THOUGHTS OF A SOMALI GIRL

The other day I had an epiphany.  I was downtown with my friend and we walked past this Asian bakery that had a really long line of customers waiting to get in. The smell coming out of the store was amazing! We decided to check it out and see what all the fuss was all about. We got in line and in just 5 minutes, there were 10 more people waiting in line behind us. The guy standing right behind us was actually Somali. Anyway, my friend and I were guessing what kind of Asian baked goods the store was selling and were wondering if it'd taste good. The Somali guy behind us smoothly joined our conversation. He asked "You guys haven't been in this store before have you? I haven't". And then the three of us started talking about how the long line drew our curiosity, leading to a willingness to try something new.  Anyhow! To my surprise, we had a completely normal conversation! And what made it better was that he didn't look like he had ulterior moti

Hi everyone! Thought I'd share something short today. I help out in a middle school classroom and a few days ago, one of the students in my classroom unknowingly and unintentionally made a racist remark in the skit he was performing with his partner. He was pretending to find some money he lost and said "I'm going to go to a Black person's house, Black people steal".  I was so caught off-guard, I just stared at him and covered my mouth while the 15 Black students (same race but different ethnic backgrounds - duh!) in the class yelled out "Racist! Racist!" and "Yo what hell" and "I'm so shocked". The poor kid just stood there awkwardly smiling. He didn't seem to understand what he'd just said. The substitute teacher, who was Black, immediately took charge of the situation and began a lesson on stereotypes and racism for the whole class and explained to the student (who was not Black) that race has nothing to

Hi everyone! I haven't written anything in a while...school has been keeping me busy! It's my last year of undergraduate studies. Pray for me y'all! :) Anyway, this post is not advice for what brides should do on their wedding night. I want to talk about a serious problem in the Muslim community that disturbs me. A lot of Muslim girls believe that even if they were scared or nervous, they cannot refuse to have sex with their husbands on their wedding night because of the hadeeth that says a woman will be cursed by the angels until morning if she refuses. Instead of telling their new husbands they want to take things slowly, girls are resorting to some sort of patch that they stick on their arm that prevents their menstruation cycle from coming. Then, they take it off before their nikaah so that their period comes on their wedding day and then ta-da!! They have a “legitimate” reason to avoid having sex on their wedding night.   Others, force themselves to have sex