Cool to be modest

Our feature on Eva Khurshid shows that whereas mainstream women’s fashion continues to tend toward immodesty, we can help push the trend in another direction – and make it cool to be modest.
Check out our feature on the Eva Khurshid fashion line. It’s modest fashion done at a sophisticated level.

I’m excited by how professional it is, as well as its obvious appeal to Muslim and non-Muslim women. As a student of Dr. Umar Abd-Allah, I am a believer in the Islamic Cultural Imperative. In Islam and the Cultural Imperative, Dr. Abd-Allah explains that part of our task as American Muslims is to make ourselves relevant and beneficial to the larger community. This includes partaking in civic, intellectual, social, and artistic activities that reflect our Muslim values while simultaneously contributing to and ultimately bettering American society. It is about showing non-Muslims the benefits of having Muslims among them; we define our place in this culture by contributing beneficially to it in ways that are uniquely Muslim.

To me, that’s what Eva Khurshid stands for – spreading our values of modesty and beauty to the larger American society. Deeming unappealing – albeit modest — clothing as categorically “Muslim” not only denies that women, including Muslim women, have the need to look polished, but also sets us apart from the rest of our society and hurts the “modesty” campaign. Whereas mainstream women’s fashion continues to tend toward immodesty, we can help push the trend in another direction – and make it cool to be modest.
Asma T. Uddin is Editor-in-Chief of Altmuslimah.