The garment we choose
Not every Muslim woman wears abaya. This truth stands first, before all else.
Fashion shifts, interpretations of modesty evolve, preferences change across generations and geographies. Some sisters have never worn the long flowing garments that were once common sights at British mosques and markets. Others wore them once but no longer do. Still others move between styles depending on context, occasion, comfort.
This is as it should be — Islam offers principles; how we embody them varies widely and validly. The choice belongs to each woman, guided by her understanding, her circumstances, and her relationship with Allah.
Yet for Trials & Tribulations, you ask participants to wear abaya regardless of their usual practice. Not to enforce a dress code. Nor to suggest one interpretation supersedes others. But for solidarity: deliberate, visible, embodied.
When refugee crises unfold across our screens — in Syria, Gaza, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Sudan, and countless places where displacement shatters lives — we see women fleeing in abayas. Not always, but often enough that the image becomes inseparable from the reality: women wrapped in dark fabric, long and modest, walking through dust or mud, carrying children, their garments marking them as visibly Muslim even as the world renders them invisible.
You ask participants to wear abaya as an act of solidarity with these women. To be marked in the same way, to be visible as they are visible, to carry for one day what they carry indefinitely. Not because it is everyone’s daily practice, but because it connects us — however tenuously — to their reality.
This is the garment you choose: not as judgment, not as claim of singular validity, but as conscious solidarity with refugee women whose dress announces their faith to a world that does not always welcome the announcement.
Stepping into visibility
When participants arrive at countryside trails — dressed in full abaya and hijab, perhaps for the first time in years or the first time ever — they step into a particular visibility. In fields and forests, on moors and muddy paths, Muslim women in modest dress are not common sights. They may be the only hijabis some walkers encounter that day, that week, that year.
Their presence speaks before they do. The abaya flowing as they walk, the hijab wrapped carefully despite knowing wind and rain will test it: these announce something. To some observers, they may seem out of place, as though Muslim women belong in cities, not on wild hillsides. Yet here they are, stepping onto the same paths, embracing the same landscape, showing with every step that these green spaces belong to everyone.
This visibility is not accidental. It is the point.
Refugee women cannot hide their identities — their dress marks them, sometimes endangering them, always making them seen. When your participants choose to be similarly visible, they taste the smallest measure of what this costs. They feel eyes on them: curious, perhaps uncomfortable, or even hostile. They notice the double-takes, the stares quickly averted or held too long, the way some people warm to them immediately whilst others stiffen.
This is dawah of a particular kind: not preaching, explaining or offering answers to questions no one asked, but simply being present. Their visible Muslim identity in unexpected spaces becomes testimony. We are here. We love beauty and nature and adventure. We belong in this country and on these paths. We are not separate, not foreign, not confined to shadows.
The power of joy
What transforms mere visibility into something more powerful is joy; not forced cheerfulness, but genuine delight in the experience. The crisp air, the rolling hills, the way light filters through trees, the profound quiet that only countryside offers.
When people see Muslim women in abayas splashing through mud with laughter, braving rain without complaint, greeting fellow walkers with warm smiles, helping each other over stiles, taking in views with obvious pleasure, it disrupts expectation. The image many carry of Muslim women involves constraint, restriction, separation. But here they are, muddy and windswept and radiantly happy, embracing unpredictable British weather with the same enthusiasm as anyone.
Joy breaks stereotypes more effectively than any argument could. It communicates without words: we are not passive, sheltered, confined by faith or dress. We seek the same moments of peace and beauty you seek. We find the same pleasure in mud splashing up hems and cool drizzle settling on scarves. We are adventurous, resilient, fully present in landscapes that belong to all of us.
This is dawah through authenticity — not trying to convince anyone of anything, just being themselves in spaces where their presence challenges assumptions. Refugee women know this reality intimately: their very existence in host countries disrupts narratives, their visible faith provokes reactions, their resilience despite displacement testifies to strengths observers often fail to recognise. Your participants’ temporary visibility during the challenge connects them to refugees’ permanent condition of being seen, being marked, constantly aware of how their presence is perceived.
Walking with adab
The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ taught that good character — adab — is the heaviest thing on the scales of judgment. In countryside spaces during the challenge, adab becomes as important as visibility.
Small acts carry disproportionate weight when one is conspicuously Muslim. A cheerful “good morning” to fellow walkers. Stepping aside on narrow paths with grace. Picking up litter that is not theirs. Respecting gates and fences, following the Countryside Code, treating the land with the care Islam teaches toward all of Allah’s creation. These acts of consideration create impressions that linger, that shape how observers think about Muslims, about Islam, about women who dress as your participants are dressed.
This matters because refugee women rarely control narratives about themselves. They are spoken about, depicted in media, reduced to victims or threats or statistics. They cannot ensure their good character, their dignity, their careful maintenance of faith and family despite impossible circumstances — that any of this is seen or valued.
When your participants walk with adab, when their kindness and courtesy become inseparable from their visible Muslim identity, they offer a different story. Not the whole story — they cannot speak for refugees, nor represent their experiences — but a story that includes Muslim women as full humans: kind, considerate, present, and engaged with the world around them.
The mud that teaches
There is something profound about mud splashed up an abaya’s hem, drizzle soaking through layers of fabric, negotiating stiles whilst managing long skirts. These small indignities — and they are small, chosen, temporary — connect participants to refugee women’s daily realities.
Refugee women walk in abayas through conditions far worse than British countryside mud. Through desert heat and monsoon rains, through border crossings and camp pathways, through circumstances that destroy garments meant for peaceful purposes. Their abayas become soiled, torn, worn thin by hardships your participants only sample during a single day.
Yet they maintain modesty. They continue dressing as faith and culture call them to dress, even when practicality might argue for different clothes. This is dignity preserved under assault, identity maintained when everything else is stripped away, faith made visible even — or especially — in circumstances that would excuse its abandonment.
When participants’ abayas grow heavy with mud, when rain makes fabric cling uncomfortably, when they think how much easier this would be in athletic wear — remind them to remember. They chose this for one day. Comfortable clothes wait at home. Their discomfort has a finish line. Refugee women live this reality indefinitely, with no promise of return to easier circumstances, with identity and faith and dignity their only possessions that displacement cannot steal.
The landscape that speaks
As participants walk through countryside — whether fields or forests, moors or meadows — encourage them to let landscape itself become teacher. The Qur’an repeatedly directs attention to the natural world as evidence of Allah’s artistry, as invitation to reflection, as reminder of something larger than human concerns.
“Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day are signs for those of understanding” (Qur’an 3:190).
The hills rolling into distance, the intricate detail of bark and leaf, the vast sky stretching over small human figures — these speak of the Creator’s majesty in ways mosques and books cannot fully capture.
Refugee women often lose access to beautiful spaces. Camps are crowded, ugly, utilitarian at best. The landscapes they flee through are marked by danger rather than peace: borders to be crossed, territories controlled by those who wish them harm, stretches where survival overshadows beauty. When they finally reach safety, they may be confined to urban areas, far from countryside that might offer the solace nature provides.
Your participants’ walk through beautiful landscape is both solidarity and privilege — the privilege of choosing discomfort in safe, beautiful spaces. They walk muddy trails knowing help is available if needed, knowing the route is planned and the finish line certain, knowing afterwards they return to comfort. Refugee women walk uncertain routes with no guaranteed destination, no assurance of safety, no promise the journey ends in anything but more displacement.
Help participants recognise this privilege. Let it soften their hearts. Let it deepen their commitment to those who cannot choose their circumstances, who endure far worse with no relief in sight.
Practical wisdom for the walk
Some practical guidance for participants, especially sisters unused to walking in abaya:
Layer thoughtfully beneath: base layers that wick moisture, mid-layers for warmth. The abaya provides covering but they will need proper clothing underneath for hours of walking and obstacles ahead.
Sturdy boots or wellies are essential. Modesty does not require suffering through mud in inappropriate footwear. Boots will not be seen beneath the abaya’s hem, and they make the difference between manageable discomfort and genuine misery.
Hijabs must be secured well: wind and rain will test them. Pins that might normally suffice will not survive the challenge’s conditions. Under-scarves and careful wrapping serve better than hoping delicate styling remains intact.
A small bag for essentials: water for after iftar, any medications needed, perhaps extra socks for when boots inevitably fail to keep all moisture out. Practicality serves both comfort and the ability to complete the challenge without unnecessary suffering.
Encourage patience with navigating obstacles in unfamiliar clothing. If sisters rarely wear abaya, managing long skirts through mud and over walls will require adjustment. They should help each other, laugh at awkwardness, remember that refugee women also must learn to navigate circumstances in whatever clothes they fled in.
Most importantly, help them stay present to the experience. Notice the beauty even as they notice the difficulty. Offer dhikr or quiet dua whilst walking, connecting physical exertion to spiritual practice. Let the challenge be both embodied and contemplative, both muddy reality and metaphor for the inner journey they are also undertaking.
Your participants as testimony
When participants complete Trials & Tribulations — muddy, exhausted, having walked miles whilst fasting in full abaya and hijab — they carry forward something valuable. Not pride in personal achievement, though they will have achieved something genuinely difficult. Not just funds raised, though those funds will serve important purposes.
They carry knowledge, written in their bodies, of what visible Muslim identity costs in spaces where it is unexpected. They understand a fraction more about what refugee women endure when clothing marks them as different, as foreign, as potentially threatening in eyes that refuse to see their full humanity.
They have been dawah without words — simply by being present, by being visibly Muslim in countryside spaces, by combining modesty with adventure, by showing joy in Allah’s creation whilst honouring dress that connects them to displaced women worldwide. Those who saw them on trails will remember. Not their names — strangers never learned them — but the image: Muslim women in abayas, muddy and happy, belonging to these landscapes, embracing the same beauty and challenge and occasional misery that British weather inflicts on everyone regardless of faith or dress.
This is the gift you offer through this challenge: testimony through presence, dawah through authenticity, solidarity made visible in clothing that announces “I am Muslim” to anyone with eyes to see. The refugee women for whom they walk may never know about this challenge. But the understanding built, the stereotypes challenged, the small shift in how observers think about Muslim women — these ripple outward in ways you cannot measure but which nonetheless matter.
After the mud washes away
When the challenge concludes and participants remove muddied abayas — whether returning them to wardrobes or setting them aside, whether resuming usual dress or continuing to wear abaya in daily life — they should carry forward what the experience taught.
They learned something about visibility, about how it feels to be marked by dress as different, about the attention this draws and assumptions it triggers. Refugee women live this visibility constantly, in circumstances far more hostile than British countryside trails. They cannot remove their abayas at day’s end and return to comfortable invisibility.
They learned something about resilience, about what bodies can endure when purpose drives them forwards, about continuing when discomfort argues for stopping. Refugee women demonstrate this resilience daily, walking when walking should be impossible, caring for children when they themselves are broken, maintaining faith when circumstances argue only for despair.
They learned something about joy remaining possible even in difficulty, about finding beauty alongside hardship, about laughter and struggle coexisting. Refugee women know this too: they sing to children in camps, they celebrate small mercies, they find moments of lightness in the heaviest of circumstances.
As the organiser, help participants carry these lessons forward not as personal accomplishments but as windows into others’ realities. When they hear about refugee crises, when images of displaced women in abayas appear on screens, they will remember. They will remember their single day of chosen difficulty in similar dress. They will remember how inadequate that experience was to capture the reality. They will remember that they tasted the smallest measure and it was hard — and refugee women’s portion is immeasurably greater, with no end in sight.
Let this remembering shape their response. Let it make them advocates rather than merely sympathisers, companions on the journey rather than distant observers of suffering. Let the mud that splashed their abayas wash away clean, but let the understanding it helped build remain, deepening with time, bearing fruit in action that extends far beyond Saturday’s difficulty.
This is why you ask participants to walk in abayas during Trials & Tribulations — not because this is the only valid Muslim dress, nor because you judge those who dress differently, but because it connects them, however briefly, to women whose visibility costs them far more than ours costs us. Your participants make themselves seen for one day. Refugee women are seen every day, with all the vulnerability and strength that visibility demands.
The threshold you create
When you organise this challenge, you do more than plan a charity walk. You create a threshold: a liminal space where the comfortable glimpse discomfort, where the fed taste hunger, where the secure feel, however briefly, the vertigo of having no solid ground beneath them.
This is sacred work.
Your participants will arrive as individuals. They will walk as a community bound by shared struggle and purpose. They will discover their physical journey mirrors an inner pilgrimage many have neglected to begin. They will learn what refugees already know: that the truest refuge is not found in the absence of hardship but in the nearness of Allah — in that sacred, still space where the displaced heart finally finds rest, where the weary traveller discovers they were never truly lost, only taking the long way home.
This is the gift you offer them. This is the transformation you make possible. May it be a means of drawing closer to the One who is always, always near.
