by HAJER NAILI
Rabha Chatar is scared to walk alone in a big city like this. “I am afraid that I could be attacked, especially if I am with my children,” she said.
Chatar, 40, who spoke with Women’s eNews in a phone interview in September, lives in the small village of Meru, in the Picardie region of France, with her three children and husband. But her fear isn’t that of a small-town person in a big metropolis. It’s due to her custom of covering her hair with a hijab, part of her way of practicing her Muslim faith.
In her town, Chatar feels that her neighbors both know and accept her. But the stories of Muslim women in big cities getting singled out for hate crimes scare her.
Workers at the Paris Opera recently drew international headlines by ejecting a woman wearing a full face veil, or niqab, which Paris outlawed in 2011. But Chatar’s fears are not about the niqab, which she doesn’t wear. All she wears is a head covering.
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