Last week’s Rose Scholar movie They Call Me Muslim depicts the lives of two women who wear the hijab in two very different cultures. One woman lives in Paris and chooses to wear her hijab despite France’s secularization policy. The other is a woman living in Iran who refuses to wear her hijab which is required in order to enforce modesty. This is against Iranian theocratic law that imposes Islam in all areas of life. The film shows that the policies both women are challenging are not enforced equally, but are equally restrictive for these particular women. For example, France’s policy has forced Muslim girls to take off the hijab in school, but does not forbid crosses for Christians or skullcaps for Jews. In the case of the Iranian woman in Iran, Muslim women are able to go to the mountains and take off the hijab to experience freedom. In my opinion, the question is not whether or not the French secularization policy or the theocracy in Iran should be allowed. The question is whether a certain group is being singled out, and what can be done in order to make such discrimination stop. Why is the French secularization policy focused only on Muslims as opposed to other religions? This policy definitely is based on fear because of threats of terrorism, but this fear should not translate into law. More recently, France has continued enforcing its policies because of the burquini debate. It was interesting to note, that in both women’s cases, the hijab is used as a symbol of power. It empowers one woman to refuse to take it off and the other to refuse to put it on. It gives the women a choice of whether or not to wear it, and in making that choice, the women are asserting themselves. It made me question what articles of clothing or accessories give women in our less-restrictive culture such power?