When Lamyaa Alshehri, a 17-year-old girl residing in Pennsylvania, tweeted her father seeking his opinion on whether she could remove her hijab, she never imagined the overwhelming attention that their conversation would grab. The tweets between the duo have now gone viral across the social media.
After an internet troll waged a bet that her father 'would beat her up' if she took it off, Lamyaa texted her father to know what he felt. The father replied:
"Sweetheart, that's not my decision to make. That's no man's decision to make. If it's what you feel like you want to do, go ahead. I'll support you no matter what."
Lamyaa tweeted saying she isn't actually planning to do away with her hijab. "Since this is a mentality a lot of you seem to have," she said in her tweet. She attached screenshots of both the rude text she received and the exchange she had with her father.
Since this is a mentality a lot of you seem to have pic.twitter.com/CQn5L8zibS
— l a m y a a (@lxmyaa) April 15, 2017
She first tweeted on April 15 and her tweets have so far received over 322,000 'likes' and more than 148,000 retweets.
Lamyaa later told the BBC that she did not actually intend to take her scarf off: "It was never part of the plan. I just wanted to prove a point."
Lamyaa said:
"I had very strong views considering the impact the Trump presidency has on me because I am an Arab, Muslim woman. I brought up the fact that I was Muslim [in the group chat] and that guy didn't feel comfortable so he said what he said."
"When I saw how sweet my dad's response was I felt that this proved something; it proved that misconceptions are often made about people who end up being the exact opposite."
Many other users chimed in with their support:
@lxmyaa awww wow, bless your father and family
— Indigo Abena (@namelessafrikan) April 15, 2017
