Middle school tests Va. Muslim girl's decision to wear head scarf - washingtonpost.com: ... Eight years later -- even as the Muslim population in the United States has soared to as many as 7 million -- it still can take real courage for a girl to put on a head scarf and venture into a public middle or high school.
"Young boys go to school, and nobody knows they are Muslim, but young girls, with a scarf on their head, it shows clearly that she made a decision to stand out as a Muslim," says Mohamed Magid, the imam at ADAMS. "They suddenly become ambassadors of Islam."
Smar didn't embrace that role until her mother took her and her younger siblings to Egypt this past summer to visit family. Smar noticed immediately that all the women and girls there wore hijab. People stared at Smar's shoulder-length dark hair.
"It felt awkward," she says. "I felt so left out."
She decided to try wearing a head scarf. Her aunt, who lives in Cairo, showed her different styles: double layers of color that frame the face, tight cloth that gathers at the neck or blooms into a floret behind one ear. Smar returned to Virginia in early September with a rainbow assortment of scarves and a changed attitude.
She had grown used to wearing what she calls "my badge of faith." It was new and exciting, and it made her feel, she says, "modest and confident at the same time."
