Hailey Woldt is a 22-year-old who blue-eyed Catholic who has been studying the cultural biases against muslims for a while now. A few years ago she went on a trek through the Middle East to study islam and assist her Georgetown University professor who was researching for a book he was writing.

She wrote about her 10-week journey through the muslim world with respect and deference. She spoke about keeping her head covered and avoiding eye contact with men … out of respect. That seemed to be okay, because that was what was expected to show respect in that culture. She is a woman and apparently she wouldn’t dream of being uncovering her head or making eye contact with a man in that culture.

On the other hand, she and a group of her colleagues recently decided to check out how people in the South would react to her as a muslim. Being Northern intellectuals they would, of course, expect that they would find backward hillbillies in the South. You know how it would go in this illiterate, dark and hostile segment of the country. Southerners would undoubtedly spit on her and refuse to serve her in restaurants.

Being a brave soul, she donned a traditional islamic black abaya and went to Arab, Alabama. She walked on the streets, went into stores, sat down in restaurants and DADGUME if people didn’t act right!!!!! How terribly disappointing it much have been for her and her little group that no one turned a water hose on her and her muslim head scarf.

Hailey Woldt put on the traditional black abaya, expecting the worst…

“I expected people to say, ‘What is this terrorist doing here? We don’t want your kind here,’ ” said Woldt, a 22-year-old blue-eyed Catholic, recalling her anticipation before stepping into a local barbecue joint. “I thought I wouldn’t even be served.”

Instead, Woldt’s experiment in social anthropology opened her own eyes. Apart from the initial glances reserved for any outsider who might venture through a small-town restaurant’s doors, her experience was a pleasant one.

On her way to the bathroom, Woldt said, “One woman’s jaw dropped, but then she smiled at me. … That little smile just makes you feel so much better.”

They found out that the stereotype of Southern hospitality is more true than the stereotype of Southern ‘Deliverance’.

Apparently, Ms. Woldt is okay with having to cover her head and avert eye contact in the muslim world and had hoped that she’d be able to compare and contrast cultural tolerance with the nastiness of people in the American South (she was in Georgia during her trip as well). In the wonky logic of the Effete Elite™, women having to cover their heads and avoid eye contact is tolerant and not liking people who attack our country (regardless of identifying characteristics) is not tolerant.

I’m sure Ms. Woldt thought she was very brave to come down South and pretend to be a muslim. But I have a dare for her. I dare her to go to Mecca as a Christian or a Jew. And I double dog dare her to take off her muslim abaya and then walk down the street in Tehran, Iran. THAT would be brave … unfortunately, we’d never get to hear her tell us about it.

Here’s a video of the group as they arrive in Arab, Alabama. They talk about how the South is ‘traditionally unaccepting of non-whites’. Poor little Hailey worries that people will get violent with her. The guy from the South says people there have always been friendly with him, but then ‘he’s white’. The northerner is equally clueless. His impression is that the South has a lot of churches. (OH MY!) lol

It has to be hard to go through life looking for the worst in people at every turn and believing every stereotype and prejudice you ever hear.

The video is actually pretty hilarious.