A Syrian refugee family featured in the New York Times left more questions than answers

A Syrian refugee family featured in the New York Times left more questions than answers.

Sunday's edition of the Los Angeles Times ran a feature on the Wawieh family. The Wawiehs are Syrian refugees with six children who moved to the United States last month. Of the many images presented in the paper and online articles, one detail was missing: Muslim women wearing the hijab.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - Though the family's mother, Safaa, is mentioned in the article, she is missing from the extensive photo spread.

Other images, such as family members lounging by their motel pool attending public school and moving into their new home were featured in place of Safaa, who is only briefly mentioned: "Safaa, a wry woman whose light hazel eyes contrast strikingly with her black hijab, refuses to let the hotel staff clean the rooms, preferring to make the beds and scrub the floors herself."

The family's younger daughters are featured, but they are not old enough to wear the hijab, while the family's older daughters and all other adult women are mysteriously missing from the photos.

Breitbart News writer Julia Hahn wrote, "The omission is striking given that the ostensible theme of the piece is how this Syrian family is seeking to 'build a new life in a strange land.'"

Hahn claims the paper's thesis is about the family, then questions why the entire family is not featured. The only image with adult women in hijabs is one in which the women are seen from behind, and they are not identified in the caption. 

In a related move, Syrian men - even those not related to the family - are seen in several photos. In the online version of the article by Katie Falkenberg, Muslim women wearing hijabs are also excluded. In one shot of the video, a woman wearing a hijab can be seen from behind, but she is never mentioned and is not seen facing the camera at any point.

Breitbart News attempted to contact L.A. Times' Linthicum or Falkenburg for a reason for the omittion of adult women, but there has yet to be a response.

In October, Greg Mills from CBS2, reported CBS' report omitted women from photos by request by the family's father, noting "[Fouad] Wawieh didn't want his wife or teenage daughters shown on TV."

If this was the case with the L.A. Times, why did no one respond? Why was it not included in the report?

Omitting adult Muslim women is not the only thing the article left out. The article stated, "The agency will help them for 90 days, then they're on their own," which leads the average reader to understand that the family will receive no government assistance whatsoever following their 90-day time-limit. 

The reality is that the family will remain on food stamps until they find sufficient employment. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) reported 91.4 percent of recent Middle Eastern refugees receive food stamps and 68.3 percent are on cash welfare.

There was also the mention that the family was utilizing smartphones for maintaining their personal online pages, but who paid for the phones? Who pays the wireless bills? Several instances of glossed-over questions appear throughout the article, so what is the real story?

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