The student who inspired a Wheaton College professor to wear a hijab in solidarity with Muslims has mobilized nearly a dozen others to wear the traditional Muslim headscarf on their flights home for Christmas.
Karly Bothman, 20, of Eugene, Ore., said the lessons she learned this fall from Larycia Hawkins, the political science professor suspended this week for proclaiming that Muslims and Christians worship the same God, have inspired her to fight for those who are oppressed, including refugees and her Muslim neighbors.
The movement is not intended as a show of solidarity with Hawkins, Bothman said, but an attempt to bolster the original purpose of the professor’s symbolic gesture.
“It’s trying to refocus what she was trying to carry out in the pursuit of justice for our Muslim neighbors,” Bothman said.
On Dec. 10, Hawkins, a tenured professor, announced on Facebook that she would don the hijab to show support for Muslims who have been under scrutiny since mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif.
“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,” she wrote in her Facebook post. “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”
Though the college did not take a position on her wearing the hijab, some evangelical Christians said her statement should have spelled out what makes Christianity distinct from Islam. Not doing so put her in conflict with the statement of faith that all Wheaton faculty must sign and live out, they said. The college placed her on administrative leave, pending a review.
Hawkins, 43, said she affirms the college’s statement of faith and was simply reiterating that there is common ground among the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths, which many theologians have said for centuries. She already has submitted a theological statement requested by the college as part of her review.
“I am committed to engaging in dialogue with appropriate colleagues at Wheaton toward the goal of reaching reconciliation so that I may continue to live out my vocation as a Christian scholar and teacher with my faculty colleagues and my remarkable students,” Hawkins said in a statement Thursday.
The suspension, expected to last through the spring semester, sparked protests on the campus from students, calling for Hawkins’ reinstatement and an apology from the college.
Protest leaders said they are expecting the school to post on its website a video of college President Philip Ryken and Provost Stan Jones responding to students’ questions and concerns.
Hawkins decided to wear the hijab after Bothman shared her idea for wearing them on flights home. Hawkins also planned to wear her hijab on a flight home to Oklahoma, where non-Muslim terrorists bombed a federal building in 1995 and where voters overwhelmingly approved a ban on Shariah, or Islamic law, in 2010.
Bothman and other women flying home for the holidays will wear the headscarf all day, in the airports and on the airplane. She said airports seemed like the appropriate venue because of the increased vulnerability Muslims feel when they travel.
“There will definitely be aspects that will be uncomfortable for us,” she said. “We’re trying to stand against Islamophobia and seek justice in that regard, so I think that airports are a place where that is maybe more visible.”
Prior to her decision, Hawkins sought the advice of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations to ensure she wouldn’t offend Muslims. The council also provided advice on what veiled women should expect when going through airport security.
“It is an act of human solidarity meant to be rooted in the Christian ideal of compassion — to stand with American Muslims who are the victims of this current backlash of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry,” said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of CAIR’s Chicago chapter. “We are grateful to Karly and her classmates for standing in solidarity with Muslims and admire the courage and compassion that act takes in the current climate.”
Inspired by Hawkins, Tramaine Kaleebu, 19, a student of Hawkins’, has been wearing a hijab since Tuesday.
“The minute I saw the pictures I felt convicted,” she said. “It’s so rare to see solidarity with other religions, let alone Islam.”
When she flew home to the Washington, D.C., area Friday, she noted being patted down and searched more than usual. She wasn’t harassed, but she did perceive a difference.
“It breaks my heart,” Kaleebu said, “that a person’s choice to embody their faith is a freedom of expression that can bring them reprimand and undue harassment.”