Soutiam Goodarzi

It was World Hijab Day earlier this month. You probably missed it, but you can imagine the idea: ‘global citizens’ of all faiths and backgrounds were asked to cover their heads for a day ‘in solidarity with Muslim women worldwide’. It is done in ‘recognition of millions of Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab and live a life of modesty’. Wearing a hijab is not such an abstract cause for me: I used to wear one a few years ago when I was at school in Iran. And in the spirit of solidarity, I’d like to tell you a bit more about the world I left behind when I moved to Britain in 2011 when I was nine years old. I was six when I was first made to wear the hijab to school.

It was World Hijab Day earlier this month. You probably missed it, but you can imagine the idea: ‘global citizens’ of all faiths and backgrounds were asked to cover their heads for a day ‘in solidarity with Muslim women worldwide’. It is done in ‘recognition of millions of Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab and live a life of modesty’. Wearing a hijab is not such an abstract cause for me: I used to wear one a few years ago when I was at school in Iran. And in the spirit of solidarity, I’d like to tell you a bit more about the world I left behind when I moved to Britain in 2011 when I was nine years old. I was six when I was first made to wear the hijab to school.

One of the most tiresome tropes of the anti-Brexit backlash is the well-trodden line that older voters have somehow ‘stolen the future’ of the country’s youth. And that all of us are sitting at home, angry that our "future" is being stolen. I see it differently. Dominic Grieve's generation may see the borders of the Europe Union as the end of their own horizons, but a good many members of my generation have never understood this Little Europe mentality. We think global, and no one ever speaks for those of us who see Brexit as part of going global.