By MM News
Minnesota (USA ): Halima Aden, a 19-year-old Somali-American became the first woman competitor in the Miss Minnesota USA Pageant to wear a Hijab..
This bold initiative taken by the young St. Cloud State University student is an attempt to challenge fast spreading Islamophobia and change long standing perception of beauty.
“A lot of people will look at you and will fail to see your beauty because you’re covered up and they’re not used to it. So growing up, I just had to work on my people skills and give people a chance to really know me besides the clothing,” she said in an interview with KARE-11.
She said that she saw her role in the pageant as a way of offering an alternative to Western beauty ideals.
Aden is a Somali-American and was born in a refugee camp in Kenya. When she entered the competition her objective was not to win the title but to combat racist stereotyping of Muslims.
Her far from ordinary pursuit becomes even more significant in a time when USA has elected a persistently racist and Islamophobic Donald Trumph as President and attacks on Hijab clad women have registered a steep surge in the country.
“The people that are doing bad things, they don’t represent an entire group,” Aden said. “I feel like I’m here to bust those misconceptions and stereotypes of Muslim women” she told reporters.
“What I wanted to do was to just give people a different perspective,” she told MPR. “We just needed one more thing to unify us. This is a small act, but I feel like having the title of Miss Minnesota USA when you are Somali-American, when you are a Muslim woman, I think that would open up people’s eyes.”
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The very idea of beauty contests is against Islam. Why should someone take the pretext of beauty contests to explain Islam and its tenets is beyond cognition.