Two Malaysian women, writing about the purdah in their own words
Two Malay-language blog accounts, published by their own authors: a mother who wore the veil in the 1980s, was turned away from a teaching placement over it, and now wears it sometimes; and a 21-year-old whose first niqab brought tears, then a rumour that she had turned Shia.
The Malay word for this garment is purdah, and the Malay-language record of wearing it is written mostly in blogs — women telling their own stories, in their own space, years before anyone asked them to. Two accounts, both published by their authors by choice, linked rather than copied.
A mother who wore it in the 1980s — and sometimes still does
A Malaysian educator, blogging pseudonymously in 2009, describes taking up the face veil after her marriage in the 1980s, initially, she writes with some humour, to cover the made-up face her husband preferred not to be seen outside. The era pushed back: sent for her teaching practicum, she and two other veiled trainees were rejected by the host school within a day over their dress and transferred elsewhere. This was the period when Malaysian universities were suspending veiled students under a government ruling — her story is that history at eye level.
Later, after her husband weighed the scholarly disagreement, she removed it to continue her studies — and now wears it in some settings and not others, comfortably in the Ḥaramayn on pilgrimage, less consistently at home in Malaysia. Her title asks the question directly: why do I sometimes wear niqab, and sometimes not? It is the same on-and-off pattern a Malaysian actress would be pressed about publicly years later — described from the inside, without an entertainment column in sight.
Source. Kenapa kadang aku berniqab, kadang-kadang tidak?
A 21-year-old's first niqab
Siti Khadijah Halil, writing on her own blog in 2014 at 21, describes buying her first veil — a half niqab, chosen while shopping with a roommate — and her eyes welling up the first time she wore it. What followed was not hostility from strangers but friction close to home: a rumour that she had become Shia, which reached her mother; hesitation from family; a campus where the veil was restricted. She kept wearing it where she could, respected the restrictions where she could not, and later moved from law studies into formal Islamic education.
She writes that she delayed publishing the account for fear of seeming proud, and framed it in the end as guidance for other young women weighing the same step — which is exactly the kind of testimony this section exists to hold.
Source. Pengalaman aku berniqab
Why these two, together
Twenty-nine years apart, the same country, the same garment. And almost none of the same pressures. The first account's obstacles were official: a government ruling, a school placement, an institution. The second's were social: a rumour, a family's worry, a campus rule. Reading them together shows the Malaysian story moving from state restriction to social negotiation within one generation.
Neither account is doctrine, and neither is presented as such. Both authors chose to publish; both may ask for their entry here to be removed at any time, and it will be.