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upworthy

marie shirine yener

Photo by Duy Pham on Unsplash

Friendship and support demonstrated through arm-in-arm picture.

In the early fall of 2016, French artist Marie-Shirine Yener, aka Maeril, had her first viral hit with a comic about how to stand up to Islamophobic harassment.

Maeril channeled her own experiences with street harassment as a woman of mixed Iranian, Turkish, Kurdish, and Armenian descent into the illustrated how-to guide for helping Muslims. But she also understood the irony that her voice as an ally resonated more loudly than the voices of actual Muslims who have been targeted.

"There is a tendency people have not to believe a minority group when they speak of oppression," she wrote in The Independent. "We always rely on some sort of a 'bridge' — a more familiar, non-Muslim person like me, in this situation — and I wish we didn't have to."

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