How Muslim women are using makeup to get closer to their religion

For Muslim women who cover their hair, make up is a way of not only expressing themselves, but is also intertwined with their feelings about Islam, writes Saman Javed

(Getty)

Islam allows worshippers five small windows of time every day to escape the commotion of their lives through prayer. It’s a calming, three-step process. First, Muslims are required to perform Wudu, a ritual of cleansing the body. Then, they state their intention before praying.

For Salwa Rahman, a 25-year-old makeup artist from east London, the sense of control this routine brings is a lot like that when she sits down to create a makeup look. “It’s a lot of the same in that you cleanse your face, you sit down with an intention of doing a look, and then you begin. It really calms me and I find I usually enjoy the routine of it,” she says.

The comfort that makeup now brings Rahman is a far cry from her teenage years. “Growing up, I was that young, angsty hijabi that was always trying to be different.” Raised in the capital, she says it was an environment where Muslim women were seen as demure and oppressed.