Note: You may notice the presence of this hijab rabbit girl in few instances since the seventh page of An Adult Body with a Childish Mind, even further her full appearance in the third page of Crying Over the Spilled Milk. For sometime, I’ve been thinking of making an original character that is either a Muslim or at least in an Islamic clothing, not just to commemorate Ramadan (especially in late March 2023), but to make something to remember by, based on my former stay in Saudi Arabia in most of my childhood years. Also, I’m not a Muslim but don’t take this seriously, it’s based on my experience I enjoyed back then.

Name: Laylah Al-Naquin
Age: 23
Height: 5’6”/1.68m tall
Species: Rabbit

DESCRIPTION:
Laylah hailed from the Arab community residing in Lahore, Pakistan. Unlike their neighbors, she and her parents were open-minded in terms of knowledge and sought to outgrow the strict lifestyle in their home when she turned 20. However the day after Laylah’s birthday at the said age, they sought to plan their way out into the United States discreetly, but the Arab locals became suspicious of them as days went on, and so had them imprisoned. A night later, while the elders were preparing to put them back into their old customs, Laylah prayed for a miracle to save her and her family from a potentially harsh punishment. She had been praying so hard, that the moment she was brought into a mihrab inside the local mosque, where she would be forced to suppress her liberal mind by the cold imam sheep, the green Qur’an started to glow and flew out from another imam’s hands and burst a big magic that dragged her and eventually her parents out of the mosque. As Laylah and her family flew across the city till they reached the US Embassy, the angry Arab locals followed them but in their own cars. The said locals failed to demand the release the Al-Naquin family from the US Embassy, due to the latter having already had legally approved documents and under protection of American soldiers. The disappointed locals begrudgingly relented, as the family were finally brought out from Pakistan by morning.

The Al-Naquin initially resided in San Francisco, but Laylah had found a better living in its nearby city of Santo Tomas and went there, but not without her parents’ permission. Her parents of course wished to stay in San Francisco, because her father was so familiar with computer maintenance inside and out that he ended up hired in one of the biggest companies stationed in the Silicon Valley, and her mother sought to bring her own experience and learnings to others and so became a teacher to fully American students. Meanwhile, Laylah was granted a scholarship in one of a dozen colleges in Santo Tomas.

As she spent few years (till 2020 or to this day) studying in college, Laylah sought a need to affiliate herself with the new community, right in a noticeably gentrified but prosperous district. Following suggestions from her new friends, she so sought to make newer but better spices by conducting experiments with old ones, as a way to start a self-sufficient business related to her old hobby. And by that, she used to cook a lot for herself and her parents back as an early teen, until she became hooked up with western books till this day, so her present self had to relive her past in order to regain what she had lost. However, following painstaking weeks of failing and improvising spices, she had managed to make most of her new ones, both spicy and profitable in a couple of months, but some of them ended up with harmful effects (which she could eventually use as a weapon in self-defense), and a few either ineffective or just outright bland. As with her business flourishing, she had made new enemies either without her knowledge or out of innocently insensitive, but only one enemy was related to her business via competition. Laylah herself wasn’t interested in politics or even any of controversy, but activists’ forceful hand at few points forced her to weaponize not just her own Qur’an, but also the long-handled pan that scoops spices. One night around mid-2021, some members of one radical activist group decided to kidnap Laylah, so they could shove their ideology down her throat. They somehow managed to grab the lone rabbit when she was walking straight into her dorm, but they never anticipated something of a backup coming from her Qur’an. Since then, that radical group began eyeing on her to reign on her one way or another.

She did make new friends as mentioned earlier, but none of them were associated with either Timothy Soro, Aaron Matthews or even Christopher North, few of the well-known yet potentially powerful individuals in the city. However in early 2023, she became a good acquaintance with Timothy, mostly due to an equal interest in each other’s cultures, as well as their cuisine. Being a former champion of Holy Qur’an Competition in her hometown seven times in a row (a title deemed not important but relevant to her religion), she did try to influence him, instead he offered her a position as an imam, but for the Muslim recruits who had joined the so-called MALAKAS Project. She accepted it but rather reluctantly.

PERSONALITY:
Laylah is often seen as a knowledgeable, pacifist and polite girl, bearing no ill intentions towards even her enemies. She is much keen on history and religious studies, albeit with multiple perspectives she brings up to spice things up. However as optimistic and tranquil as she wants to be, she is born naïve, especially when dealing with new trends or environments. She can also be insensitive to others without her knowing and sometimes tends to be forgetful of what happened. And speaking of forgetfulness, she can always come up with thoughts and ideas, which she believes should make sense but sometimes doesn’t, because either she is confident with her answer, she is unaware of a possible contradiction, or she just doesn’t get a memo. However, she can’t get it with many corrections but is willing to accept defeat if treated back with respect. Also, she is incapable of bearing grudges against anyone who wronged her, not even in a second.

She enjoys debating and likes to see someone willing to edge it up a bit in order to beat her opponent, but that can lead to overconfidence where she runs the high risk of losing, even if she manages to remain herself without getting toxic. Verbal fights are often her thing but when it come sto physical fights, she proved to be quite an incapable fighter, due both to her pacifism and to overreliance on her magical Qur’an. She could hit a few heads with a long-handled pan, but she was more likely not to fight unless she was forced to.

Additionally, she is always open to new trends, especially ones that break or defy tradition, making her believe that a girl like her deserves freedom as equal as boys, but while her mind is a liberal state, her heart is moderate. She seeks for a freer choice to do whatever she wants, but at the same time she comes to realize and understand the limits of such, lest she can go so far. She believes both science and religion should be balanced in order to make a better society. However, she herself isn’t always consistent with her own philosophy even on a moderate level. And being a devout Muslim, she always wears a hijab to hide her hair (unless she was home) and holds onto a Qur’an to remind herself to know her place (albeit in less strict), but she can get a chance to persuade others into her religion, which sometimes fails but for numerous reasons. Other than that, she enjoys meditation even outside the five daily prayers, but her intolerance to pressure can botch such session up, the same goes to her using the magic of Qur’an.

LIKES: