Thank YOU to the brilliant @imankzfilm for this Instagram post on "Microaggressions towards Muslim women" I sadly relate to so many of these statements. Thread with my commentary.

This tends to be said in a "compliment" manner but it's far from a compliment. I've also been asked "How come you don't have an accent?"

I haven't been told that one (as I'm hijabi) but when I first moved to the UK, I was constantly asked if I'm Pakistani. It seemed to me that a large number of people only knew Pakistani hijabis and thought any hijabi is Pakistani.

Tying Muslim women to oppression is unfortunately a common ideology. I always wonder if I'm labeled in job interviews and in the workplace and what my role/salary could have potentially reached if I wasn't a Muslim woman.

When people meet my husband, there's no assumption about who he is or where he's from. When they meet me with my husband, we then get labelled as the Muslim couple, the immigrants, the foreigners.

Sadly, I've been told this statement by none other than Muslim women. I've been told that I should at least consider not wearing my scarf too tight, that I should simply wrap it as a turban. I've been given advice that I didn't ask for.

Being a woman...a Muslim woman...a hijabi Muslim one: I have to be loud and assertive and I need to work so hard to be taken seriously.

I don't talk about this often, I was called a towel head before (2013), a man lit a cigarette and threw it on my scarf (2015) and a few French colleagues didn't speak to me the week after a terrorist attack happened in France (2016). It's sad, it's scary and it's not okay.