Discourses of being a Muslim woman in contemporary Hungary and the hijab paradox

The paper aims to investigate, on the one hand, the discourses of being a woman, an immigrant, and a Muslim in today’s Hungary. On the other hand, it endeavors to illustrate the multiple and diverse aspects of identity among Muslim women in Hungary. Qualitative methods, participant observations, and interviews are the main sources of empirical information. This paper presents and analyzes accounts related to wearing and not wearing the hijab among Muslim women living in Budapest, including immigrants and Hungarian convert women as well. The analyzed discourse segments pertain to presence of wearing the hijab in public spaces, and illustrate the different experiences and performances about our interviewees’ identity as a woman, a Muslim, and an immigrant, depending on their background, past and present experiences with their own group and with outer group/s. The data demonstrate various challenges of wearing the hijab, including, the phenomenon we describe as the “hijab paradox.” With this coined term, we attempt to delineate the paradoxical situation when the hijab is simultaneously the requisite for countering uninvited attention, in accordance with Muslim cultural habits and religious requirements, and, at the same time, the hijab is precisely the element that provokes unwanted attention from members of the host society. The collected materials indicate that Muslim women`s perception of their roles and multi- faceted identities within the Muslim and the Hungarian community influence what they consider a conflict, discrimination, and oppression, and how they cope with the tensions, the bigotry, and the oppression they face.