The Christian Science Monitor

In Israel, first hijab-wearing lawmaker hopes to build bridges

In her hilltop village home outside Nazareth, Iman Khatib Yassin, one of Israel’s newest lawmakers, sinks into a chair in her living room, furnished with plush cream-colored couches and Persian rugs.

Wearing a pale green hijab headscarf and rose-colored cardigan, she clasps her hands on the lap of her floor-skimming dress. It’s been a long week, she explains in her low, gentle voice, a week of shuttling between parliamentary committee meetings on the coronavirus and the economy in Jerusalem, and long drives to tend to her ailing mother at a hospital in the Galilee. She would return home around 11 p.m.

Ms. Khatib Yassin still

Breaking barriersPolitical since childhood, religious since childbirth

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