World Hijab Day is celebrated February 1 and was created by New York resident Nazma Khan to foster religious tolerance and understanding by inviting women (non-Hijabi Muslims and non-Muslims) to experience the hijab for one day. Her intention was to counteract some of the controversies surrounding why Muslim women choose to wear the hijab.
Arriving in the U.S. from Bangladesh at age 11, she remembers her experience as the only young woman wearing a hijab in her middle school.
“Growing up in the Bronx, in NYC, I experienced a great deal of discrimination due to my hijab,” she says. “In middle school, I was ‘Batman’ or ‘ninja’. When I entered university after 9/11, I was called Osama bin Laden or terrorist. It was awful. I figured the only way to end discrimination is if we ask our fellow sisters to experience hijab themselves.”
According to the World Hijab Day website, (WHD) now has thousands of volunteers worldwide and more than 70 WHD Ambassadors from over 45 countries. In 2016, 150 countries participated in WHD, which has been endorsed by scholars, politicians, and celebrities and has been covered by The New York Times, BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera and Huffington Post. Time magazine has listed World Hijab Day in their world calendar.
