybody wants regardless of race, religion, or where you’re from—you want a little bit better for the next generation.
