A Social Experiment : Hijab [an excerpt]

This is one of the top reasons, besides many other, why I dont ever want to go to america or any other western / european country because of the discrimination and racism. Its sad and I pity such people who keep on ranting about tolerance and justice and equality and freedom of speech and freedom of expression and freedom to live your life the way you want , but practically they just mean that for “their” people and not anyone else because others don’t “deserve” it ! Read below an excerpt from a simple article of a non-muslim, who carried out a simple social experiment. Read what she found out. Also the comments are worth reading too

A Social Experiment

by ~asmilingmalice Yesterday, I went to the Islamic Center of America. I felt incredibly out of place, being a non-Muslim who wasn’t wearing a hijab, and I was very nervous when stepping into the office. Out of respect, I did the best I could to hide my hair by pulling up my coat’s hood. I went to the lady at the desk, greeted her with “assalamu alaikum,” and she was very happy to answer my questions about the mosque and where to buy a hijab, among other things. She told me that I could observe the prayers, gave me an e-mail to a man who could give me a tour of the center, and told me how to properly wear the hijab. It was a surprisingly warm welcome and I felt pretty at ease. After observing the service, I noticed a man was selling something in one of the hallways. I walked over there and saw a collection of jewelry and hijabs. I decided that if I were to come back, I should have more than just my coat’s big hood. So I bought a pretty green hijab, then stepped into the lady’s room to try it on. It’s there I met Sona. She was 27-years-old and had converted to Islam a year ago. She helped me with the hijab, we exchanged numbers, and she told me that she would answer any questions I had about the religion, the culture, among other things. After we parted ways, an idea occurred to me when I was driving home from the mosque. Back in high school, I wanted to do a social experiment for my Sociology class. My sister gave me the idea to wear a hijab out in public to see how people treated me. Back then, I didn’t know where to find a hijab. Now that I had one, I thought I would give that experiment another shot. So I put on my new hijab and set out to three public places: a bookstore, the mall, and a restaurant. The bookstore wasn’t entirely unpleasant. There weren’t too many people there to begin with, and because the ones there were absorbed in books, it explained why they didn’t pay all that much attention to me. One of the ladies who worked there asked me if I needed any help and showed me where the bookstore kept the Qur’an. Overall it was pretty nice. The mall and the restaurant were quite different. I wrote this in my status on Facebook: Muslims put up with some of the worst customer service. I am not exaggerating when I say this.

When I stepped into that mall, I realized just how different this particular outing was going to be from others I’ve had in the past. The first store I walked into was Best Buy, but I visited every store in the mall at least once. No sooner did I step into Best Buy, I noticed how different things were. First of all, the person at the door didn’t greet me like he did to other customers entering the store. I didn’t think nothing of it at first, and instead I went over to look at the CDs and DVDs in the store. Usually when a customer is browsing the store, one of the employees will approach them and ask if they need any help finding something. This didn’t happen once, not even when I made direct eye contact with an employee whom I went to school with. She didn’t recognize me. I can’t blame her for it, since my long hair was covered up, but I couldn’t help but feel that all she saw was my hijab and not me, let alone a customer.

You can read the complete article here : http://asmilingmalice.deviantart.com/art/A-Social-Experiment-202124891

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