It's like one of those scenes from a feel-good Hollywood movie. Where everybody is happy and nobody's hair fizzes in the wind. Where it doesn't rain, your shoes stay comfortable all day, and everybody's jokes are funny.

It is time Australian Muslims stop being treated as negotiable citizens in their own country. It is time people stop 'tolerating' us, presuming some right to decide if we have a place in our own home.

We are, at almost every point of our day, immersed in cultural diversity: faces, clothes, smells, attitudes, values, traditions, behaviours, beliefs, rituals.

We have to choices in this world; we either try to survive or to give up.

That’s when this warm feeling buzzes through you and you smile to yourself, knowing God’s watching you, knowing that He knows you’re trying to be strong to please Him.

I do most of my reading on the train ride to and from work. But I always have a book in my handbag so that I can read at any time, anywhere.

Most Muslim women know it is fear and curiosity that cause people to stare. They know it is ignorance and stereotypes that cause people to suppose that a piece of material covering the hair strips a woman of the ability to speak English, pursue a career, work a remote control.