The student said she believed Muslim women should wear scarves, though she said she did not feel pressured to wear one.
"That's what our religion demands," she said. "But that doesn't mean we force people to put it on. People should understand why they have to put on hejab first; otherwise there is no point of it on the head."
Noor Ali, 19, said she has chosen to wear a scarf since she was 14, but she also cannot stand the idea that women would feel forced to put on the full cloth headdress -- one piece that crosses the forehead to hide the hairline completely, the other a longer drape that covers the head.
"Those who want to force women to put on a scarf want nothing [Western] to spread in Iraq," she said. "They want us to be another Kabul," she added, referring to the capital of Afghanistan, which was ruled from 1996 to 2001 by the Taliban, an Islamic extremist militia.
"The Taliban failed there, and they want to try in Iraq," Ali said. "Everyone should be free to choose whether to put the scarf on or not. It is not us who judge. There is a God, and he will eventually decide this."
Dalal Jabbar, 19, a resident of Sadr City, a poor Shiite Muslim neighborhood in Baghdad, said Iraqi women are more afraid today than ever before.
"There is no law to rule the country," she said. "I see the scarves as the best way to protect ourselves in Iraq now. When I walk in the street, I know I'll have no trouble, because men prefer to look at others without a scarf, more than me."
A woman who gave her name as Dalia, 21, an engineering student at Baghdad University, agreed that forcing women to wear scarves was not the way to win people over.
"We cannot force people to believe in what we believe in," said Dalia, who is Muslim. "They even want the Christians to put on a scarf. Christians have their religion and convictions, which differ from ours. We cannot force them to do what we want. We want to have our country secured and stable, and I think forcing people to do what they don't want will add nothing but tension."
Dalia said she is one of the few women at her university who does not wear a scarf.
"The scarf has nothing to do with faith," she said. "I fear there will be time when we cannot walk in the street without head-to-toe abaya [the full black traditional dress] and a face cover. This will be the end of Iraq as a civilized country."
Special correspondents Omar Fekeiki and Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.
