Modeled from the ever popular photo blog Humans of New York, an activist and student Rana Abdelhamid started a social media project aims to diversify perception and combat hate crimes against Muslim women.
The Tumblr and Facebook page titled Hijabis of New York showcases different photos and stories of Muslim women with hijab across New York. The idea is to dispel myth and through personal interview and story "to raise awareness, to humanize and diversify the image that people have of Muslim women,according to Abdelhamid.
A New York native and a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School, Abdelhamid launched Hijabis in the wake of her own personal experience. She recalled that at the age of 16, she was attacked on her way to a domestic-violence shelter in Jamaica, Queens, by a man who attempted to forcibly remove her headscarf. Since then, she has been doing research and after 9-11, she found out that the hate crimes against Muslims had increased by 1,600 percent according to FBI statistics.
The project is then launched and continues to capture the story of Muslim women with hijab in the five boroughs of New York, while educating the general public on what it means to be young, Muslim and female in post 9-11 America.
Despite the recent trends of hijab merging into popular culture, with haute couture brand like Dolce & Gabbana launched its first collection of high-fashion hijabs & abayas;hijab is still remained a point of heated debate. Many of the hijabis are often seen as being repressed and docile, regardless of their personal reasons of donning the garments.
Hijabis of New York now has more than 13,000 fans on Facebook. Abdelhamid has recently took Hijabis of New York to Madrid, Spain when she went to lead a workshop. She plans to visit London next and continue sharing stories from Muslim women she meets around the globe.
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Posted by Hijabis of New York onFriday, February 5, 2016