Djamila
Bosnjakinja
What, for you, is the most annoying misconception about your faith?
I don't really know where to begin. I suppose the most annoying misconception about Islam, to me, is that it hasn't played as significant a role as it did in the development of the world. So much, in terms of architecture, music, dance, and so on - styles found universally around the globe - owe their roots to Islam. So much science and literature, so many aspects of modern civilization.
It really saddens me that students in Paris, for example, learn about European inventors while students in Bosnia learn about the Arabs and Persians who invented the same things often centuries earlier. This misconception of world history, I think, also plays a role in the rare but present misconception that all Muslims are terrorists today.
Another misconception that bothers me relates to Muslim women. I am frustrated with the Arab world's implementation of scripture in countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, and frustrated with non-Muslim misconceptions about Muslim women. I notice when I'm in Norway that if I'm wearing a veil, people speak more slowly to me as though they somehow have this belief that I am stupid. It's not a mean thing, they're still extraordinarily polite, but still they speak as though they're talking to a child - and its not because I'm Bosnian, it never happens when I don't wear a veil.
Those would be it for me.
What's it for you?
I don't really know where to begin. I suppose the most annoying misconception about Islam, to me, is that it hasn't played as significant a role as it did in the development of the world. So much, in terms of architecture, music, dance, and so on - styles found universally around the globe - owe their roots to Islam. So much science and literature, so many aspects of modern civilization.
It really saddens me that students in Paris, for example, learn about European inventors while students in Bosnia learn about the Arabs and Persians who invented the same things often centuries earlier. This misconception of world history, I think, also plays a role in the rare but present misconception that all Muslims are terrorists today.
Another misconception that bothers me relates to Muslim women. I am frustrated with the Arab world's implementation of scripture in countries like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, and frustrated with non-Muslim misconceptions about Muslim women. I notice when I'm in Norway that if I'm wearing a veil, people speak more slowly to me as though they somehow have this belief that I am stupid. It's not a mean thing, they're still extraordinarily polite, but still they speak as though they're talking to a child - and its not because I'm Bosnian, it never happens when I don't wear a veil.
Those would be it for me.
What's it for you?
