When Marah Jadalla wears a hijab, she feels like Iron Man: Strong, confident and protected.
"The hijab," she said, "is my armor."
Inside the reception area of the Central Mosque of Charleston, Jadalla wears a beige hijab draped neatly over her head and shoulders, framing her hazel-green eyes and wide dimples. Her dark hairline is barely exposed.
A 19-year-old marketing and studio arts major at the College of Charleston, she started wearing the hijab — a scarf covering her head and neck — two years ago as an act of devotion to God and her Islamic faith.
Hers was a deeply personal, even courageous choice.
The hijab is perhaps the most visible and misunderstood marker of Muslim identity, making American "Hijabis" involuntary ambassadors for their religion and potential targets for discrimination in this era of anti-Muslim hysteria.
In the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack in December, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump called for a "total and complete" ban on Muslims entering the U.S. while speaking aboard the USS Yorktown at Patriots Point. In April, The Citadel set off a social media firestorm after word got out that an incoming student had requested an exemption to the school's strict uniform policy, so she could wear a hijab.
"I think for many Muslim women, they don't necessarily want the burden or onus of representing an entire religion. It's a private matter of wanting to fulfil a duty she feels God has asked her," said Hadia Mubarak, a lecturer in religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
"It's very, very difficult nowadays for women to wear the hijab," she added. "It's as if they're no longer an individual. They're no longer a normal human being. They're constantly being viewed through images of terrorist attacks and all sorts of barbaric things around the world that have nothing to do with them."
Among more than 1 million Muslim women living in the United States, more than one-third always wear a head-covering or hijab in public, according to the Pew Research Center. Jadalla is one of them.
She was born in Jordan. Her family emigrated to the United States when she 9 years old, the oldest of five children. She hated middle school at C.E. Williams. High school was hard, too. She struggled with English. Kids bullied her, she said, because she was different.
She wanted to start wearing the hijab during her freshman year of high school, along with some of her friends, but her mother insisted that she wait a little longer.
"Since we're here, my parents didn't want me to wear it until after I got married or after we moved back home," she said. "My mother, she was scared of the reaction I would get."
Jadalla wore the hijab publicly for the first time the summer after she graduated from West Ashley High School for an Eid celebration dinner. She remembers the look of surprise on her friends and family's faces and their words of congratulations.
"Everybody loved it. My grandma and my grandpa, they got so happy," she said. "So I was like, 'I really love this,' and I felt better as a person about myself."
Veiling isn't necessarily easy. Finding modest, loose-fitting clothes can be difficult. Airports, particularly TSA agents, are a source of anxiety. And Charleston summers are hot. Although her peers at the College of Charleston are open-minded, she knows others aren't.
But Jadalla has never regretted her decision.
"I always loved the idea of the hijab. It's like you're covering your beauty for your true soul mate and for yourself," she said. "I felt safe after I started wearing it, like nobody can see anything, it's all for me. ... It was beautiful."
Reach Deanna Pan at 843- 937-5764.
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