of fabric if I were asked to describe it
I would say it’s a couple yards of
material very lightweight very pretty
sky-blue color other than that it’s not
very remarkable or extraordinary this
piece of fabric is called the hijab it
is worn by many different women around
the world and it looks like if there’s a
delay it’s worn by many different women
around the world many Muslim women
around the world and it is and arguably
one of the most powerful articles of
clothing that exists it elicits a wide
range of emotions both positive and
negative and it’s debated time and again
by both women who do and don’t wear it
and the men who like to dictate the
woman how to dress it has been banned in
some public spaces and public
universities in some countries and for
better or for worse it is an essential
part of my American Muslim identity one
of the best parts about it is I never
have to worry about a bad hair day to
the communities that I advocate for I am
a social justice activist my name is
aina and to the barista at the Starbucks
down the street I’m Xena like the social
wart the warrior justice princess I
reassure myself and to my fifth grade
elementary school teacher I am simply
the letter Z my die syllabic foreign
sounding name is simply too difficult to
pronounce in arabic my name means
father’s pride or Father’s jewel and too
many Americans who’ve never met a Muslim
before
my name means oppressed because they
imagine the only way a woman would ever
dress the way that I do especially one
who’s been born raised and educated in
the United States is if she’s forced but
the reality is I chose to wear the
headscarf when I was 19 years old and I
became the first woman in my family to
do so and I’ve never regretted the
decision
I am from Baltimore I often get asked
where are you from and I say I’m from
Baltimore and people say but no where
are you really from and I say I’m from
Baltimore and they get this confused
look on their face as if somebody who
looks like me who dresses like me could
it possibly be from this diverse City
but I promise you I am from Baltimore I
that means I bleed purple I am a huge
die-hard fan of the Baltimore Ravens and
any team that defeats the Pittsburgh
Steelers and my husband is from New
Jersey
we’ve been married six beautiful years
and he’s taught me a lot about life for
example in every marriage there are two
people one person is always right and
the other one is a husband a lot of
people ask me how does your husband let
you do the work that you do activism is
not an easy job and I tell them to my
mind I’m thinking they probably think
Muslim men oppress Muslim women they
tell them what to do what to go where to
go what to do how to act and we actually
enjoy an equal opportunity marriage
sometimes that’s not so great when you
I’m not quite sure what the clicker it’s
not working so um even though I am a
die-hard NFL fan this season I am on an
NFL hiatus
unlike the President of the United
States I believe that sometimes standing
for justice requires taking a knee and
that’s not always a popular position to
take but sometimes we have to stand on
principle I am the proud daughter of
immigrants back when Lady Liberty’s
torch still burned bright and before the
days of the Muslim ban or the expanded
travel ban when our nation still
welcomed immigrants my parents had the
opportunity to come to the United States
and settle and build a better life for
themselves and their children
collectively they’ve been working for
almost five decades to help serve our
nation’s veterans and their loved ones I
grew up in a male-dominated Punjabi
household so I have three brothers I’m
the only girl
and so I suffer from middle child
syndrome only thai only sister only
daughter two syndrome and probably a few
other ones as well um but one thing my
brother’s taught me early on was the
importance of speaking up for yourself
of using your voice to express yourself
because if you’re not speaking up for
yourself then others are speaking for
you and you’re not always going to like
so education was emphasized in our
family growing up we never took a family
vacation
we often took trips to the local library
and I loved to read we used to have
bumper stickers in our home that read
literacy begins at home and one of my
favorite books that had a really
transformative impact on me was the
autobiography of malcolm x
i read this when i was in high school
and its really one of those books that
kind of reaches inside of you it grabs
hold of everything that you think you
know and it shakes it and completely
transforms your perception and it
revolutionized my perspective on race
and politics I went on to pharmacy
school 9/11 happened when I was in first
year of pharmacy school and those
terrible tragic terror attacks helped
shape the lives moving forward for all
Americans but especially American
Muslims I remember thinking to myself as
a Muslim in America that life would
never be the same again as a Muslim
woman especially and it has not been we
saw a spike in hate crimes and bias
attacks targeting American Muslim
communities there was a blanket of
suspicion cast over American Muslim
mosques and different houses of worship
and it really led to a spike in
anti-muslim bias in 2011 the Center for
American Progress published a report if
you’re incorporated and this is really a
groundbreaking report because it
highlighted that there was actually an
Islamophobia industry within the United
States that profited off of
manufacturing fear and hatred against
the simón Muslims and when I read this
report it opened my eyes to the need as
an American Muslim to speak out and be
more visible and to push back against a
lot of the misinformation that existed
out there because just like how myself
and many of
many of you woke up every day we would
go to work earn a salary to pay our
bills there were people who were waking
up every day and their job was to spread
hatred and fear of Muslims in Hollywood
there was a dominant narrative that was
being promoted that Islam is inherently
violent that Muslims are evil and that
it’s okay to to have aggressive
unconstitutional policies targeting our
communities
there was an activist and author his
name was dr. Jack Shaheen and he
published this book that really
highlighted through thousands of films
over a thousand films that he was
cataloguing how the roles of Arabs and
Muslims were being depicted and it
really set this stereotypical image of
Arabs and Muslims being a certain a
certain way in a negative fashion a
random quick point three six second
Google search of Muslim woman would
yield hundreds of thousands of results a
woman who looked nothing like myself
nothing like the many other amazing
American Muslim woman that I knew but
very frightening figures people who you
know if we didn’t know much about Islam
and Muslims it would be very easy to be
turned off by these images and it was
frightening to me that these were at the
fingertips of the vast majority of
American Muslims who didn’t didn’t know
much about Islam and about people like
myself one of the probably most
disturbing aspects of the rise in
Islamophobia was the impact that it had
on Muslim youth we saw a spike in
faith-based bullying of Muslim children
we saw more and more children who were
struggling to reconcile their American
and Muslim aspects of their identity I
remember there was a campaign to D
stigmatize the word virgin when I was
growing up and if we saw billboards all
around the city that said virgin teacher
kid is not a dirty word and I remember I
would have conversations with Muslim
youth and I would think to myself that
it would be wonderful to have some kind
of campaign to help distinguish the word
Islam and Muslims because right now it’s
just probably the most stigmatized
racial and religious and
in the United States some of the most
common stereotypes are that Muslims take
the American Way of life or that Sharia
is taking over our country or that Islam
oppresses woman and if we don’t
understand faith it’s easy to
regurgitate what we hear in right-wing
media or in biased media outlets and the
reality couldn’t be further from the
truth
actually Assam is not new to America
it’s been part of our country since
before its founding and if we understand
the concept of Sharia we would know that
there is no place in the in the world
that we can practice Islam the way it’s
intended to then in the United States
because of the Constitution and that
Islam requires that people abide by the
laws of the land in which we reside and
so this all compelled me to take on this
journey into activism so I segue from
pharmacy and to nonprofit activism to
help dispel a lot of the misinformation
that was out there I would see fear in
the eyes of people who did not know much
about our communities and I would see
our communities that were not equipped
to be able to deal with some of the
challenges that we were facing so the
goal was really to help educate and
empower our my most my Muslim
communities to speak out against Osama
phobia but also to encourage youth to
form their own narrative and to
dismantle many of the misconceptions
that existed about our communities
there’s a powerful quote the Malcolm X
has said is credited for saying that the
media is the most powerful entity on
earth it’s powerful because it has the
power to make the innocent look guilty
and to make the guilty look innocent and
that really has the ability to control
the minds of the masses it’s a tool it’s
a powerful tool to shape public
perception and it’s millions around the
world every day get their information
about the world from news reports and
the way that these news reports are
framed has a huge role to play in
whether we have a positive or a negative
response to it and there’s actually been
studies that conducted that have been
conducted that negative portrayals of a
Simon
Muslims are actually more prevalent in
the media because they since they are
sensationalized and they get higher
ratings so it comes down to dollars and
cents and for companies for media
conglomerates and organizations that’s
what their goal is at the end of the day
they want to make money and sometimes it
really it doesn’t matter if it’s
accurate if it gets the rating
unfortunately we saw a lot of that in
the media so I started doing a lot of
media interviews it wasn’t something I
ever saw myself doing I never imagined
that I would ever be in a position where
I would be like a spokesperson for my
communities but there was a need that
was there and that’s what compelled me
to come outside of my shell and I
remember one time I was about to go onto
CNN and I was sitting in the green room
and there was this really sweet lady who
was in the room with me and she comes up
to me and we struck up a conversation we
had this great conversation going and
just before I was about to go on she
comes up to me and she like taps my arm
and she’s like oh you speak perfect
English and I’m like really I actually
speak bottom orys and for those of you
who are native to Baltimore you know
what I’m talking about
but there is this idea that people who
are Muslim or foreign and cannot speak
English or cannot be native to the
cities in our country I had the
opportunity to sit in on President
Obama’s historic u.s. mosque visit in
2016 and this was really a
groundbreaking moment for many American
Muslims because especially in the face
of so much Islamophobia it sent a strong
message that Muslims have a place in our
country and especially for the American
Muslims who are indigenous to our
country in the sense that their families
have been here for centuries this is
really something that you know many
communities have struggled with over
time and I remember a couple days after
the mosque visit I got a phone call from
a mother who had a fourth-grade son in
public school and she was in tears
and she said to me that her son came
home from school
the day after if the President President
Obama visited a mosque and she said that
he told her that for the first time he
stood up for the Pledge of Allegiance in
class for the first time her
fourth-grade son stood up for the Pledge
of Allegiance because he felt after
seeing his president attend of Alger
visit a mosque he felt American enough
in his identity to be able to stand for
the Pledge of Allegiance after the 2016
presidential election we saw a spike in
hate crimes and bias attacks targeting
our communities I received several calls
from young woman who were college
students across Maryland and they had
either physically or been assaulted or
they’ve been verbally assaulted and had
their head scarves or hips pulled off
and so a lot of people were asking me
should I take off my headscarf and the
idea that any woman would ever feel
afraid because of the way that she is
dressed was unacceptable
whether she wears a headscarf or whether
she doesn’t whether she wants to walk
around wearing a bikini or whether she
wants to walk around fully dressed
that’s the woman’s decision but the idea
that there were so many young girls and
woman who were afraid compelled us to
begin offering self-defense workshops
and the idea was to empower young woman
regardless of their religion regardless
of their identity to feel confident in
their identity to be able to walk
outside in public and not feel like they
have to change who they are or the way
that they dress because of how other
people are acting so these actually
became more popular than we’d imagined
there the response was pretty
overwhelmingly positive and one day I
got a phone call from Vogue and they
were interested in reporting on how
American Muslim woman were pushing back
against Islamophobia so they actually
did this feature story on Muslim women
in Maryland it was pretty exciting I got
to tell my mom hey I’m in vogue I never
imagined myself as a Muslim woman
wearing a headscarf would ever be like
in these kind of platforms but the idea
was really to highlight the the
wonderful young woman who had so much
potential to really kind of push back
against the fear the fear mongering and
the bigotry and to take ownership of
their identity
and not be afraid to highlight their
voices and center their voices since the
election I had many woman who have since
then struggled with the idea of how they
should reconcile their identities and
you know my message is very simple and
very clear in times of crisis we have a
choice we have a choice of whether we’re
going to allow fear to divide us and
change who we are or we have a choice to
push back against that fear inform
ourselves and encourage others to be
more informed and be more United than
ever before the Newton’s first law of
motion says that an object in motion
will stay in motion until it meets with
a resisting force an object in motion
will stay in motion until it meets with
a resisting force your goals your
ambitions your passion in life is that
object and every obstacle that you’re
going to encounter is that resisting
force and you have an opportunity to
pledge to yourself to push back against
those obstacles to overcome them and to
make sure that you accomplish your goals
regardless of the pushback that you’re
receiving so my message is very simple
be unstoppable thank you [Applause]