From Teen Vogue
by Mona Khalifeh
In celebration of Muslim Women’s Day on March 27, Teen Vogue is highlighting the real stories of Muslim women.
Abeer Najjar is a South Side Chicagoan, Palestinian, Muslim, Chef. Abeer is American.
She is the epitome of what a modern-day American looks like. When you strip away the identifiers, at her core, Abeer is a foodie. From an early age, she had a passion for food. Abeer envisioned having her own cooking show, and while the rest of us were watching Rugrats, Abeer was watching Julia Child. Growing up in the cultural metropolis that is the south side of Chicago, the typical Palestinian fare Abeer was accustomed to at home was influenced by the foods and cultures of the African, Latino, and Asian friends and neighbors she was surrounded by. Those influences not only made their way into her mother’s cooking, but her own as she took the helm in her home kitchen. Taking America’s favorite street foods like tacos and marrying them with a favorite street food of the Middle East, shawarma, Abeer created dishes like shawarma tacos that not only intermingled her worlds, but created the very food fusion that has come to represent the melting pot that is cities like Chicago.
Before Abeer set her sights on bringing dishes like her tacos to a cooking show, she had a food blog where she shared the food she made. From there, she took the comments and inspiration of her friends and began hosting a secret supper club. The invite-only social brought friends together to sample Abeer’s latest creations. Here, Abeer had friends from all walks of life commenting on and tasting foods that she mixed and matched through her upbringing. It was at these supper clubs that she began to realize that a cooking show could be possible.
The question that remained was, is there a place for Abeer in the cult cooking show world. On networks like the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, and Travel Channel, the absence of Middle Eastern chefs is evident. Not only are Middle Eastern chefs missing from programs like Top Chef, but Muslim chefs, more specifically a female Muslim chef wearing a hijab are hard to find. While Abeer would not be the first to do it, she would help shed a spotlight on the talents many Muslim chefs have to offer and would like to share with the world, but are hesitant to.
In 2015, Amanda Saab, a Muslim woman who wears a hijab, was a contestant on Fox’s MasterChef. As the first Muslim female chef to appear in a hijab on an American cooking show, Saab helped open up a dialogue for chefs like Abeer. But as expected, Saab faced backlash and ignorance that has only grown greater in today’s political climate of things like Trump’s “Muslim Ban.” With hate crimes against Muslim-Americans at an all-time high, it’s understandable that Abeer had reservations of putting her face out there, but that’s exactly why she’s blazed forward. If women like Saab and Abeer do not lead the charge, who will?
