The niqab flickered briefly for Sheema Khan as the logical next step in her effort to rediscover Islam.
The Muslim face covering, which reveals only the eyes, appealed to the then Harvard grad student as a symbol of piety and fidelity to the religion increasingly asserting itself in her life.
But Khan’s experiment with the niqab lasted only a few hours and she settled instead on the hijab.
“I tried it and I hated it,” says the author of “Of Hockey and Hijab: Reflections of a Canadian Muslim Woman.”
“I couldn’t breathe.”
Yet her own unwillingness to don the niqab hasn’t stopped her from offering a biting critique of the Quebec government’s proposed law that would prevent women wearing the covering from receiving government services.
“It’s abominable,” Khan says. “I can’t believe this is Canada.”
Khan has never been one to hide her opinions.
She was the vocal founder of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations and served on the board of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
Khan, who holds a doctorate in chemical physics, has spent the past several years chronicling Canada’s sometimes complicated relationship with Islam for the Globe and Mail, culminating in her first book.
There is perhaps no place in the country where that relationship is more fraught than Quebec.
Muslim practises frequently get hashed out in the media as part of the province’s ongoing debate over reasonable accommodations for minorities.
The proposed niqab law provoked surprisingly little dissent within Quebec’s political class.
Khan, who grew up in Montreal after her family emigrated from India, has noticed a chill descend on Quebec society in recent years.
“I feel the environment is getting less and less comfortable for those who don’t ascribe to the majority view of Quebec,” she says.
“The previous generation had a very different view of Quebec as being a very inclusive society.
“It seems like especially now it has become a much more narrow vision, and that is very troubling.”
As a de facto spokesperson for Canada’s Muslim community, Khan acknowledges her role, and indeed one of the goals of her book, is to debunk some of the popularly held myths about the religion.
Chief among these myths, at least in Quebec, is the belief that those wearing the niqab invariably do so against their will.
Not so, says Khan, who knows several women who wear the covering against the wishes of their family.
“They’re making a conscious choice,” she says. “Stop treating them like people who need the guardianship of the state.”
This, however, is not to confuse Khan for an apologist for some of the more conservative elements of the Muslim community.
Her outlook is resolutely liberal, which has prompted clashes with imams in the past.
She relates how when scheduled to speak at a mosque several years ago, she was asked if she would allow a male to read her speech instead.
Khan held her ground, but says the incident typifies the challenges women can face within the religion.
“I could write a whole book of idiotic, stupid restrictions that are imposed on us,” she says.
But Khan refuses to let such tensions affect the foundations of her faith.
“If anything it makes my faith stronger,” she says. “My faith isn’t in the institutions, my faith isn’t in the men or the culture. It’s beyond that.
“If anything my faith impels me to try and change these things.”