We were sitting in front of our lockers, eating our lunch, when my friend Katherine started talking about the unit on Islam they had just started in her World Religions class. We were in 12th grade, 8 months from graduating high school. “Noha, it’s awful. The textbook has chapters and chapters on Christianity, and then the parts about Islam are so wrong. Nothing like what you’ve told me.”
Katherine, my best friend since 9th grade, had been over to my observant Muslim household many times. She’d waited outside the guidance counselor’s office while I prayed, heard me say my dua at lunch, watched me rewrap my hijab in the girls’ washroom. It was 1998 and we didn’t have the words for Islamophobia yet, but she knew the textbook had flattened my identity and beliefs.
“You should talk to Mr. Rayburn. You could come and talk to the class about Islam instead, since the textbook is so bad.” The next day, we walked to the World Religions classroom and had a chat with Mr. Rayburn. He was welcomin…
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