Ghazala Hashmi recalls adults, many of them meeting a Muslim for the first time, asking her awkward questions like whether she believed in multiple gods or prayed to Jesus. Hashmi had just emigrated from India to a small Georgia town, one of the first two Muslim families to move to the area. She was 8.
The questions were unfair, at least for a child, but they helped Hashmi forge an identity at an early age — one that would shape her political career, she says now.
“I think it did help me to grapple with some big questions at a young age and to actually engage in an understanding and having to define myself and my identity at a young age,” she said. “I think that’s been very formative for the kind of person I became. And it is a part of my identity now, as I run for office.”