These days there's plenty of commentary about the religion of Islam and/or Muslims on the news.
What about hearing straight from the source?
BuzzFeed Australia just made a great video featuring six women sharing what it's really like to be a hijabi today.
Hijabi women are Muslim women who wear a scarf called, well, a hijab to cover their hair, ears, and neck. They also observe a conservative style of dress that entails covering their entire body save for their hands and face. These women offer a unique point of view since the hijab makes it clear to the world what their religious identity is.
The video starts with a simple prompt — "I'm a hijabi woman, but..." — that reveals itself as a powerful springboard for dropping some serious truths about Islamophobia.
The video is only two and a half minutes long, but it is jam-packed with some great nuggets of humor, vulnerability, and wisdom that could benefit people of all beliefs (or lack thereof). Like:
Make sure you double- and triple-check before you think you've spotted Malala Yousafzai.
No, she won't be signing any autographs. All GIFs via BuzzFeedYellow/YouTube.
Don't judge a book by its cover (or, in this case, a woman by her hijab).
... so no making assumptions about personality.
These women get that the hijab may be the first thing you notice about them, but they are sooo much more than that.
And are willing to talk about nearly anything else.
Turns out hijabi women as just as diverse and complex as any other group of people. Shocker, right?
Islamophobia sucks. It has a huge impact on small parts of their day-to-day lives.
And probably most heartbreaking:
It's super unfair of people to keep demanding these women publicly condemn Muslim terrorists.
I mean, did anyone call for white male Christians to take a public stand in the aftermath of the 1996 Centennial Olympic bombings or this year's Planned Parenthood Colorado shooting?
But this woman will keep doing it anyway.
It's awful that the narrative around Islam and Muslims has been dominated by people who aren't Muslims themselves. The sad truth is that most Americans don't really know anything about the religion or its people.
That's why this video is so refreshing.
In it, we finally see Muslims share what it's like to be them, and we get a real look at the female Muslim experience in these tenuous times.
Want to learn more? Find a hijabi woman to ask (respectfully, of course). She might just be up for some more sharing.
Just try to make sure you do some basic research first. People can be a great resource, but they're not your private search engine.
