From the vast depths of the internet the video to the song “Hijabi” surfaced in 2017. What you saw was a highly pregnant woman rapping about her headscarf and all the advantages she gets from it. At first, Mona Haydar was met with skepticism, but that sparked exactly the conversation she had intended: the public began to discuss the value of the headscarf as a feminist symbol. And yet, to reduce Mona Haydar to this song alone would be a fatal mistake, even if she deals with similar topics in songs such as “Barbarian”: the ideal of beauty and female identity in our strongly western-influenced society. The artist born in Flint, Michigan with Syrian and American roots sees herself as a poet and a teacher, and is currently studying Christian ethics in New York.
Mona Haydar
