I had two quizzes yesterday,
EMF and circuits and gosh
I feel like I'm really far behind in my circuit class!
I need to catch up!!!
This semester, I just have to get better results,
I just have to.
Back to the main story;
so last two weeks, my friend, S invited me to have a dinner at an Iranian restaurant
but I couldn't make it cause I had two midterms the week after;
so I went to have dinner with her and three other good friends of mine there yesterday.
We're having such a lovely conversation;
about love story, marriage life, the kind of life we are wishing for etc,
very productive.
Then this friend was telling us
her story about her migration to Canada
and how it changed her perspective about Islam.
I don't remember every word she said though
cause we talked about so many stuff,
but this is what I learned from her.
Living in a Muslim country,
we can listen to the azan, we see people practising our religion,
no one questions us why are we wearing hijab and why don't we eat pork,
why Muslims are terrorists?
We don't face these kind of questions,
so we tend to be very complaisant,
we feel very safe.
But once we're living on the other side of the world,
where the people have a completely bad view on Islam,
they hate Muslims so much,
they question the very existence of our religion etc,
we tend to be very triggered.
We can get so angry when they question us so much.
We tend to feel intimidated by their questions,
they sound so rude that their questions really push us to the corner.
We know our religion but we could be very clueless in finding
the right words to say to them,
cause our words will change their views on our religion,
more or less.
What S told me was very interesting.
We don't have to focus so much on what to answer or how to answer
those who are curious about our religion,
but we have to improve ourselves in becoming a better Muslim on daily basis.
The way we talk, the way we smile, eat, walk, our personality,
we should improve on that.
Because people see Muslims as the image of Islam as a whole.
Our failure in representing what Islam really is
makes people think differently about Islam.
Words are not enough to convince them
how great Islam is,
but our action can somehow change their perspective.
These days I befriend with a lot of non-Muslims
and I hangout with them, study with them
and in some ways it helps breaking stereotypes that they have towards Muslim girls
(hijabists specifically).
They're very surprised to know that I'm here in McGill under scholarship,
I study engineering and I'm gonna serve back the company that sponsors me for 7 years
and I share with them about my interest in photography and dancing
and the fact that I can't be a model cause I'm short really cracks them up.
They're surprised to see
how women in hijab can also pursue our dreams,
we can achieve what we want
and the hijab that we put on never stops us from defining ourselves,
in fact, hijab is part of our identity and we should be proud of it :)
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