You can’t wear skirts that are too short. You can’t wear skirts that are too long.
Let’s just stop wearing clothes.
Wtf does that even mean?? Too long? Are the school boys going to get too turned off?
What the fucking shitty ass hell or wtfsah.
Apparently it was deemed indicative of religious affiliation? If a non-Muslim girl had been wearing it, it would have been called boho chic.
-V
This is fucking ridiculous. You can’t wear an arrival of clothing indicative of your religion? Where are the right wing zealots screaming for religious freedom?
Well, this was in France where they have the controversial secularism law. If you google the story, you can see a picture of the skirt in question (black maxi skirt.) Nothing about it is religious and the only way one could make it so is by deciding that Muslims wearing long black skirts is particularly religious when it’s a fucking maxi skirt.
9/11 is coming up - and with it, a sharp spike of anxiety that always accompanies the anniversary. each year our community deals with attacks, threats, even deaths. each anniversary i don’t leave my house. i don’t go to the masjid.
i remember the time someone shot up the side of our mosque when we were inside
i remember the time someone chased two young hijabis with a taser
i remember the time someone intentionally swerved towards me when i was crossing the street and i stood frozen in fear
i remember the time someone slipped a knife threat into my mailbox
or the times my friends and i have been verbally assaulted in crowded public spaces and nobody said a word
call out racism and islamophobia when you see it. check in on your muslim neighbors and friends. refuse to tolerate the bigotry and hate that takes lives and spreads fear - both in public and online. stand united with us against hate.
[image description, from The Middle Eastern Feminist’s post:
An illustrated guide to help a person being targeted by Islamophobic harassment in the public space (in the subway, in the street, etc). The illustrations describe the steps to help the person to safety. There are three characters: the person being attacked is represented as a veiled woman with olive skin, wearing a violet hijab and a lavender dress, the bystander/helper is a white woman with short burgundy hair, a striped tee and boyfriend jeans, and the attacker is a white, bearded man with hazel hair, a teal polo shirt and regular denim jeans.
The four steps are as follows:
1) Engage conversation. Go to them, sit beside them and say hello. Try to appear calm, collected and welcoming. Ignore the attacker (this is, again, very important). (the bystander goes to the veiled lady and says: “hi, how are you?”)
2) Pick a random subject and start discussing it. It can be anything: a movie you liked, the weather, saying you like something they wear and asking where they got it… ( in the illustration attached to this step, the attacker has a big “IGNORED” marked on his body - the bystander talks about the weather, and a movie her sister told her about)
3) Keep building the safe space. Keep eye contact with them and don’t acknowledge the attacker’s presence: the absence of response from you two will push them to leave the area shortly. (in the illustration attached to this step, the attacker has a big “IRRELEVANT” marked on his body and leaves the area angrily - while the two protagonists chat.)
4) Continue the conversation until the attacker leaves, & escort them to a safe place if necessary. Bring them to a neutral area where they can recollect themselves; respect their wishes if they tell you they’re ok and just want to go. (here the bystander lighty holds the veiled woman by the shoulders as a way to show support)
/end i.d.]
i know i told people not to comment on this if they weren’t muslim but i will absolutely accept this addition because it’s generally really useful info to know. this happened to me once and someone used a tactic like this and it worked wonderfully!
in my situation, it was a woman who pretended like she knew me when a man was verbally assaulting my friend and i - she approached us like we were old friends or relatives and asked “what took you so long? i’ve been waiting!”
and just like that, i had an out! the guy didn’t follow when she guided us away, and she stayed by my side the entire time until i had gotten to where i needed to go. the situation was de-escalated quickly and peacefully
i know a gut instinct to seeing bigotry or injustice is often confrontation, but it’s not always the safest response and tactics like this are extremely useful!!!
(however - just to note: if the situation looks potentially dangerous or on the verge of escalating to that level, call the police. there is a difference between uncomfortable comments on public transit vs the threat of verbal or physical assault - tactics like these work well in the first situation, but the second should be treated differently and with extreme caution. never hesitate to notify the proper authorities in situations where it looks like things are getting out of hand.)
I think this is important to share. It’s a very clever and nonviolent way to neutralize a bigot, can apply to many situations, and could save someone from a potentially dangerous situation. Information this important deserves to be shared, not scrolled past
Now, as the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, sparks fresh scrutiny of the American far-right’s ‘great replacement theory,’ new data has punctured India’s own version – where Hindus are allegedly victims of a dramatic Muslim demographic rise.
Hey everyone! Its been quite some time since I’ve had the chance to spill out my world of emotions and updates to you.
These days it seems I am wrapped in the world media and truly forget about my own little blog here. There have been recent days where I think about closing this blog down because I simply am unable to keep up…give me your thoughts whether I should or not!
Crushing on: The AjA Project’s Collective Voices Program
Young Muslim women from City Heights in San Diego, California use the arts to tackle topics of identity, representation, and dual-consciousness in their installation entitled: “Navigating the Map of Our Selfhood”
Participants from The AjA Project, a City-Heights-based nonprofit (funded by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art), exhibited a large-scale public art piece this month at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park.
The installation, entitled Navigating the Map of Our Selfhood, was the culminating project of AjA’s Collective Voices program, a participatory photography program involving young Muslim women from City Heights. For the past year, participants of Collective Voices have used photography to explore themes of representation, identity, and culture through workshops in conjunction with The AjA Project and The United Women of East Africa.
This final installation was intended to serve as a platform to ignite public dialogue around some of the most important and contested issues in contemporary culture around the world – the refugee crisis, islamophobia, and women’s rights.
“We have a need for the world to visualize and empathize with our point of view.”
In the words of the Collective Voices participants, “The mission of Collective Voices is to express the pride we have in ourselves in order to provide young girls, who are often not heard, with a voice. This installation recognizes the beauty in our struggle and who we are as East African American young Muslim women from San Diego. We have a need for the world to visualize and empathize with our point of view. Navigating the Map of Our Selfhood formally acknowledges the contradicting multiple consciousness of our experience. Our goal is to reach out to the community to educate and eliminate misconceptions some may have about us as female Muslims. This is an artistic work of individuals collectively navigating the reality of various identities.”
As a fellow Christian, I pray everyday that one day I will be able to see a world where your people will be persecuted by the Faith in which you guys believe in. Islam is not the cause for the tragedies that happen in this world everyday. People who do not interpret your holy book correctly are. I will defend you people for I know you all represent a peaceful religion centered around Love and Faith. And the media may portray Islam as the root of all evil; but I hope others educate themselves like I did. Fuck Islamaphobia. I hope that all have a blessed Ramadan. Mashallah.
The silence about the #MuslimBan from Republican leaders - many of whom condemned such an idea during the GOP primary - is deafening.
House Speaker Paul Ryan’s Tweets are blathering on about the Obamacare replacement plan that they STILL haven’t devised, despite 7 years of promising it.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Tweets are about abortion and the Supreme Court - but since Donald J. Trump is in the midst of undermining a federal judge checking and balancing the executive branch, I feel like this is a moot point.
Fortunately, John McCain is decent enough to speak out. But then I remembered, he’s the one who unleashed Sarah Palin on us - and consequently, sent the GOP on this disaster course of lunacy
Remember, folks, the primaries for the midterm elections are only a year away! ✋
