Head turner

A few years ago, a young woman wearing a hijab began playing the guitar at music cafés around Kuala Lampur, the Malaysian capital, singing songs of love and heartbreak.

With her combination of Muslim head scarf and skinny jeans, Yunalis Mat Zara’ai drew attention for her appearance as much as for her music.

Since then, under the stage name Yuna, she has won a clutch of Malaysian music awards, moved to Los Angeles, signed with an American music label, appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, started a clothing business and in the process has become the poster girl for a group of young Malaysian Muslim women, dubbed hijabsters, or hipsters who wear the hijab.

“I love music,” said the 27-year-old singer and songwriter, who sings in English and Malay. “I’m just like any other girl out there.”

The accolades for Yuna — as a musician and as a cultural force — have come from the West as well as the East. This fall, she appears in an ad campaign for Barneys New York. In Malaysia, where she has won Anugerah Industri Muzik honors — the local equivalent of the Grammys —every year since 2010, Yuna is already one of the country’s biggest stars. In 2011, the news and opinion website Free Malaysia Today ran an article titled “How to spot a hijabster” by the columnist Zaidel Baharuddin, where he described the phenomenon sparked by Yuna as akin to a “feminist awakening”, even as he poked gentle fun at the hijabsters who hung out at Starbucks and the frozen yogurt chain Tutti Frutti.

While hijab fashion emerged first among young Muslims in Europe, Zaidel reckons it has spread so quickly here as to become a potential cultural export of Malaysia. “This is ours. This could be our K-pop or our Korean drama,” he said.

On a recent trip back to Kuala Lumpur for Eid ul-Fitr, Yuna performed at an MTV concert at a giant water park before an audience of thousands. Coming onstage after the K-pop band Boys Republic and before the American hip hop artist B.o.B., she appeared, backed by her band, wearing red lipstick, a gold turban — she sometimes swaps her scarf for a turban — and a gauzy white pantsuit.

“Who do you think you are? This love, you’re throwing away,” she sang, in the Malay song Lelaki or Men, her voice sounding a little bit Norah Jones. In the English song Rescue, she crooned: “She don’t need no rescue, she’s okay.”

After another smaller show at a mall, she was mobbed by fans bearing smartphones. “She expresses what we feel,” said Azimah Sharipuddin, a 21-year-old student, who snapped a picture of herself with Yuna.

For fans like Azimah, Yuna is the role model they’ve been waiting for, a dynamic young career woman who is also an observant Muslim. In Malaysia, where 60 per cent of the 30 million population is Muslim, people practise a moderate brand of Islam. The head scarf has proliferated since the 1980s, inspired by the Iranian revolution, but here, the decision on whether to cover up rests on a mix of religious obligation, societal pressure and personal choice, rather than law or decree.

Dina Zaman, a Malaysian journalist, said she started noticing a renewed interest in religion among Malaysians about a decade ago, after the September 11 attacks.

At the same time that more young women were donning the hijab, they were also experimenting with fashion. Magazines such as the Malay-language glossy Hijabista, which now has a circulation of 45,000, began crowding newsstands.

A fashion industry has grown around this: the online retailer FashionValet, for example, sells a popular line of head scarves in gift boxes and is owned by the fashion blogger Vivy Yusof, who has more than 120,000 followers on Instagram.

These young women, said Dina, “were recreating their own boundaries. They want to be fashionable, but they also want to obey God.” She added: “Yuna is a leader in that sense.”

The daughter of a judge and a high-school teacher, Yuna grew up listening to Fiona Apple and Coldplay and performed in jazz cafes through college in Kuala Lumpur, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in law.

Her decision to wear a head scarf came about 10 years ago. Her motivation was simple: “I wanted to be a better Muslim.”

Her family supported her musical ambitions and her mother is often present at her gigs. But until Yuna, women Muslim entertainers in Malaysia tended not to cover their hair. Her decision to perform with a head scarf opened her to a higher level of scrutiny. Conservative Muslims took issue with her skinny jeans. She said she noticed she was treated better after she started covering her hair. “It’s a cliché,” she said, “but people are more respectful.”

By the end of this year, she will have toured more than two dozen cities in the US, promoting her latest album, Nocturnal.

In May, she opened a store in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur called November Culture — after the month she was born. The store reflects her interests and pet causes — there are long-sleeved sequined gowns of her own design, Yuna CDs, terrariums and a donation box for the humanitarian aid organisation Mercy Malaysia.

“What we wear is our own choice, how we cover up,” she said. “Personally, I found a balance.”