I can't keep putting this off..

My last journal entry announced that I had moved to live with my non muslim sister and mother and that I had started to wear the hijab everyday.

So where to start..

I have been banned from the hijab and really even openly practicing Islam. I had fought. Allah knows how hard I tried. However it wasn't enough. There only reason forbidding me to not wear it is that I am not 18 and it could be somehow dangerous. Even though she let my older sister -who is now an apostate along with her- wear it at the very same age.

So I took a flight alone to Dallas Texas from Pa...
I went and visited my biological father I only recently met this Summer. I walked out that door with my head high dawning a pure white hijab after my mother yelled at me and tried to rip it off my head 2 times as I screamed for the police. Then on my way to the airport my fathers mother drove me. She too asked me to take of the hijab and then preached to me for 3 hours about how Jesus saves.

The only thought that came in my head was would she have asked Mary mother of Jesus to remove her hijab?

Arriving at the airport I was the only Muslim in sight and you know what, no one gave me a problem. I boarded that flight alone. It was my very first flight.

Landing in Dallas there too my own biological family bombarded me with more preaching. And due to other reasons those which I won't discuss I was left with no other choice, but to remove the hijab.

The preaching still continued. And after arriving back in PA I discovered my room very empty. All my hijab, all my Islamic books, My Qur'an everything that had anything to do with Islam was gone. My mother than returned the items which she had stuffed into a trash bag as if they were garbage.

Yet her Bibles lay around the house. Her alcohol in the fridge. Her pork in the cupboards.

A complete double standard.

A few weeks later my father's mother - the one who drove me to the airport- calls me. She requests that I not only change my email "Laila_Habibti@yahoo.com", but also tells me my religion isn't true and I'm on a bad path and that all the people who "really" love me are concerned.

I didn't respond as I never do even when she preaches to me I simply shut my mouth and wait for the conversation to pass. So I quickly hung up saying I had to go. And I haven't talked to her since.

My thought was Oh you love me yet where have you been for 16 years. Secondly how dare you say to someone "for one thing it isn't true" about someone's religion when I have been nothing but nice to her.

Respecting her right to her religion even though I think its nothing but paganism in a monotheistic guise. But would I tell her that? No. Because I believe in coexistence. I believe in Peace. I believe in the freedom of religion without compulsion. And all these beautiful ideas are not mine. They are what my religion teaches.

So it leads me to question if this is the way she goes about spreading her beliefs or even persuading me than what does her religion teach her?

Currently no I am not wearing the hijab. So many of my viewers out there have noticed my lack of new art. A New school, a new home, a complete attack on my identity, and all my hopes thrown in the toilet by my blood family.

But I will keep trying to do my art. I will just pray that time be fast. And that my goals next month and after get to be achieved.

Just keep an eye out for some new pics.
I am still watching all of yours even if I am not commenting a lot.

-Laila Jihad

p.s. I went bungee jumping and free falling and jet skiing. It was pretty awesome.