Reignited Ire Buffets Muslim Students

September 6, 2010

Author: Lisa Wangsness

Source: The Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/09/06/reignited_ire_buffets_muslim_students/?p1=News_links

Laila Alawa fiddled with her cellphone, pretending she hadn’t heard what an apparently intoxicated man near her on the MBTA had said about “her people’’ wanting to build the “ground zero mosque.’

Growing up in a large Muslim family in upstate New York and New Hampshire, Alawa had often drawn stares because of her headscarf, and sometimes endured harassment from neighborhood children. But this summer, as she shuttled between research jobs at Wellesley College and MIT, the looks and questions from strangers about where she was from seemed to come more often, and with a sharper edge.