In this piece for USA Today, we meet twenty-year old Lamia Arafa. Lamia is a normal Florida State biology student who is also an observant Muslim and wears the hijab. In the interview, she says that she doesn’t mind if people sometimes stare — in fact, she finds it the “perfect conversation opener.”
“It’s kind of like walking around with a billboard saying, ‘I’m Muslim!’” says Lamia. “When I see someone staring at me at a store or wherever, I’ll casually approach them and ask, ‘Excuse me ma’am/sir, do you have any questions about Islam or the hijab that I can clear up for you? And people usually do have questions.”
“There’s this big idea that Muslim women are oppressed and that we’re forced into these prisons of headscarves,” Lamia continues. “But in a secular sense, it very much frees me from the cultural oppression against women. Putting on the hijab was kind of like [sending a message], ‘No, you are not to value me on the circumference of my thigh — you’re to value me on the human that I am.’”
