ABSTRACT
Face-to-face interviews and follow-up email conversations for this study were conducted by the author research assistant and himself between October 2016 and April 2017 on the oral histories of adult Malay Muslim women who have never worn the hijab and those who have removed it. The interview as therapy embraces the notion of 'friendship as method' as a means of ethically rethinking the identity of the researcher and participants in a socially sensitive setting. In the phenomenon of un-veiling amongst Malay-Muslim women and personal testimonies of moral failure and reconstruction of self, the interview has functioned more than a mere method in the research process. The hijab represents the most visible of Islamic symbols and has come to represent the gendered image of Islam itself. As therapy, the interview is also an ethical intervention and method of friendship in which the researcher enters the participant's world and accesses information that is often confidential to figures close to the participants.
