Last week, Vernon Hills High School students donned the hijab at an event organized by the school’s Muslim Student Association aimed at smashing negative stereotypes. 17 non-Muslim girls chose to wear the traditional headscarf in order to better understand Islam and promote acceptance and tolerance.
Yasmeen Abdallah, president of the association, explained to the Daily Herald why the “Walk a Mile in Her Hijab” event was important.
“You can't really understand or judge a person and their beliefs until you understand why they do it and what it's like for them to do what they're doing,” she said. “This event is to hopefully denounce negative stereotypes.”
Abdallah hopes that the event will be repeated annually.
The event, having been planned in May, was not organized as a response to the recent attacks in Paris and California. But in their wake—and the Islamohpobia that followed—it certainly seems more vital.
The principal of the school, Jon Guillaume, described how he hoped the event would bring pupils together. He told the Daily Herald:
“I think it is a difficult time to be a Muslim student in our high school, in our community, and in America [...] I think this is an opportunity for our kids to embrace the Muslim community within the school.”
The feedback was reportedly generally good, although one girl was allegedly told by a male student to take off her hijab as she passed him in the hall. But in the wake of a lot of other bad news, this a welcome reprise.
