Scared of the scarf

When I was in Morocco for about a month in 1981, I learned not to speak to the women there — especially women who wear the head covering called the hijab. Maybe it was because I was a stranger, but I had some vague notion that religious Muslim women were not allowed to talk to men who weren't their relatives. This wasn't just on the street. I stayed with a family in Rabat and all communication with women went through the man of the house.

I carried that feeling with me for many years, avoiding speaking to women in hijab. I thought they didn't want to talk to me, and I respected that. Then, a couple of years ago, on a school trip with my daughter, I found myself sitting at a table with a group of people directly across from a woman wearing the head scarf. After being uneasy for a while I told her that I was having a hard time talking to her and recounted my Morocco experience.

She found my attitude amusing and told me that she was born and raised in the United States, and had chosen to wear the hijab as an adult. She also told me there was no reason not to talk to her.

Since then, I've been making the effort to speak when I find myself around women in hijab. Recently, I was picking up some takeout from my favorite Arabic restaurant in Dearborn. The middle-aged woman at the cash register — there is usually an older man there — was wearing the hijab. After we finished our transaction I said "shukran" — the Arabic word for thank you. She replied, "I was born here. You can speak English to me."

We chatted for a few moments. Something I wouldn't have done in the past.

"I think it's great that you told that woman that you were uncomfortable," says Zeinab Chami, a 26-year-old graduate student at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. "That is a really good point to start a dialogue. Sometimes people are surprised when women who wear the headscarf are friendly. People just see the headscarf as something foreign. It's not foreign; it's organic. That's part of this country's freedom of religion."

Chami was born here, and didn't start wearing the hijab until she was 20 years old. When she changed the way she dressed, it didn't make much difference to the people she knew. But strangers approached her differently.

"People started making assumptions," she says. "The first question I get is, 'Do you speak English?' Or, 'Where are you from?' I don't get offended. I find it interesting."

Chami is from Dearborn, which has one of the largest Arabic communities outside of the Middle East. Dearborn has been getting a lot of scrutiny since 9/11, and recent Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle put the spotlight on Dearborn again when she claimed that sharia (Islamic law) was taking over in Dearborn.

"I laugh at that just because it's so ridiculous," Chami says. "The best way to combat this is by educating ourselves. The truth has a domino effect. It's really the best that we can do. You also have to look at who's saying that. Sharron Angle knows nothing about us." Then Chami pulls out the trump card with a tone of self-satisfaction. "She lost the election."

> Email Larry Gabriel