@SaraSoueidan: Dear men, This is how you greet a veiled Muslim woman (a Hijabi). Hand on your chest, not offering to shake hers. ????
so prominent BLM activist deray mckesson just retweeted this which i think is super cool for various reasons :)))
I did not know this. Is it OK for a non Muslim woman to shake hands with a Hijabi? Or do we do the hand on chest thing too?@popcanpoli
hey so i don’t wear a hijab and i’m not muslim so i definitely don’t have the authority to answer this question (or any other questions i’ve been getting abt this) (i’m just a lil canadian politics blog i didn’t expect this to blow up lol)
BUT here are some tweets by the original tweeter (who wears a hijab) that clarify some things
one:
two:
three:
This is also good if you’re meeting an Orthodox Jewish person who’s not the same gender as you! Not all Orthodox Jews hold by this restriction, and many consider it a permissible exception to shake hands in a formal greeting context; I’d guess this is parallel to Ms. Soueidan’s last-quoted tweet above. And as that says, the sensible thing is to wait for initiation.
Yup! Back when I worked for an LGBTQ organization, I had to warn my (Christian) boss ahead of time that the Orthodox rabbi we were meeting with would offer his hand to my boss but not to me. I just didn’t want my boss to be surprised and say something inappropriate.
