NPR and Hijab: Women’s Voices Around the 2016 Election
What did NPR’s reporting reveal about Muslim women’s hijab choices around the 2016 US presidential election? The most useful answer comes from the women’s accounts: the work they were doing, the pressures they described and the different meanings they gave their clothing. Those details offer more than a claim that the media made women either embrace or abandon hijab.
There is an essential distinction between reporting a decision and causing it. An interview can tell us why a woman says she changed her dress. Establishing that a broadcast changed other women’s behaviour would require evidence about those listeners. The reports discussed here provide valuable testimony and context; they do not establish that NPR determined Muslim women’s hijab choices.
This is a historical reading of selected coverage, with the 2016 election at its centre and earlier and later pieces supplying context. It includes NPR reports republished by public radio stations and one separately identified KQED report. The selection is intended to illuminate different experiences, not to measure the balance of NPR’s entire output or stand as a survey of Muslim women.
Hijab decisions had a history before the election
Beginning the story on election night would erase decisions, relationships and religious questions that already existed. Earlier reporting helps put the later accounts in perspective. It also makes it harder to assign every change in someone’s appearance to the latest political event.
A 2011 report allowed for changing decisions
In Asma Khalid’s April 2011 report on women who had stopped covering, the accounts followed different paths. Rasmieyh Abdelnabi described the unwanted responsibility of being treated as a representative of a community. Leen Jaber explained that she had stopped wearing hijab during a difficult period and later resumed it, with a different understanding of the decision. Nadia Shoeb connected her own experience with religious and personal identity.
These were individual explanations, including disagreement about religious meaning. They were not a religious ruling or evidence that every woman was moving in the same direction. Reading the account as a simple story of women “leaving hijab” would lose the return to covering within it. For the election discussion, the earlier date matters: complicated changes in dress were being reported years before the 2016 result.
Women also described choosing greater visibility
Reema Khrais’s February 2016 reporting from North Carolina included Summer Hamad and her daughter Marjan. After the February 2015 killings of three young Muslim Americans in Chapel Hill, mother and daughter decided to begin wearing hijab together. They had considered covering before. Summer wanted their Muslim identity to be visible in the community, including when they volunteered.
The report also preserved a tension within that decision. Pride and commitment existed alongside family conversations about safety. That complexity is more informative than classifying their response as either fear or defiance. Their account concerned their own relationship to a particular tragedy and community; it was published before the presidential election. A later reader should keep that sequence intact instead of presenting it as a reaction to the election result.
Solidarity was already a disputed question
Asra Nomani challenged the use of a headscarf as a gesture
In Ari Shapiro’s December 2015 interview with Asra Nomani, the question was whether non-Muslim supporters should wear a headscarf to show solidarity. Nomani opposed that gesture because of the political and religious meanings she associated with it. Shapiro asked whether her argument also challenged Muslim women who freely wished to cover. She answered by affirming individual choice while maintaining her criticism of the expectations she believed the scarf could carry.
This was an argument voiced by a guest, with the interviewer testing its implications. It should be read as Nomani’s position, including where other Muslim women would disagree with her account of their clothing. The distinction is especially relevant to an article about NPR’s supposed influence: interviewing a critic of a practice does not establish that the broadcaster instructed its audience to abandon that practice. The exchange also predates the election. It shows that arguments about support, religious identity and the meaning attached to hijab were already part of the coverage, with no single answer accepted on behalf of every wearer.
Larycia Hawkins explained her intention in wearing one
Michel Martin’s January 2016 interview with Larycia Hawkins approached solidarity through a different speaker. Hawkins, a Christian professor at Wheaton College, had worn a headscarf during Advent and posted about Christians and Muslims worshipping the same God. Facing a possible dismissal, she described her action as an expression of Christian concern for Muslim neighbours and her teaching as an attempt to connect principles with action.
The report also included the college’s explanation: its objection concerned her theological statement, rather than the headscarf itself. Hawkins disputed its interpretation. Preserving both positions matters because “professor punished for wearing hijab” would give an incomplete account of the dispute. Nor was Hawkins describing a Muslim woman’s decision about her own religious obligations. Her interview concerned a Christian woman’s act of support and the institutional argument that followed. Within this historical sequence, it adds a distinct question: a gesture can be sincerely intended while its religious or political meaning remains contested. Hearing the intention does not require assuming that everyone understood or welcomed it in the same way.
The chronology continued. Camila Domonoske’s February 2016 follow-up reported that Hawkins and Wheaton had agreed to part ways before the proposed termination hearing. Their agreement was confidential. That later development prevents the January interview from being left as an unresolved account of an impending hearing; it does not supply a public judgement on every issue raised in the dispute.
Visibility during the campaign year
Ghazala Khan gave her own explanation for remaining silent
A brief NPR segment on 31 July 2016 covered the response to Khizr Khan’s Democratic convention speech about the death of the couple’s son, a US Army captain. Donald Trump had suggested that Ghazala Khan’s silence beside her husband might mean she had not been allowed to speak. The segment then carried her explanation, originally given to MSNBC: grief and the sight of her son’s photograph had made speaking unbearable.
This was not an interview about adopting or removing hijab. It is relevant to the surrounding campaign coverage because it shows a Muslim woman’s public presence being interpreted without first accepting her own explanation. The NPR item included recorded comments from other broadcasts; it should not be credited as an exclusive NPR interview with Khan. Its contribution was to place her answer alongside the suggestion she was answering. A discussion focused only on the argument between the men would miss that distinction. She was explaining a particular moment of bereavement, not offering her silence as evidence about the position of all Muslim women.
Ibtihaj Muhammad connected clothing with the sport she loved
Before the Rio Olympics, Hansi Lo Wang’s August 2016 report on Ibtihaj Muhammad explored how fencing fitted her life. She recalled her mother noticing its long jackets and trousers, and explained the appeal of a sport whose uniform she did not need to adapt for the coverage she wanted. The account also described the extra layers she had previously worn to play volleyball.
That practical history sat beside the pressure of public visibility. Muhammad said she wanted to concentrate on fencing, while experiences of discrimination had prompted her to speak publicly. She wanted an American Muslim woman competing in hijab to seem ordinary. Her ambitions were therefore both sporting and connected to how others viewed her belonging.
For the question of hijab choices, the useful detail is the relationship between an activity and its clothing requirements. Her account explains why one setting suited her existing preferences. It does not describe a new post-election decision or show that radio coverage created those preferences. The report followed an athlete preparing to compete; its meaning should not be reduced to a prediction about political change.
The campaign looked different through a reporter’s experience
On 7 December 2016, Khalid reflected on covering the presidential campaign as a visibly Muslim reporter. She described hostile encounters and online abuse, but also invitations and kindness from people she interviewed. In her conversation with Audie Cornish, she explained that there had been occasions when she reported without her headscarf and noticed a difference in how people spoke to her.
Her account connected clothing to the practical conditions of doing her job: access to voters, their assumptions and her ability to hear them candidly. It should not be converted into a claim that she permanently abandoned hijab or that her experience described every Muslim journalist. The piece was a personal reflection on reporting through the campaign, published after it. It described the person gathering political stories as well as those appearing in them.
After the result, concern and participation appeared together
Post-election reporting did not offer one uniform response. The subjects included anxiety about hostility, conversations within families, participation in local institutions and public achievements. These strands belong together when considering what audiences could hear about Muslim women during that period.
A victory-night report recorded an ambition to govern
Doualy Xaykaothao’s report of 10 November 2016 followed Ilhan Omar’s election to the Minnesota House of Representatives. Its scene was a celebration among supporters, with Omar speaking about the people she hoped to represent and the public work ahead. She identified young people, women in the East African community, Muslims and young mothers among the voices she would bring to the legislature. The report also recorded her interest in justice, renewable energy and reducing waste.
Clothing appeared in the description of the evening, but the account was about an electoral result and stated political priorities. It offers a useful counterpoint to coverage concerned mainly with fear after the presidential election: public participation continued within the same news cycle. This does not make one local result a verdict on how all Muslim women experienced the national outcome. It shows the importance of keeping the level of government and the speaker’s actual aims in view. A woman appearing in hijab can be a candidate with a programme, rather than simply a visual response to another politician’s victory.
A live interview examined the reasons for fear
In Michel Martin’s 12 November 2016 interview, lawyer and author Arsalan Iftikhar described concerns following Trump’s election, including accounts of harassment directed at women wearing hijab. Martin asked why he attributed those concerns to the election and raised the contrary perspective of supporters who believed the media had misinterpreted Trump.
The exchange is evidence of a particular public argument, with questions and attributed answers. Iftikhar was describing his interpretation and reported experiences, including his sister’s; the interview was not a survey of women deciding whether to cover. Listening to the questions as well as the answers helps identify what the programme was examining. It also prevents a guest’s explanation from silently becoming the broadcaster’s independently established finding.
A local report showed disagreement within a community
Joel Rose’s report of 15 November 2016 visited the Islamic Society of Central Jersey. Azra Baig described vandalism of her school-board election signs and explained why she had kept it quiet during the campaign: she wanted her work to be the reason for her re-election. Other interviewees discussed family worries, belonging and the future.
The account included different expectations. Some speakers feared the consequences of the result; another questioned whether people’s underlying attitudes would have been different without Trump. The report also noted Trump’s call for supporters to stop attacks on minorities. A broad label such as “Muslim reaction” would conceal these differences. The article concerned local people interpreting an election and their place in the country. It did not document a collective decision to change religious dress.
A Canadian newsreader described professional visibility
A 28 November 2016 NPR segment about Ginella Massa described her appearance anchoring a major nightly newscast in Canada while wearing hijab. Massa welcomed the recognition while questioning why such visibility had taken so long. She described a response that was largely positive, alongside negative comments and earlier doubts expressed about a woman in hijab appearing on television.
This was a Canadian professional story, even though it reached audiences in the same month as the US election. Its timing does not make the election the cause of her achievement. It also gives a different meaning to being visible: holding an ordinary professional role in a public setting. A reader can value that example without treating the presence of one newsreader as a measurement of inclusion across every newsroom.
A pageant contestant explained the terms of her participation
In Riham Feshir’s 29 November 2016 interview with Halima Aden, Aden explained her request to wear a burkini and hijab in the Miss Minnesota USA pageant. She reached the top 15 and described encouragement as well as criticism. Her answers connected the decision with her own values and a desire to reassure girls who felt anxious about wearing hijab.
The interview gave her space to discuss ambition, family responses and her refugee background as well as clothing. Her appearance was a specific negotiated form of participation, not a religious instruction to other women or a claim that pageants were everyone’s route to confidence. Reading her explanation in full is more useful than extracting a photograph and assigning it a universal message about Muslim women.
A later KQED profile followed a different response
Pasha Zolfaghari’s August 2017 KQED report profiled Marwa Abdelghani, who said fear of becoming a target had led her to stop wearing her headscarf. The account also followed her decision to attend a self-defence class after the election. It was part of a USC Annenberg student reporting project published by KQED; it should be credited that way rather than described as a nationally produced NPR report.
Her story gives a personal account of changing clothing and seeking confidence. It does not establish that removing hijab prevents harassment, that a particular class guarantees safety or that a broadcast prompted her decision. The importance of the report lies in the choices she described, including their difficulty. Her account does not need to be judged against another woman’s decision to become more visibly Muslim.
Fashion reporting supplied another set of questions
Political reporting is only part of this record. Fashion and cultural coverage introduced questions about creative work, ordinary ambitions and who could appear in public images. Reading those pieces alongside election coverage avoids reducing every appearance of hijab to a political confrontation.
Mariah Idrissi’s advert was discussed through her own ambitions
In Leila Fadel’s October 2015 report from London, Mariah Idrissi discussed the attention following her appearance in an H&M advert. She had expected only a brief appearance and was surprised by the response. The report placed her beside wider hopes for recognition of British Muslims, while also noting her own account of everyday life and interest in hijab fashion bloggers.
The voices in the piece did different jobs. Idrissi described her experience; another interviewee expressed hopes about the advert’s wider effect. Hope is meaningful testimony, but it is not evidence that an advert or a radio report changed the treatment of Muslim women across Britain. The distinction allows the achievement to be discussed positively without attaching an unmeasured social transformation to it.
A designer explained practical clothing needs
During Renee Montagne’s May 2016 interview with Melanie Elturk, the conversation concerned the first Istanbul Modest Fashion Week. Elturk described the kinds of coverage, fit and formal clothing she expected to see, and why she hoped the event would bring designers and wearers together.
This was an industry participant explaining her perspective. Her descriptions supplied clothing detail that a purely political discussion might miss: the length of a skirt, how closely a garment fits and the search for occasion wear. They did not establish one dress standard for all Muslim women. Nor does a business interview independently prove the size of a market or every commercial claim within it. The relevant contribution here is her account of the needs she wanted fashion to address.
A French report showed disagreement over what fashion signified
In Eleanor Beardsley’s April 2016 report from Paris, the arrival of clothing marketed to Muslim women prompted conflicting responses. A shopper described uncertainty; fashion writer Dana Thomas questioned why religious imagery was accepted in some collections while Muslim clothing caused alarm. French journalist Faïza Zerouala explained her view that women wearing hijab were particularly exposed to hostile assumptions about Islam.
These were situated arguments from different participants, rather than a single French response. Zerouala’s criticism of the use of secularism was her interpretation. The report did not ask women whether listening to NPR had changed their clothing. Its relevance lies in the contrast between commercial availability and social acceptance: garments can attract customers while their public meaning remains contested.
Alongside the British advertising and Turkish fashion-event interviews, this account broadens the geographical context without making the settings interchangeable. It also complicates a uniformly celebratory history of modest fashion. A new collection may be newsworthy for a designer, a wearer and a critic for different reasons. That disagreement belongs in the account of what NPR covered before the US election.
Online self-expression came with disagreement
Amarra Ghani’s December 2013 account of the Mipsterz video considered a project showing Muslim women wearing hijab with individual styles. Ghani disclosed that she belonged to the group’s mailing list and appeared in the video. She described both enthusiasm and criticism, and included producer Sara Aghajanian’s explanation of the project’s interest in diversity.
That disclosure matters to how the account is read: the writer was participating in the cultural conversation she described. The disagreement also complicates the idea that greater visibility automatically produces agreement or reassurance. An image can be welcomed by one viewer and questioned by another. The project’s participants could explain their intentions, but those intentions did not settle every viewer’s interpretation or establish an effect on hijab decisions.
Four distinctions that change how these accounts are read
A decision can have a different timescale from the report about it. Place Jaber’s account of stopping and later resuming hijab beside Abdelghani’s description of removing it amid fears about hostility. The first includes a later change; the second records a position at the time of the profile. Neither gives a reader permission to predict the woman’s future. This matters when older interviews circulate again: a publication date tells you when an account was recorded, not that it remains a complete description of someone’s life. A respectful discussion can take the stated decision seriously without attaching a permanent identity to it.
Beginning to cover and negotiating participation are different decisions. Summer and Marjan Hamad described taking up hijab; Aden discussed entering a particular event while keeping her preferred dress. Both accounts involve visible Muslim identity, but that shared feature should not flatten the practical difference. One concerns a change in everyday clothing. The other concerns the conditions under which someone can join an activity. If a headline says a woman is “embracing hijab”, read far enough to establish what has actually changed. She may be making a new clothing choice, maintaining an existing one in an unfamiliar setting, or simply receiving attention for something she already does.
Visibility can be part of a job and a complication within it. Massa’s interview concerns appearing before a television audience; Khalid’s reflection concerns interactions while gathering political reporting. Both are accounts of professional work. Their tasks, however, place the journalist in different relationships with other people: presenting a programme and eliciting an interview are distinct activities. Comparing them helps explain why a woman might welcome public recognition yet also describe circumstances in which other people’s assumptions obstruct her work. It would be misleading to make either account a general prescription for what Muslim journalists should wear. The professional setting belongs in the explanation of the individual experience.
Appearing in a fashion image and designing clothing address different needs. Idrissi’s account concerns the response to an advertising appearance; Elturk’s interview discusses garments and a fashion event. A viewer may appreciate seeing someone in hijab in an advert while still struggling to find the length, fit or coverage she wants to buy. Recognition in an image and usefulness in a wardrobe are related questions, but one cannot answer the other. Reading these reports together creates room for both: a discussion of who appears publicly and a practical discussion of what clothing is being made. Neither interview establishes that every wearer values the same outcome.
A population survey answers a different question
Pew Research Center’s 2017 study of American Muslims reported that 38% of Muslim women said they wore hijab in public all the time, 5% most of the time, 15% some of the time and 42% never. Pew described the share who always covered as broadly steady compared with its earlier surveys.
These historical figures help resist the assumption that a few compelling interviews establish a uniform national change. They do not cancel individual experiences: a stable overall proportion can coexist with different people making different decisions. Equally, those figures do not measure the effect of listening to NPR. A question about the frequency of wearing hijab cannot, on its own, explain why a person does so or which news coverage she encountered.
The distinction is useful when an article combines interviews and numbers. The interview may explain a particular experience in depth. A survey may estimate how common a stated response was in a defined population. The strongest reading allows each to contribute what it can establish, while keeping the question about cause open.
Coverage and audience influence remain different questions
The selected reports here were not designed as an evaluation of NPR’s audience effects. The responsible conclusion is therefore limited: they documented a range of experiences and supplied material through which listeners could understand them. The scale and direction of their influence on hijab decisions remain unestablished by these sources.
Online reach is not the same as a shared interpretation
A link can travel beyond the country in which a report was produced. That makes it possible for an account of an American or British experience to reach readers elsewhere. It does not make the surrounding circumstances identical, or show that the report has the same meaning for each reader.
For a later scholarly perspective, Nancy Demerdash’s 2024 study of Mipsterz visual culture examines fashion, digital self-presentation and debates about belonging across national settings. Its published abstract describes both celebration and criticism of the “hipster” label and considers how online images give form to faith and fashion. This is analysis of a cultural phenomenon, not a measurement of NPR’s effect on women’s decisions.
That difference suggests a useful way to follow a story online. Separate the original creative project, the journalist’s account, the platform carrying it and the comments added when it is shared. Each layer can introduce a different interpretation. A repost saying “this proves women are rejecting tradition” may be the sharer’s argument rather than the conclusion of the original report.
Corrections belong in the account of the coverage
One especially relevant example is Tom Gjelten’s early February 2016 report on women’s reasons for covering or not covering. Maryam Adamu described changed social interactions; Asma Uddin discussed the burden of being treated as a religious spokesperson. Other interviewees challenged attempts to turn individual choices into a uniform debate.
The published correction states that an earlier web version appeared without Gjelten’s prior input and drew conclusions his reporting had not explored. It also corrected Uddin’s birthplace. The post was revised to match the reporting. This is a concrete editorial problem and correction, not a reason to invent a verdict about every NPR story.
In a separate December 2022 account, NPR’s Public Editor team described the organisation’s approach to corrections: identifying errors, attaching notes and maintaining a public record. That describes an accountability practice. It does not mean the existence of a correction erases the original mistake or guarantees that every reader sees the revised version.
For readers interested in the wider craft of interpreting coverage, Amani’s guide to hijab in the news explores framing and context in more detail. The value of the NPR examples lies in their particularity: actual speakers, dated settings and decisions that can be read on their own terms.
Give the women’s accounts room to remain different
The question of NPR and hijab becomes more illuminating when it moves beyond a verdict that coverage was either liberating or damaging. The material contains personal reflections, professional ambitions, disagreement, concern and ordinary practical needs. It also contains editorial choices that deserve scrutiny.
What it does not provide is a demonstrated, uniform media effect on Muslim women’s clothing. Women’s decisions should not become evidence of a broadcaster’s power simply because the broadcaster reported them. Listening carefully means retaining the speaker’s reasons, the date and the circumstances, including where those reasons do not fit a neat political story.
That leaves a worthwhile role for journalism: giving an audience access to lives and questions it might otherwise overlook. Readers can take those accounts seriously, question the reporting where necessary and still allow each woman to be more than the meaning someone else attaches to her scarf.