Via Christian Post:
A Baptist high school guidance counselor and youth pastor’s wife in Missouri is wearing a hijab (Muslim headscarf) to school every Monday as a way of showing solidarity with Muslims and combating anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Martha DeVries, the guidance counselor at North Kansas City High School, began wearing a headscarf to school every Monday after she was inspired by a sermon from her pastor in which he challenged his congregants to make a difference.
“I am a follower of Jesus. I do believe that I am called to live out His message. I believe that the most important commandment is ‘love God and love others,'” DeVries said in an interview with the Religion News Service. “It’s not my intent to take on the establishment of the entire Islamic faith, it’s my intent to say I stand with Muslim women in my community.”
DeVries said that wearing a headscarf helps her identify with with Muslim women at a time when moderate and peaceful Muslims are being overshadowed by the violent and brutal acts of Islamic extremists, who are affecting how many perceive Muslims as as whole.
“I’ve just gotten very tired of hearing so many negative things, like Donald Trump’s ‘let’s not let Muslim immigrants into the United States’ and the scare on Syrian refugees,” DeVries told Baptist News Global.
“I said I’m trying to walk in someone else’s shoes,” she added.
DeVries asserts that there is little difference between her and Muslim women and she doesn’t see the reason why people should be frightened over a person’s religion or cultural dress.
“What’s a headscarf? I mean, its three yards, if even,” she told RNS. “That shouldn’t separate me from someone whose humanity is so much like mine.”