NEWARK, New Jersey – In what is likely to be the most diverse college campus in the United States, Hijabi Muslim women  in Rutgers University, Newark, have shared their experiences, talking about their lives in a project designed to highlight their struggle to preserve faith and American identity.

The video features a group of Muslim women, including Hamna Saleem and Dina Sayedahmed, both Rutgers students.

Both Hamna and Dina were engaged in an New American-inspired journalism class when they saw a viral video featuring non-Muslim women wearing the hijab for a day and recounting their experiences.

Though the video was intended to serve as a show of solidarity, Hamna and Dina resented the idea of non-Muslim women taking license to speak on their behalf.

“These women don’t go to their job interviews with hijab on; they don’t go to class with it; they don’t have to move into new neighborhoods wearing it and have to convince people that they’re ‘normal,’ ” Sayedahmed was quoted in a blog by Julie Winokur in the New York Times.

That led to the production of the video which interviews several friends about their experiences as real hijabis.

According to Winokur, “Hijabi World” video allows young Muslim women to express what it’s like coming of age in America in a time of xenophobia.

“The film allows them to set the record straight about when and why they started to wear the Islamic head scarf and to answer for themselves how they balance American feminism with cultural and religious tradition.

“They stare straight ahead and announce ‘We are here and we have a voice.'”