If you meet a woman in a burqa, she can't reply to your smile. It's a denial of identity.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If you're authentic, people smile because they sense there's a piece of themselves there.
And one of the things that I learned was you can't generalise at all about a woman in a veil. You can't think you know her story, because she will confound you over and over again. She may be an engineer or a diplomat or a doctor. Or she may be an unbelievable babe with bleached hair down to her waist.
To be a veiled Muslim woman on screen is a very scary minefield for me.
Most Muslim women know it is fear and curiosity that cause people to stare. They know it is ignorance and stereotypes that cause people to suppose that a piece of material covering the hair strips a woman of the ability to speak English, pursue a career, work a remote control.
If you haven't seen your wife smile at a traffic cop, you haven't seen her smile her prettiest.
Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there is not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted the wearing of a veil.
When I first came to America, you know, I would look at the newsstands and see the women on the magazine covers. I had never seen anyone smile the way these girls smile! It's like they have nothing to worry about!
The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. This is America, not Saudi Arabia.
A woman as the leader of the Free World is an impossibility. Muslim countries won't talk to you.
If you want to meet a woman, it's best just to smile and say hi.