University of Wisconsin students wear hijabs during ‘Islam Appreciation Week’

Rasa - University of Wisconsin students are participating in a “Hijabi for a Day” event that’s designed to spread awareness about the Muslim headscarf and counter “islamophobia.”

News ID: 425735

Date: 13 December 2016 - 00:46

RNA - University of Wisconsin students are participating in a “Hijabi for a Day” event that’s designed to spread awareness about the Muslim headscarf and counter “islamophobia.”

Student across campus donned hijabs last Wednesday – becoming what’s known as hijabis – as part of an event for Islam Appreciation Week put on by the University of Wisconsin Muslim Student Association and the Wisconsin Union Directorate Global Connection, the Badger Herald reports.

According to the news site: During “Hijabi for a Day,” the women met in the morning to receive their head scarves and also get assigned a texting buddy, who wears a hijab on a day-to-day basis.

Farhat Bhuiyan, one of the organizers of the event, said one of the main goals is to normalize Muslim female practices.

UW-Madison Professor Anna Gade, an “expert on Islam,” quoted the Quran as an impetus for the outreach.

“I think that ‘Hijabi for a Day’ is really in the spirit of what the Qur’an says when it teaches its readers that people of diverse backgrounds and identities, including Muslims, should ‘get to know one another’ (Qur. 49:13),” Gade said in an email to The Daily Cardinal.

The event, however, seemed to backfire as some students who witnessed their non-Muslim classmates in hijabs accused them of cultural appropriation, Bhuiyan told the Herald.

“I got some looks,” said sophomore Anna Ambros, who participated in the event. “I’m sure they were wondering why I was wearing a hijab because I never had before. I’m not a Muslim.”

Coincidentally, UW’s Islam Appreciation Week and the “Hijabi for a Day” was largely overshadowed by a Muslim student at the University of Ohio who went on a rampage with a butcher knife that injured 11. Police believe that attack stemmed from student Abdul Artan’s radical Islamic beliefs, CNN reports.

Regardless, Bhuiyan told the Herald the response to the Hijabi for a Day prompted mixed reactions from UW students.

“Throughout the day, Bhuiyan said she received both positive and negative feedback,” according to the news site. “She said that the negative feedback suggested it was cultural appropriation or offensive.

“Bhuiyan said those who feel negatively might not understand the point of the event. She responded to every message she received during the day, trying to explain the organization’s goals.”

Students who donned the headscarves last week also discussed their experience afterwards, and “many of the women said they received compliments during the day and felt beautiful,” the Herald reports.

“Others expressed that more people would look at them while wearing the hijab.”

The hijab exercise is the latest in a growing trend of Muslim students convincing their non-Muslim classmates to don the headscarf for a day to gain an understanding of their circumstances, and the events have caused controversy in many K-12 school districts, EAGnews reports.

Officials at a school in Ohio last school year were forced to cancel a “Covered Girl Challenge” because of the backlash.

The “Hijab for a Day” events are spawned in part by recommendations from the U.S. Department of Education on how schools can counter anti-Muslim bias in schools, which were outlined in a “Home Room” blog published by the department following terrorist attacks in Paris and California earlier this year, EAGnews reports.

The event at the University of Wisconsin prompted at least one online commenter to point out the hypocrisy of the “Hijab for a Day” events in the larger context of Islam’s treatment of women.

847/940