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How a Woman Changed My Perception on the Muslim Refugee Crisis
How working with an Iraqi woman taught me to change my perception of the Iraqi/Muslim people.
Warning, this piece will share the wrong ideas I had about the refugee crisis and why/how it was necessary to open my mind and truly think about why I had the opinions I did.
This picture is what many Americans think of when I say Iraq or a person from Iraq. I’m ashamed to say I shared this impression of the country or people from this place.
I met her one day at work, a quiet mother of an infant, and an eight-year-old. She was kind and gentle, speaking with a very pronounced accent, but one of the sweetest ladies I’d met in quite some time. Initially, I couldn’t place her accent, and so I asked her right out because I like to know people’s histories and why they are the way they are. When she told me I was shocked. That really shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. I was speaking to a woman who had lived under Saddam Hussein’s regime, through the Iraqi occupation of the United States, and an actual refugee from the ISIL regime.
