Sisterhood, religion, and other thoughts

This is another one of those posts that I'm sure will make some of you angry (or irritated or something) and some of you happy...so here we go...

As most of you readers know, I work at a public high school in a suburb of Denver.  The school was opened in 1978, in a (at that time) a primarily white middle class neighborhood.  Over the years, the population of the neighborhood, and therefore the school, have changed substantially.  When I arrived there in 2002, our population was probably about 50% White, 25% Black, 20% Latino-a few other groups represented, but not in any great number.  Most of the black and white students at that time had a long history of life in America.  Some of the Latino students were immigrants, many were also at least 2nd or 3rd generation American citizens.  In probably the last 5-6 years, our population has changed greatly again.  According to schooldigger.com, we currently have a population of about 40%  Black, 40% Hispanic, and 25% White.  What those statistics don't tell is the number of our students who are recent immigrants or children of immigrants. We have also become a school of immigrants-many of our students arriving at our school within weeks, sometimes days, of leaving their homeland or a refugee camp they stayed at first.  I have heard an estimate that we have about 55 different native languages spoken by our students.  Some of our students come from war torn nations and have seen and heard things I wouldn't want anyone, let alone a child, witness.  Some of our students come from peaceful nations, some were rich, some were poor...some attended schools very much like US schools (or even more rigorous), some have never been in a classroom. A increasing number of our students are first, second, or third generation immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, many of whom are Muslim or have a family connection to Islam.  Two years ago, my office mate, a devout practicing Muslim, was hired as as special education teacher.  Besides being one of the best teachers I've ever known, she is also an amazing woman of faith.  We giggled for an hour one morning when we both were huddled over our computers reading personal email...and realized we were both reading our "verse of the day" (hers from the Koran, mine from the Bible, ironically, both verses related to patience, I think, that day).

Now, where am I going with this, you may ask? One of our earliest conversations as office mates was about 9/11.  On 9/11/01 my office mate was living in Brooklyn. As we chatted, she described  the horror of that day and the days that followed--as an American, as the wife  of an American Air Force member, as a mother, and as a Muslim woman who commonly covered or "wore hijab".  She described how, growing up as the daughter of a Department of Defense employee, she has lived all over the world and never been afraid to cover...and in the days after 9/11 she took it off.  An American woman, in America, was afraid to wear a symbol of her religion because of how others treated her.  I was speechless. I shouldn't have been. But I was.  Regardless of how you feel about Islam...this is America and the right to practice your religion peacefully is protected by the Constitution.  Yet peace-loving women here felt afraid to wear a symbol of their modesty.

Enter World Hijab Day...  "Better Understanding...Greater Understanding....Peaceful World".  The young women of our Muslim student association advertised this day and asked both Muslim women who don't usually cover and non-Muslim women to participate in wearing hijab for the day.  Before the day I read a lot of the literature on the website (link above) and had a lot of discussions with my students and my office mates--learning more about the purpose of "covering".  Just as it is for Orthodox Jewish women, Coptic Christians, and certainly the Amish and Mennonites, covering is not a sign of submission, but rather a sign of modesty.  Of not being a show off and of showing that a women's beauty is does not make her an object.  Initially, I was concerned that it would seem disrespectful for non-Muslim women to wear hijab, but the many articles and discussions helped me understand that the purpose is to support each other--regardless of religion--in our roles as women all over the world.  I'm not actually sure how many of us participated at my school today, but I know there were a lot of smiles as many of us turned corners and discovered each other. There were some surprises...one of my co-workers made a couple comments that surprised me in their intolerance--one was essentially that "people who look like you (me) don't wear things like that".  I actually found words relatively quickly and replied that I'm pretty sure that my Austrian/Swiss (probably Jewish) ancestors, as well as my husbands' Catholic ancestors quite often wore head scarves "back in the day"--that I was not wearing hijab to support Islam, or the choices of radical Muslims, but rather I was wearing a head scarf to support my sisters around the world who are afraid to announce their religion for fear of recognition and retaliation for crimes they didn't commit and don't support. The highlight of my day was when one of our teaching assistants, a young Muslim man, stopped me and told me how much he appreciates support of the Christian staff and students in the form of our one day covering.  It is cheesy to say, but I was really touched and thankful that I was able to provide him with joy today.  I also enjoyed "my girls" fussing over my scarf and listening to them talk among themselves about the best way to tie a scarf (there are so many different ways, for so many reasons, ranging from teenage rebellion to regional to how strict the family or mosque is).

At the end of this day, I am thankful that I had an opportunity to walk in someone else's shoes for a short while.  I am grateful, that as a Christian woman in America, I haven't ever experienced true persecution, that I am free to worship and practice my religion as I please.  It reminds me that we still have room to grow as human beings--as it points out in the Bible, it is not our job to judge--we are to share our faith and love people--not persecute them (do unto others...).  And, again, I am so proud of my students, for the support they give each other and the hope they give me for the peaceful future of our world.