Aalimah is a female student of Iranian origin who is also a Muslim.
On the first week of the course her tutor disclosed to the group that she is an atheist and that she believed that god or gods are a manmade construct. Aalimah felt like the tutor’s view was very final and left no room for discussion about faith identities.
Later in the course during a presentation of her work in which Aalimah had made some visual art on the wearing of the hijab, she found the feedback from some of her group quite disturbing.
Some people assumed that she was forced to wear hijab and therefore sexually oppressed. The feedback session turned very quickly into a debate by her peers about terrorism.
Aalimah believes that the presentation was not facilitated well by the tutor and as a result she felt under attack by a minority of classmates. Who were posing all sorts of difficult questions that Aalimah felt that she was not able to answer.