WASHINGTON – Would you accept a challenge to experience life in another person’s shoes?
Recently, more than 100 students at the University of Maryland did just that during an event called “Undercover as a Muslim Woman.”
But instead of shoes, they wore hijabs.
Felicia Davenport is one of the students who took part in the social experiment. Davenport is a Christian, but for 12 hours she dressed as a Muslim woman.
“It wasn’t as uncomfortable as I thought it was going to be,” she says. “It actually started to feel really nice.”
Students from all backgrounds wore the traditional headscarf for an entire day to experience life behind the veil.
The University of Maryland daily student paper, the Diamondback, reports the event was organized by Muslim Women of Maryland member Sarah Mostafa, along with members of Community Roots, the Sisterhood of Unity and Love and the Nyumburu Cultural Center.
Davenport says one of her professors did not recognize her.
“He asked me if I was in the correct class and then after he looked at me, he realized who I was,” she says.
In Islam, the hijab represents modesty, privacy, and morality.
“There was a sense of community between all of the women wearing the hijab,” Davenport says. “You just felt really connected.”
She says from the experience she has learned not to judge others so quickly.
“We are similar. We just do things a little different. But it’s still OK,” she says.
Davenport says she grew so close to other Muslim students during the experience and they felt like sisters.
“I’m not a Muslim woman. I’m a Christian woman, and the idea of modesty I feel like plays out in a lot of religious beliefs but they just manifest differently,” she says.
WTOP’s Jamie Forzato contributed to this report. Follow WTOP on Twitter.
(Copyright 2011 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)
