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Girl Spends Day as a Niqaabi
sofia
03/23/02 at 08:56:34
GOING UNDERCOVER TO EXPOSE THE HORROR OF HATRED
By LEWIS W. DIUGUID, The Kansas City Star, 3/20/2002
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascitystar/news/opinion/2900228.htm

EMPORIA, Kan. - Kaila Williams has felt the hatred and bigotry that Muslims have experienced since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

That sentiment didn't receive much attention in the coverage commemorating the six months that have passed since the national tragedy. But the hatred unleashed toward Muslims and Arab-Americans has been a national horror, too.

Kaila, 17, is the opinions editor for The Echo, the newspaper at Emporia High School in this city of 26,760 persons about 115 miles southwest of Kansas City. After some Muslim students reported being harassed, Kaila decided to investigate.

She darkened her skin with Revlon makeup and put on an olive-colored jilbab. The robelike garment covered her so that only her eyes and part of her nose were visible.

Then the 5-foot 6-inch teen walked through the Wal-Mart Supercenter about a half-mile from her school. She described people's reactions in a Nov. 16, front-page, first-person story in The Echo.

The Emporia Gazette did a Nov. 21 front page article on Kaila's experience. It ran in other newspapers and generated letters to Kaila from as far away as England.

Many people were touched and said she bravely got folks to see how badly they were treating their neighbors. One Muslim girl said the story made her cry. She didn't think others could understand...

In the store a couple of persons were friendly. But "most either stared or backed away in fear," including people Kaila knew from Flint Hills Christian Church, where she worships.

She wrote in her article that one woman said, "We don't need none of that here!" A man "glared at me as I passed. Fear knotted in my chest as I looked into his hard, cold eyes, for the first time seeing raw, undisguised hatred; it was directed at me."

Another woman said, "Damned foreigners!"...

Kaila learned that hatred and prejudice remain problems in America. "These are still things that we need to realize that we need to work on," she said.



NS


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