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Female-only trains already exist in Thailand, Japan, Malaysia and India to protect women from harassment and abuse. London’s Transport Minister is open to the possibility of such a segregation. However, she was met with the usual backlash heard time and time again from feminist voices- there should be actions taken to educate the perpetrators, not the victim.

Backpacker hostels in Europe have women only bunks. Trains in India have women only coaches. It seems that travelling is easier for women today with all these facilities. So where is the relevance of the hadtih that Muslim women cannot travel alone over one day and one night (Bukhari)?

The term hijabista (noun) according to Mr Wiktionary is “a Muslim woman or girl who dresses stylishly while conforming to the Islamic modesty code”.

 The code basically prescribes a woman to coverher hair and body in loose and unrevealing clothing and to obscure the detailsof her body from the public. Having said that, are women even allowed to mix fashion with faith when Islam fundamentally prohibits them to draw attention to themselves especially the lustful gaze of men?

 Nevertheless, through fashion, many young Muslim women nowadays are more inclined to dress modestly and to start donning the hijab. The question “To veil or not to veil?" has been replaced by, "How do I veil? Let me count the ways."

Is it easier to be a Muslim traveller today as compared to ten years ago? There are numerous apps created to make it easy for Muslims to venture out of their familiar shores. HalalTrip helps one to choose and discover airlines, hotels, and serving Halal food. Irhal produces online guides to give us more information. CrescentRating has an app to help you pray in the airplane.

With all these apps, it’s easy to feel that it is much easier to travel abroad while keeping my Muslim lifestyle. But what about renewing and keeping our purpose of travel for the purpose of Allah in order to make travel an act of worship, on top of our first intent of travelling be it for business or otherwise.

Yes, all these apps make foreign countries more accessible for the Muslim traveller. But to make better Muslims out of travel, maybe these apps can help renew our intent of travelling? Say, if our original intent is to travel to see the creations of Allah and reflect on his wonders, no app (as of now) can do that, just a conscious awareness and deep contemplation of every occurrence, which happens during your travels.

With technology pushing itself to be more relevant to the user’s location and situation, especially with the creation of Google Glass and wearable tech, I hope there will be apps which push out content relevant to the area that we visit, even when the Muslim traveller is not requesting for the information, to encourage contemplation, or if not, to help the traveller with the intent of their travel ‘for the sake of Allah’.

For example, when they visit Italy for shopping in Milan, and it’s Asar time. Make it possible to tell them not just where to pray and what the local solat time is, and facts about the Muslims in Italy. Did you know that in Italy, there are 1.5 million Muslims but only 8 mosques? This fact makes it easier to contemplate, and appreciate being a Muslim in a majority-Muslim country like Malaysia.