Heraa Hashmi, a Muslim American teenager, was sick of stereotypes of Muslims being passive in the face of acts of violence carried out in the name of their religion.
Last November, the 19-year-old, who is a student of molecular biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, was so irritated that she shared a list on Twitter of every instance she could find of Muslims condemning attacks. Since then her tweet has been shared over 18,000 times and won international attention.
classmate: why dont muslims condemn things
me: *goes home makes 712 page long list of Muslims Condemning Things with sources*
me: fight me pic.twitter.com/sDhwUMIAK1
Hashmi speaks with TRT World about what she hoped to achieve, and how she feels about the place of Muslim women in US society.
What led you to compile a 712-page document of Muslims condemning stuff and post it on Twitter?
HERAA HASHMI: It all started from an argument that I had in class. This was a history class and we were discussing violence as it pertains to religion and, obviously, the topic of terrorism and Islam came up. There was a student who believed that Muslims were inherently not peaceful and that we supported terrorist attacks and we remained silent in those times, because we supported the terrorists. And I said that’s not true, we are always speaking to our communities about how it’s wrong. He didn’t believe me, so I went home very frustrated.
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