Gabriela Diaz / Arizona Sonora News Service
Heba Albasha, a UA medical student, said she welcomes all the “hijab questions” she receives on campus.
The stakes were high and her nerves were shot — the start of fifth grade was serious business. As she ran around her house collecting pencils and notebooks, the veil she clenched in her hands was making her particularly apprehensive.
“I had no idea how to wear it,” she said laughing, recalling how her classmates eventually helped her.
In Arizona, where Muslims compose a fragment of the population, being a religious minority can heighten the pressure of deciding whether to wear the hijab.
“When Islamaphobia plays out on the ground level, what typically happens is that it affects Muslim women more directly because they’re easily identifiable as Muslim,” he said.
“He walked by me and said, ‘You bleeping terrorist,’” she recalled. “I let it go … but it shocked me because I’d never experienced that before.”
In terms of her “hijab calculus,” parental pressure was not a variable. In fact, Noyes’ mother, and most women in her father’s extended family, choose not to the wear the veil.
Victoria Trull, an attorney, has also faced challenges wearing the hijab, though generally, the problems have come from other Muslims.
The next month, she traveled to Egypt, where she wore the veil.
“I was reduced to what fabric was on my head, how I wore it and how long it was,” she said. “I came into Islam on an intellectual level, in that I studied it. And I know that all the junk I’m going through … is not what my religion is.”
At the UA, Heba Albasha, a medical student, said she’s never faced discrimination on campus and that she welcomes the curious questions she receives from classmates on a regular basis.
Albasha said the constant looks from strangers and feeling as though people assume she’s an ambassador for the other 1.5 billion Muslims does get overwhelming, but that she welcomes the pressure.
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