"My family didn't allow me to wear it at first," the petite Chechen girl said as she wrapped a pastel-colored scarf around her head and neck, concealing every strand of her long, brown hair.
"They said I was too young. My mom beat my sister and me every day, but I didn't care: I am a Muslim and it is my duty to wear it."
Half of the girls in Seda's ninth-grade class in the Chechen village of Serzhen-Yurt near the Chechen capital, Grozny, now wear the hijab, a sharp break from local tradition. In past generations, married women in Chechnya covered their hair with a small, triangle-shaped scarf as a sign of respect and modesty.
But these girls are part of a new trend in the republic that has seen two wars in the past few decades and a rise in adherence to the kinds of codes promoted by fundamentalist Muslims. Some Muslims are fighting against it.
"I didn't want them to wear the hijab. I argued, yelled and even beat them," said Seda's mother, Rosa Makhagieva, 45, whose three daughters all cover themselves in loose-fitting, modest clothes. "My husband was against me. He said, 'If you don't allow them to wear it, I am going to make you put it on.' " Read the rest on: 
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