My veil elicits stares, slurs

I am an American woman. I am a wife, mother and daughter. I am a student, worker and volunteer. I was born and raised in America, as were my husband and my children. I share the same love of the Constitution as does any American.

So why is it that when I opt to exercise my rights as an American and express my modesty by wearing hijab, a given portion of you – and you know who you are – feel the need to become disrespectful and belligerent?

Having friends of many different ethnicities, I had heard the stories of discrimination. Yet they were experiences I, as a young white woman, could not fathom, until now. The vast array of emotions one feels is unequivocal when the same citizens who used to smile at me now curse me. Are not I and other American Muslimahs endowed with the same right of expression as you?

I sit and watch, as well as experience the stares and whispering made at the veil. Little do many realize a simple inquiry from the often uninformed onlooker would be all that was needed for a Muslimah such as myself to share why I choose to wear hijab. Sadly, this tends not to be the case. Nevertheless, the inquiring citizen is not the issue, and neither are the stares and whispers. Instead it is the disrespect running rampant in our society.

It is the teenagers who haven’t been taught any manners, or at least do not care to embody them, who are kicking the young girl’s bag while she waits for the STA bus simply because she is wearing hijab. It is the ignorant men hazing the woman in downtown Spokane because she decides to veil instead of show her cleavage. It is the individual in the Shadle area who finds it necessary to use an excessive amount of profanity and disrespectful slurs in front of my young children and then telling me to return to the country I came from.

HELLO. I am where I belong, and while I may be veiled, it is you who cannot see.

A vast portion of our society has seemingly become blinded. It appears as if many can no longer see or understand the meaning of simple aphoristic quotes such as “Love for humanity what you love for yourself,” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

What if it were your mother, wife or daughter? Would you still feel the need to try and degrade them? I ponder what it is that makes some individuals put forth so much effort to act with such demeanor. Such manners of degradation could be utilized in much more constructive societal efforts.

Does our society no longer see the importance of teaching our children, and ourselves for that matter, to act respectfully as well as respectably? Rather than attempting to demean one another, we should take the time as good citizens to inform each other of our ignorance. Surely we are bound to strengthen our community by doing so and find the community as a whole beneficent. After all, if we are not teaching our youth how to be modest and respectful, what then are we teaching? Surely it should not be to inflict malice.

Namely, it is you, the disrespectful few who feel they speak for all Americans and really speak on the contrary, whom I address this to:

Learn some manners, prepare to be respectful and then share your discourse with others. Your words do not depict what America is about, and this American is tired of hearing them.