Thank you, Asif. Most importantly, thank you for organizing this wonderful panel and giving us this opportunity.
Just like Asif, I don't plan to take more than a few seconds so I will be brief and then Saadia will cover the majority of our points of view.
The only thing I wish to add here is that words matter and leadership has never been more important. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson infamously described Muslim women in a burka as “letter boxes” and “bank robbers”. The following week there was an increased record of 375% in anti-Muslim incidents. More than half of such incidents in the following three weeks were directed towards Muslim women and 42% of street-based incidents directly referenced Prime Minister Johnson and the language that he used.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy of France stated that the problem of Muslim women's outfits is not a religious problem, that it is an issue of the freedom and dignity of women. This is a quote that I'm taking from the former president.