From Chicago Sun-Times
by Francine Knowles
A Muslim woman’s effort to deal with Chicago’s brutal cold by covering her head with warm winter gear — inadvertently concealing her hijab — produced unanticipated and thought-provoking results.
Leena Suleiman’s online posting about her experience — which included suddenly getting more friendly treatment from non-Muslims and getting the cold shoulder by members of her faith — was among the top stories Monday morning on website Reddit.com’s TrueReddit and Chicago Reddit.
“I didn’t understand what was happening at first,” Suleiman, 25, who works as an architectural designer downtown, said in a post titled “I Took Off My Hijab,” on her blog, Facetruth, at http://bit.ly/1lza4tH.
Non-Muslim “people started talking to me more. Women would speak to me like I knew them since forever. Men looked at me like I was actually approachable. And I was made to feel like I was actually from this planet,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, Muslim taxi drivers, who previously typically greeted her warmly and on occasion wouldn’t even let her pay, were far less friendly.
