DUBAI: A New Yorker is teaching Muslim women how to protect themselves against hate crimes, including a move she calls the “hijab-grab”.
Rana Abdelhamid started learning martial arts when she was just 7-years-old, her parents having enrolled her into Shotokan karate classes.
But it was when she was 15 that she experienced hate crime for the first time.
Describing the incident, she said: “I remember I was walking down the street in Queens, New York, which is actually one of the most diverse places in the world… I remember feeling a tug at the back of my hijab. A man aggressively assaulted me, trying to take off my hijab.”
She said the attack left her feeling vulnerable and insecure. But rather than dwelling on her fears, it inspired her to help other women from any future hate crimes.
“Our main goal is to be able to give Muslim women the tools to be able to confront anti-Muslim violence, gender-based violence and state-based violence,” Abdelhamid explained.
Abdelhamid teaches the classes under the banner of the International Muslim Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment, an organization she founded to run self-defense classes and to teach leadership skills.
The classes teach the women how to cope with “typical” attacks, including the shockingly common grabbing of a woman’s hijab.
“We’ve actually put together and invented, almost, a technique called the ‘hijab-grab’ technique, which is so messed up because why should we have to invent that?” she said.
She also teaches the women how to defend themselves verbally, teaching them how to shout confidently.
In one of her videos she tells her students: “I need you to go home and I need you to scream, I need you to practice, to use your voice to say ‘stop,’ to say, ‘no.’”
According to the New York Post a study from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding revealed that 42 percent of Muslim Americans report religious-based bullying.
But Abdelhamid stops short of blaming the Trump administration, saying the problem dated back long before this year.
She explained: “This sort of marginalization isn’t just a Trump administration thing,” she said. “Unfortunately, it was also happening under Obama, it was also happening under Bush, and it was happening under Clinton.”
