Source: The Commercial Appeal

Every Hijabi has a story.

Hajar Sakhi, a Rhodes College student from Nashville, was working at a fast-food restaurant in high school. One day, a customer looked at her wearing a uniform visor over her headscarf and started laughing. He left without ordering.

“My manager said, ‘You’re lucky we hire your kind,'” Sakhi said.

Irem Khan, a Rhodes student and White Station High grad, was with her mother at a gas station one day. They had just left a holiday celebration. As they were gassing up their Honda, a man next to them asked if the gas was running low because it was being used to burn more Qurans.

“He started laughing and began to make more snide remarks, indirectly at us, claiming that if those ‘Maazlems’ could do 9/11 to us, we could do whatever to them,” Khan said.

Lettia Shaw, the daughter of an Alabama Baptist, was in her Cordova front yard when two guys driving by in a truck started shouting obscenities at her. “Until my husband stood up and they saw him, at which point they shut up,” Shaw said.

Those were some of the stories told this week by Muslim women in Memphis who have chosen — for personal and religious reasons — to wear hijabs, or headscarves, in public.

The Hijabis, who spoke at separate events Monday evening at the University of Memphis and Tuesday evening at Rhodes College, say they are used to dirty looks and disdainful comments. But lately, they are feeling a bit more anxiety.

Last week, a Hijabi in California, a 32-year-old mother of five, died after being severely beaten in her home by a killer who left a note that reportedly said, “Go back to your own country. You’re a terrorist.”

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