You know when people are like, "Do Muslim women have hair under?"
I'm like "No, we don't."
Plot twist, it goes somewhere secret.
Plot twist, there's actually no hair!
Oh my god.
I don't know how I'm going to start this.
I just wanted to come on here and speak because I felt like I had to.
Let me just address, yes, my head is covered.
I am Muslim if you guys know that, but my channel is for everyone.
We're in for a ride.
We just have to stay strong.
Bye guys.
I feel like people just refuse to believe that I'm a normal girl.
I started wearing the hijab almost two years ago.
I was going through a lot, I was really confused at the time and I really turned to my religion.
Before I started wearing the hijab, I was actually a natural hair blogger.
Even prior to wearing the hijab I was always a bit hesitant because I knew a lot of my
followers weren't Muslim, and now I'm like it's like a part of me, so why would I hide that?
Today I just want to share how I maneuver as a black Muslim woman in Los Angeles.
I'm going to meet with my good friend Neelam and we're going to chat about our shared experiences
being Muslim women, and we're going to do it over a manicure.
These ones are halal. Halal means that it's breathable and it's vegan.
I'm gonna do white.
Okay, cheers.
Let's go before I change my mind.
Nail polish cheers.
Cheers.
So how are you loving L.A?
I'm obsessed with L.A. I feel like I turned into a Cali girl so fast.
I mean it's obviously different from Minnesota.
Like I came here and it was such a culture shock.
Speaking of Minnesota like I was just there.
You're were just there, yeah.
And one of the number one things that was
shocking to me is to go anyplace and see a hijabi, a group of hijabis.
And I was just like "whoa."
Like coming from L.A. you don't see that.
So I understand the culture shock.
Yes.
I don't know if I ever told you this story but I was sitting at Earth Cafe with a couple
of my friends and we were — it was like we were caged animals.
It was the wildest thing ever.
Like, we were just sitting, enjoying my avocado toast like always and this girl was staring
at me from one side and then I see this other girl is staring.
I see firefighters in uniform just completely staring at us.
You know I just recently started wearing the hijab just only what like a year ago.
The transition to like okay I'm going into modest fashion and wearing my hijab.
You know, I feel like it's been positive.
L.A is Like a melting pot of people from everywhere.
I feel like they're really open out here.
So it's not like I haven't really gotten any backlash, but I have you know,
Yeah, it's not like hate.
seen the stares.
It's not hate, there's no...
Thank god I haven't experienced that.
Like pure Islamophobia, just like pure hatred or anything like that.
Nothing like that.
I remember being in this restaurant and this guy brought me my food and he was like Bismillah.
And then after he was like Alhamdulillah and I was just like that's cute that you like
just like went out of your way to just like
Aw.
No, no I love that.
It's nice that you like went out of your way to go hey like I see you and I respect you
and I appreciate it.
And it is the sweetest thing ever.
Now that I have my halal manicure I thought it could be fun to chat about the art of
henna.
Nadia is a makeup and henna artist.
We're going to chat about Muslim women, as well as get my henna done.
I love henna so much I've always really, really loved it and I've always been so proud of
it.
So do you like examine people's hands before you start?
I do, I do.
I have to to figure out what's the best way to make your hand look attractive and so with your hand I
think we're going to concentrate on the majority of the design traveling from this end down
your index finger and like basically covering this part and giving you some like drapes
down here.
So right now we're doing black henna because I know for me it's culturally what Sudanese
people do.
The color of this henna is black because it's mixed with jagua.
Jagua on its own will color like the stain looks like a tattoo.
For a lot of Indians and Pakistanis there is a — there's a thing that a bride has to hide
her groom's name in her henna.
Back in the day, brides didn't know their grooms and so here you're married to a stranger
and it's your wedding night, so as an icebreaker he has to find his name in your henna.
But what brides are doing nowadays is they're not hiding the name, they're making it
very prominent.
Interesting.
Henna has cooling agents in it.
In Africa, henna is not used as much for decoration purposes.
You know women tend to do it on their bellies too when they're pregnant because it helps
cool their bodies.
I love that.
I think I'm done.
I love it.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome!
I really appreciate it.
It felt really wonderful to get my henna done, and I love the design, but now it's time to
talk about something really dear to my heart: the hijab.
I think a lot of the stigma surrounding the hijab stems from a lack of understanding about
Islam.
I'm headed over to see my friend Marya who runs a hijab company.
It's so cool to me how there's so many different ways to wear the hijab.
How does your family typically wear it?
Well what's interesting is because you know my mom is Mexican.
Yeah.
And she's a convert to Islam, born and raised in America, so she never had like a culture
that practices the concept of hijab.
She would wear the one pieces.
And so when I became ready to wear the hijab I could not relate to that.
So what my mom told me to do she inspired me she said let's go to Joanne's, get fabric,
and sew your own scarves.
It's hard when people only talk about the negative aspects of it because of course that
comes with it inevitably, but they focus so much on that.
So I think about like the future.
Do you get nervous at all, or...?
I'm nervous but I'm more optimistic and more excited than anything.
That my fear, I'll be honest with you, stems from the fact that I'm a Mexican-Arab-Muslim.
I was in liberal Santa Monica sitting outside of a very well-known cafe reading a book and
a guy comes over, passes by me, and just stops in his place and goes, "How could you let
her sit here?
Does anybody see this? Nobody go over there.
Don't you see that there is a dumb Arab bitch."
I literally said a prayer and he threw the table that I was on towards me. Thankfully
didn't hit me, but I'll be honest with you, aside from that being really scary and
he kind of ran off after that, the scarier thing was that there were two elderly white
women who was sitting next to me and they didn't say anything.
But it was things like that that made me realize like this is 2018, I'm an educated, you know,
self-sufficient working woman.
You know, I happened to be of mixed background and outwardly Muslim but like why is this
happening?
You know what I'm saying?
It should never happen.
So that's why I say like I do have a bit of fear and the fear kind of gets channeled into
an engine running for me to make sure that the future is better for my children.
I'm a first generation American.
So for me it's really important that my kids are able to take the best of their Sudanese
culture and the best of their American culture and obviously have Islam and they are able
to shape their narrative and what it really truly means to be, you know, American Muslim.
A lot of the Muslim women that we see in social media have to do with beauty and fashion, and I
think that's great, that's a step, but there's also Muslim women who are doing other things
that are so incredible, that aren't getting the recognition.
So when I think about the future, I want them to get the recognition as well.
You know?
And I think right now we're shaping it, there's so much representation but I'm just so excited.
There's so much stigma and negativity surrounded around how people perceive the hijab because
that's what's in the media. And you can't necessarily blame people for what they've been fed.
But you can blame people for not wanting to understand.
It's really sad to know that people might judge me because of my religion.
And I think that comes from a lack of knowledge and a lack of empathy.
But at the end of the day I'm really proud of my religion and I'm not afraid to show
it.
I am truly hopeful that if we make the effort to share our stories we can break stereotypes
and focus on living in a world where we can all belong.
Thank you so much for watching.
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