However, it has been regularly bashed and labeled by much of western society as a “terrorist scarf” which insinuates that those who wear it are akin to supporters of terrorism. Coffeehouse and donut company Dunkin’ Donuts demonstrated this when they pulled an ad of Rachel Ray wearing a scarf that resembled the Keffiyeh. Critics claimed that the keffiyeh was “the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad.” Prominent publications were even questioning whether Ray was a terrorist sympathizer herself. Although Dunkin’ Donuts removed the ad after buckling under the pressure, Palestinians, and those who stand in solidarity with them, are still heavily stigmatized when wearing the symbol of support and resistance. We are given dirty looks when we wear these items and people accuse us of spreading hatred or even being terrorists ourselves. On my campus, a middle-aged male professor approached me, along with four other Palestinian women wearing the Keffiyeh, and said “don’t shoot me.” We are typically expecting this sort of language when attending peaceful rallies or protests, yet as Palestinians we also face this in our learning environment, the one place we mistakenly thought we were supposed to be safe. Instead of recognizing that we wear the scarf to support the Palestinians who were uprooted and expelled from their homes, and Palestinians that continue to struggle to this very day from apartheid, siege, blockade, and countless instances of human rights violations, we are simply vilified using one extreme word that our movement continuously suffers from ‘terrorist’. Western media has continuously labeled it as ‘violent’ and use words like Jihad, Islamist, Hamas, and terrorist to describe something that’s very important to us.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 13:00:02 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015