Being ME, Speaking out against racism in the ummah #BeingBlackAndMuslim #BlackLivesMatter #MuslimLivesMatter

As I prepared my speech for Being ME, Muslimah Empowered, a conference in Toronto attended by over 4000 women, it dawned on me that this would be my first time addressing a majority immigrant audience on the ways in which Muslims perpetuate racism in our mosque communities. 

Since publishing my book on this topic six years ago, I’ve given a handful of talks on relations between African American and immigrant Muslims, but not once had I been asked to “confront racism,” to discuss the “hierarchies that pit Muslim against Muslim,” and to push Muslims “to self-reflect and question our own culpability in perpetuating this hate.”

The conference organizers

The women who asked me to do this were second-generation Canadian women, the daughters of desi (referring to the Indian subcontinent and its diaspora; South Asian), Arab, and East African immigrants. The conference’s theme was “Qur’an: A Compass to Compassion,” and my charge was “to focus on how we can develop true fellowship and raise an ummah built on compassion.”

Whoever thought to invite me had definitely read my book as that is partly what I seek to do in its 300 pages. My challenge was to present this message in roughly twelve pages and to convince an audience who I would also critique. It would require the skill of pulling together the perfect stories, quotes, and analysis on race; work that I love to do.

After my talk, a black Canadian woman of my generation (born Muslim, the daughter of converts of African and Native American descent) said to me, “The way that you laid out the stories and perspectives was unique. You made it accessible. At first I wasn’t sure how the aunties were going to take it, but I watched them, and they were feeling it. Just the fact that you were standing up there speaking those words to these people was awesome.”   

Several people remarked with sentiments ranging from “Wow, I never thought about it that way” to “You usually don’t hear socially relevant talks like yours at conferences like these.” I responded, “Alhamdulillah, thank the conference organizers for inviting me.”

Conference organizers and volunteers

My talk

I started my talk with the story at the beginning of my book: a conversation between an African American convert, an Eritrean immigrant, and a Pakistani immigrant. The dialogue occurred after an Arabic lesson in the Eritrean woman’s home. The two immigrant women insult and alienate the African American convert after she described the racism she experienced at an immigrant mosque. They tell her that the racism she feels is her “perception” and that she “stresses” race too much. After this, the convert woman never again joins the women for Arabic lessons.

This story reveals both the awesomeness and the sadness of the North American ummah (Muslim community). We have ummah spaces like the masjid and the Eritrean woman’s home that bring together people of diverse ethnic backgrounds who do not ordinarily come together in intimate spaces because of longstanding structures of racism. This means that we have this unparalleled opportunity to confront racism and cross boundaries; but sadly, we do not show the compassion or use the tools to learn from one another and create true sisterhood. The main tool highlighted in my talk was the Qur’anic verse, “Humanity, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into nations and tribes so that you should get to know one another. In God’s eyes, the most honored of you are the ones most conscious of Him: God is all knowing, all aware.”

“We take our racism lightly,” I told the women, “however, it has a severe impact on our personal, spiritual development and on the wellbeing of real communities, including our own Muslim communities.” Here’s where I discuss the impact racism has on our communities and how we perpetuate racism:

Because many nonwhite immigrants have done well financially, they easily accommodate new forms of anti-black racism. They acknowledge past racism against African Americans but believe that nothing prevents them from doing well now. In my own research, I found this immigrant sentiment over and over again. Nailah, a second generation desi American told me,“In the Indo-Pak community you hear a lot of, ‘Why don’t they [blacks] just do this or do that.’  There’s this attitude that if we are foreigners in this country and we didn’t even speak English properly, and we were able to establish ourselves and our community, why can’t they do the same.”  

Not only does she hear this among her parents’ generation, but also, Nailah stated, “I hear it from my peers.” Sajdah, an African American woman, stated, “The immigrants don’t care about black communities because they think that our condition is because we are lazy...They need to really understand the dynamics of being an African American...Unfortunately they do not believe that there are any factors that work against us.”

Sajdah is right. As we learn from the history of white violence that left blacks without the vote despite the fact that they had attained the legal right to vote, constitutional equality does not translate into practical equality in housing, education, and employment when the government does not commit to resources that seek to put African Americans on equal footing.  Ironically, progressive whites often appear more sensitive and aware of this form of racism than immigrants of color.

While this speaks to U.S. history and policy, Canadian society also has a racial order that privileges whiteness. In pursuit of acceptance and inclusion, immigrants ascribe to their society’s racial hierarchies. As one scholar put it, immigrants accept “the color line in order to cross over to its advantageous side.” Ironically, it is racism against immigrants that pushes them to assume whiteness as best they can through skin color, wealth, education, choice of neighborhood, and other factors that grant them inclusion in white communities. In this pursuit, they also assume contempt for blacks and their neighborhoods, which they choose not to live in. This begs the question, is it even possible for us to assimilate in societies of white privilege without becoming racist?

The racist comments by Muslim immigrants prove that it is impossible unless we make a concerted effort to recognize the racial hierarchies and dynamics in the larger society. Awareness is the first step to resistance. Interestingly, discrimination against Muslims post-9/11 has moved Muslim immigrants to this awareness, though it has been slow. Rami Nashashibi, the executive direction of IMAN, the Inner City Muslim Action Network, a grassroots organization that serves poor Latino, black, and Arab communities in the South Side of Chicago, was at the forefront educating and inspiring Muslim immigrants and their children to see the ways in which they had ignored or downplayed African American struggle. 

In one speech, he noted how ever since 9/11 and the war on terrorism, there has been an uproar in immigrant Muslim communities about racial profiling and the assault on civil liberties, BUT he asked them, “Where was all this concern for justice before when racial profiling was happening to black people every day. When a black man is beaten by a cop, where are the Muslims protesting on the streets? Now that we’ve become the newest victims of racism, we want everyone to come rallying to our cause, but what have we done to really help the black community that would make them want to be a part of our struggle?”

Rami’s words speak to another reason why we need to confront and end racism in our Muslim communities. We need interracial solidarity to make the work against Islamophobia most effective and successful. We see this most clearly in the Muslim Lives Matter movement that occurred after the tragic death of our beloved brother Deah Barakat and our beloved sisters Yusor and Razan Abu Salha. That movement stands on the shoulders of the Black Lives Matter Movement. 

This is a perfect example of the way in which different ethnic struggles, civil rights struggles, and liberation struggles have historically informed and borrowed from each other. We should desire and encourage this type of collaboration and alliance. The diversity of the North American ummah provides us an advantage at building such alliances. But yet again, because of our internal racism, because immigrants were not moved to align themselves with African American Muslims as Rami laments, some African American Muslims and also second generation Arab and Desi American Muslims have criticized what they see as hypocrisy: that you never cared about black lives until Muslim lives were savagely taken.

This African American sentiment that immigrants are hypocritical was especially felt and vocalized after 9/11. One African American imam who I call Imam Hakim told me in 2002 that immigrants “are being tested” for assimilating into America’s capitalistic “way of life”: “You have built up your empire, and now there is a possibility that you may lose it, get your green card snatched and shot back over to Pakistan where you don’t want to live. Are you willing to give that up?” But, if immigrant Muslims had been living up to their Islamic duty to help America’s poor in the inner city, Imam Hakim believes, God would have spared them 9/11 backlash as He has spared African American Muslims. “But immigrants haven’t done anything significantly enough to eradicate injustice in America. They haven’t done anything. So now they have got to pay.”

Imam Hakim’s sentiments against immigrants are harsh and they demonstrate the type of anti-immigrant racism that many black Muslims have. For Imam Hakim to say that this is their payback suggests that immigrants somehow deserve to be the victims of white violence just because they never stood up for the black cause, as though African American struggle is the paramount struggle. African Americans demonstrate anti-immigrant racism when we deny other nonwhite groups legitimate protest and civil rights protection. When we overlook the discrimination that immigrants have experienced in the past and present and privilege black struggles over immigrant struggles, black Muslims contribute to attitudes and social structures that deny immigrants their rights. We too become complicit in larger structures of racism.

Most of my speech called out immigrants and their children for perpetuating racism in the ummah. And this is not because of my bias, although some have called my analysis that in Amazon reviews of my book. Rather, it is because immigrants and their children hold the greater amount of power and privilege in the ummah. Many see themselves as more authentic Muslims, and they are closer to whiteness, the benefits of which they pursue.   

It was important for me, however, to address African American Muslims’ racism, or complicity in racism (since many argue that one cannot be a racist without power) to acknowledge that African Americans carry anti-immigrant prejudices and that all of us must take responsibility to address racism and facilitate better race relations in the ummah.

Imam Hakim’s hard-hitting words were my best example of anti-immigrant sentiments in the ummah; however, I am sympathetic to his general critiques of immigrants and how they have distanced themselves from black struggle, especially when they claim an exemplary religious community that fights against injustice. This issue emerges in critiques of the Muslim Lives Matter movement: the concern among African Americans "that other people so frequently appropriate the symbols of our struggle but not the burden of our struggle," notes scholar Zaheer Ali.

Women’s responses

Immediately after my talk, I left for the speaker’s corner where a few women lined up to speak to me. The first was a Sudanese immigrant woman of my mother’s generation. My opening story resonated with her. Women from her country brought their tribal tensions to their Sudanese mosque in Toronto. She has spoken to the imam to address the women’s discrimination, but he denies it. She believes that if he heard my talk, it would open his eyes.

Next was a white Canadian convert who wanted to buy my book. She said that it is as though her social status decreased when she became a Muslim. She has lost her white privilege because she looks like an immigrant because of her hijab. In the mosque, she is rejected by the Arab group on one side and the desi group on the other. The only time she’s felt comfortable in a mosque is when she visited an African American mosque in Detroit where she was treated as a sister. Her daughters, who have Malaysian and Vietnamese fathers, don’t fit in either. Outside the mosque, they have friends of diverse ethnic backgrounds, but in the mosque, they are not accepted in their second-generation Arab and desi Canadian peer groups because their parents are neither Arab nor desi.

An Indian auntie came up to me, and after hugging me said, “Your talk was amazing. You are right. We are trying to be white.” She was a social worker and told me that her field made her aware of my level of race analysis. Her words meant a lot to me since I spoke about South Asian privilege the most, as they were the group featured in my book.

Finally, my favorite encounter was with a Somali immigrant, Fatima. We are the same age and have children the same age. She too spoke about how it blew her mind that I was up there speaking to this audience on this topic: “I was like, ‘Do...these...people...understand...what she is talking about?’” Unlike the multigeneration African Canadian woman described earlier, Fatima couldn’t conceive their fully grasping it. Her sentiments underscored that what I had done had never been done before. “You need to come back for RIS [a conference three times the size of Being ME] and give the exact same talk. The shuyukh [male teachers] touch on this, but nothing like what you have done.”  

“You can’t tell me that our people stolen from our lands and brought here in chains can have the same experience as people who came here on their own free will,” Fatima continued, affirming the points in my talk. I loved the way she spoke of my ancestors as her ancestors. And too she claimed the legacy of the slaves who escaped to Canada via the Underground Railroad. Write down this title, she insisted, Viola Desmond Won’t be Budged. And then she pulled from her purse a Canadian stamp with a photo of Viola Desmond. It was her last and she gave it to me. “This is our Rosa Parks, and yours too. When you get the book, put this stamp on it.”   

The women’s responses were awesome because they affirmed our diversity and the potential for unity. That my talk resonated with Muslim women of diverse backgrounds from various angles demonstrates that the work to cross racial divides and resist the hierarchies that privilege whiteness and pit “racial others” against each other can and must be a shared goal.

Fatima’s feedback was most moving because her comments brought to life what I had spoken about in theory, that the Qur’anic verse that states, God has created us differently to come to know each other, is a tool guiding us to compassion. “The Qur’an is literally telling us to show some compassion. To attempt to walk in someone else’s shoes. To understand where someone else is coming from.”

Fatima literally walked in the shoes of the generations of African, African American, and African Canadian women who endured slavery and racism in the Americas. Soon after she migrated to Toronto, only fifteen years ago, a white man said to her on a public bus, “You are the most beautiful nigra I’ve ever seen.” While Fatima could have used this as a lesson to henceforth downplay her blackness and pursue whiteness, to remove herself from the struggle of the women who came to these shores before her, whose features she shares, she decided to walk in our shoes, to learn our ethnic struggles. And this is why I loved that when I showed my unfamiliarity with Viola Desmond and the terms Fatima used to describe the Canadian history of the descendants of the Underground Railroad, she asked, “Don’t you know about Harriet Tubman?” “Of course,” I smiled.

Being ME - Muslimah Empowered, Toronto

I'm looking forward to speaking at Being ME-Muslimah Empowered this coming Saturday.

I will speak at three sessions: 

"The Colour of Hate: Confronting Racism in the Muslim Community" 

"Compassion in Action: Muslimahs that Inspire" 

"Scaling the Ivory Tower: Academia, Feminism and the Muslimah

Bio

Jamillah Karim is an award-winning author, lecturer, and blogger. Karim specializes in race, gender, and Islam in America. She is co-author of the new book Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (NYU Press, 2014). Her first book, American Muslim Women, was awarded the 2008 Book Award in Social Sciences by the Association for Asian American Studies. She is former associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Spelman College where she taught courses in the study of Islam for six years. In 2010 Karim traveled with her family to Malaysia where she began her blog “Race+Gender+Faith.” As an independent scholar in Atlanta, she presents her research to scholarly communities and lectures frequently within Muslim communities. She occasionally contributes articles on spirituality for Azizah Magazine. Karim blogs for Sapelo Square, Hagar Lives and Huffington Post Religion. In 2014, she was highlighted as a young faith leader in the African American community by JET magazine. Karim holds a doctorate in Islamic Studies from Duke University. 

Challenging hate in mainstream media, Women and the legacy of Malcolm X

The Duke Islamic Studies Center commemorates the 50th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination this week with the conference “The Legacy of Malcolm X: Afro-American Visionary, Muslim Activist.” When I received the invitation to participate, I had just completed my new book Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam. There was no question: I would present the ways in which women have carried Malcolm X’s legacy.

Without doubt, his greatest impact on women comes through his autobiography which led thousands to embrace Islam. But also it deepened the faith of women of my generation, who were born Muslim. When I read the autobiography in high school, I wished for the entire world to read it, to know the depth of racism and African American struggle, and to know that Islam was brought to African Americans immediately as a religion of race liberation, and ultimately as a healing and a mercy to all humanity.

As a scholar, however, always looking for a new insight, I wanted to expand beyond the autobiography and provide other ways to celebrate and build upon Malcolm’s legacy. The Muhammad Speaks newspaper immediately came to mind.

Malcolm X started the Muhammad Speaks newspaper in Harlem in 1960. The newspaper was a stunning success and contributed immensely to the legacy of the black press and the popularity of the NOI. C. Eric Lincoln called it “by far the most widely read paper in the black community.” In the eyes of the African American masses, the Nation of Islam was the image of black men selling Muhammad Speaks newspapers on urban street corners.

As Ana Karim, the first female editor of Muhammad Speaks, stated,

“The militant, commanding FOI, Fruit of Islam, the brothers in the beautiful blue suits with the red insignias, the star and crescent, they were the dominant force of our community in terms of visibility. The sisters in the white silk-like scarves and uniforms, we were somewhat in the background, but the men were dominating.”

Today, Muslim women are no longer in the background but in the forefront. They have claimed Malcolm X’s legacy to use our own press to present images of Islam and Muslims. Ayesha K. Mustafaa has been the editor of the Muslim Journal, the contemporary version of  Muhammad Speaks, since 1988. But this position came with struggle. During the transition to women’s leadership under the guidance of Imam W.D. Mohammed, women faced opposition from some male leaders. The Muhammad Speaks legacy served as a platform for women’s resistance and leadership, starting with Ana Karim.

Support the legacy. Live the legacy.

Given the violence and trials of our time, the late peace advocate Tayyibah Taylor and her creation Azizah magazine most notably represent Muslim women’s inheriting Malcolm X’s legacy, the legacy of an alternative press. While researching Malcolm X and Muhammad Speaks, I discovered that the legacy of the African American press is the legacy of the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad, and Malcolm X. Malcolm X once stated, “The Negro press is our only medium for voicing the true plight of our oppressed people in the world.” He also stated, “If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Standing on the legacy of the black press, Malcolm X unrelentingly condemned the dominant media as a vehicle of racial hatred and violence. It inflicted the worst form of hate upon African Americans: self hate. Malcolm X stated,

“The Black man in the Western Hemisphere . . . is the best example of how one can be made, skillfully, to hate himself. . . . And I say that this is a very serious problem, because all of it stems from what the Western powers do to the image of the African continent and the African people. By making our people in the Western Hemisphere hate Africa, . . . they have taught us to hate ourselves. To hate our skin, hate our hair, hate our features, hate our blood, hate what we are.”  

Khuram Hussain, an expert on the radical black press, gets to the heart of why Malcolm X’s legacy matters today:

“Ultimately Malcolm X understood that undemocratically controlled, highly centralized media needed to be directly challenged. He, and the paper he started, sustained a relentless pursuit of dominant media narratives, identifying its collusions with state and corporate power and shedding light on the silenced aspirations of millions. In turn, this aspect of Malcolm’s legacy, may hold important insight for those who seek to speak the truth of the powerless, to the powerful.”

Mourning the savage killing of the beloved Muslim students in Chapel Hill--Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu Salha--I grasped most clearly the link between Malcolm X’s and Tayyibah Taylor’s legacies: challenging the prejudice and hate fostered by mainstream media. In an interview with altMuslimah, Tayyibah described the inspiration behind creating Azizah magazine:

“When I was about 12, I remember picking up a copy of Ebony magazine, and seeing people of color in positions of leadership, contributing to society. And I had a bit of an epiphany in terms of validation of self, of being, of black culture.”

Later when she embraced Islam, she similarly understood that the dominant media’s portrayal of Muslim women was a gross misrepresentation and that we needed our own Ebony.

As Malcolm X fought the mainstream media’s depiction of Africa and black people all over the world, Tayyibah fought against the dominant media’s portrayal of Muslim women as oppressed and silenced. She fought against the exploitation of the covered woman in hijab, used as a sign of Islam’s backwardness and threat to the West. She fought against the inescapable effect of this false image of Islam and Muslim women: self hate and external hate. She fought against the hate and violence inflicted upon Deah, Yusor, Razan, and their families and communities. 

Tayyibah knew the truth, and as Malcolm X understood, the truth that we must portray in our own press because we live and experience it intimately. The truth that we must portray in our own press because we resist the structures that work to maintain the privilege of the powerful at the cost of those imagined voiceless. But through our voices, Tayyibah’s legacy continues, Malcolm X’s legacy continues, as do the legacies of Deah, Yusor, and Razan.

"Never consider those killed in the cause of God to be dead. Indeed they are alive, being sustained by their Lord. They are delighted with what their Lord gives them from His bounty. They rejoice for the sake of those coming after them who have not yet joined them, that no fear shall overcome them, nor shall they grieve." (Qur'an 3:169-170)

Note: This post is also dedicated to Kayla Mueller, who also joined the martyrs in this month that we remember Malcolm X. 

Why we need "third spaces," women's voice and the American mosque

MLK weekend in Atlanta, I participated in the ALIM Program for the first time. The theme for the winter program was Redefining Spaces, How is the mosque's role changing in the 21st century?

The topic of my class was "Gender and Third Spaces." Third space is the term popularly used to describe spaces functioning as alternatives to mosques. Third spaces are occupied by American Muslims who are dissatisfied with mosques and, as a result, seek other spaces to cultivate community and American Muslim identity. An example of a "third space" is MakeSpace.

Cultural gender practices in mosques, particularly barriers excluding women from the main prayer space, contribute greatly to making mosques alienating places. I guided the group to reflect on the way that mosques are gendered spaces in both cultural and religious ways, a point discussed in my first book. The fact that most African American mosques do not have gender barriers while immigrant mosques do, indicates the way in which culture shapes the mosque as a gendered space.

At the same time, there are ways in which almost all American mosques are gendered spaces because of common religious rulings and understandings. These include the religious ruling that only men can be imams. Also, the separation of men and women in worship--even without a physical barrier or wall--and distinct dress codes for men and women make the mosque a gendered space.

I challenged the group to set aside for a moment the popular idea of "third space" as a space alternative to the mosque and imagine third space in the way that it is generally theorized in anthropology. It is the space “in-between,” as Homi Bhabha describes it. It is the space where two distinct, and perhaps conflicting, cultures meet. Through this encounter, new identities and meanings are negotiated.  It is considered a hybrid space, a space of negotiation, fruitful contestation, innovation, new and unexpected meanings.

As a space of negotiated creative expression, I argued that the mosque can in fact function as a third space, and does so for diverse American mosque communities. And at the same time, other spaces outside the mosques where Muslims of diverse ethnic backgrounds come together, not necessarily for religious purposes, function as third spaces.

My point was that even if we didn't have this problem of homogeneous, outdated mosque cultures, we would always have and need third spaces, not competing with the mosque, but enriching it.

I proposed a new definition of third spaces as it relates to American Muslims: Muslim spaces that are not necessarily created for religious purposes; more open to diverse identities and influences, including non-Muslims; share mosque membership, and can potentially influence and transform mosque spaces. IMAN is an example. 

So instead of thinking of third spaces as alternative mosque spaces, we can think of them as critical spaces beyond the mosque that enrich mosque life. In this way, we recognize that the mosque is a vital space that should not be replaced by other spaces, which means that we feel a sense of urgency to make the mosque a culturally relevant space of belonging. At the same time, we recognize the importance of spaces beyond the home and mosque that cultivate other parts of our identities as human beings, that make Muslims relevant in the larger society, and that influence mosque life.

From this perspective, the phenomenon of the unmosqued is not necessarily a problem. It’s not surprising. It’s a natural, organic process by which new identities are emerging at the interface of multiple cultural locations and demanding new cultural expressions. As a result, these encounters are impacting and changing the other spaces in which we occupy. Third spaces include Muslim schools, Muslim restaurants, Muslim media, or any ummah spaces as I discuss in my book.

I ended the discussion by describing why I believe third spaces are critical: They bring BALANCE. Remember, I told the group, we discussed the ways in which the mosque is a gendered space for religious reasons. One of them is that the imam is a male. The imam has a tremendous amount of influence because he offers the weekly Friday sermon. This means that men will always have an advantage in mosque space, no matter how creative or progressive we are in cultivating women's leadership in mosques. (And we must do everything we can to cultivate women's leadership in mosques.)

However, think about this, I continued. I'm raising and homeschooling three boys. Who has the advantage in that space?

I shared the cute story of my preparing for my ALIM talk at home and one of my son's asking if I was preparing a speech for Azizah Magazine. I answered that I was preparing for ALIM. His response: "What is an ALIM?" The point is that Azizah Magazine is the familiar reference for my son because I talk about Azizah Magazine. When I prepared my speech for a tribute to Tayyibah Taylor, he heard me recite it over and over again. I have the greatest influence on him at this stage of his life.

Third spaces bring balance because in the home, in schools, in media, in businesses, and other ummah spaces, American Muslim women are vocal leaders and often leaders of men. (And, yes, I reject the idea that men are natural or superior leaders.)

After sharing this, I finally really, really understood why women in the WDM community, women that I write about in my second book, do not have a problem with the fact that only men are imams.

I hope to discuss this more another time and also share the story of Aminah Hamidullah, an amazing woman in the WDM community whom I highlighted in my second class at ALIM. Aminah's story is a model of how we can enrich mosque life via women's leadership and the creative, negotiated expression of third space.

Signing Books at Islamic Center in Jacksonville

I'm really looking forward to speaking at the Islamic Center of North East Florida at the end of the month. I've presented my work to Muslim communities in Florida twice before, and the warmth and generosity of these communities remain vivid.

A Discussion with Jamillah Karim, Scholar and Mother

After participating in a discussion on faith and feminism in September in Washington, DC, Crystal Corman interviewed me for the Berkley Center's Women, Religion and the Family Project. I've posted the original interview here:

Background: As a scholar, lecturer, and blogger on race, gender, and Islam in the United States, Jamillah Karim participated in the Berkley Center’s Women, Religion, and the Family project. She came to Washington, DC to be a panelist at an event on faith and feminism on September 24, 2014 and spoke with Crystal Corman the following day. The following conversation traces Karim’s motivation to study gender and race within Islam in the United States, as well as her experience researching this topic with immigrant communities. Her lived experience and research highlight the diversity within Islam in the United States, as well as, more specifically, perceptions toward African American Muslims. Karim also offers insight into working with Muslim women in development projects and contexts.

What drew you to study gender and race within Islam in the United States?
Growing up in a community with roots in the Nation of Islam, I understood Islam as a faith that could uplift and elevate communities. That’s the meaning that Islam had for people in the Nation of Islam: they were coming to this movement that was going to improve their lives economically, in particular.  People were attracted to the way they were nation building, establishing their own businesses and schools.  And also the positive racial message of Islam was obviously relevant at the time when African Americans were seen as inferior. Growing up, this is what I repeatedly heard, that Islam can be socially elevating.

The focus on women came in because they were always at the center, and were important role models for me. It wasn’t until graduate school, however, that I understood this importance. I told my grad advisors that I wanted to focus on Islam and race for the reasons I just described. They then said that I had to do something about women. I responded, “Why?” I had very little knowledge of feminism and actually thought it was something to be avoided. I thought feminism was against religion. I’d also heard people use the narrative that Islam was oppressive to women; by the time of graduate school, I wanted to distance myself from that narrative because I didn’t see it as true. I imagined that focusing on women would mean that I’d be playing into that narrative.

It was my professor miriam cooke who helped me understand that this could be an opportunity to show that in fact Muslim women are empowered by their faith. She was working on a project making this case and took from the work of a black feminist scholar. She suggested that I also look at black feminist thought.

The work of black feminists – who look at the ways in which discrimination against black women occurs at the intersection of race and gender constructs - became very influential. When I was learning about black feminist thought, the faith piece came up, because my faith has always been an important part of who I am. I wanted to look at the intersection of race and gender identities for Muslim women. I also wanted to respond to Paula Giddings, a visiting scholar at Duke who taught my course on black feminism, who was saying that the Nation of Islam was oppressive. It was an opportunity to engage that popular belief.

Can you explain if there is overlap between black feminists and womanists?  

There is definitely overlap. Black women scholars who led the way in theorizing about the impact of sexism on black women’s lives found that mainstream white feminism did not speak to the experiences of black women. Most early white feminists were racist and did not envision black women as part of the movement. Black women scholars found it necessary to develop their own theories with varying degrees of comfort with using the label feminist to describe their approach to black women’s liberation. Many felt that the only way to talk about a form of feminism for black women without the influence of ideas that did not apply to the realities of black women’s lives and communities was to define and name their own approach. Womanist is the result of this redefining and renaming. But the theories of black women scholars who appropriate either term feminist or womanist certainly overlap as they both situate black women’s struggles at the center of analysis.

How did you come to focus on race and ethnicity of Muslims in the United States?
In college at Duke University, the majority of the students in the Muslim Student Association (MSA) were the children of immigrants and didn’t have a lot experience with African American Muslims. They were kind and welcoming, but I don’t think they were prepared for the type of African American Muslims that we were (vocal about our Nation of Islam heritage). All of us were Sunni, but these students were associating our community with the Nation of Islam. We didn’t like this, because they saw the history of the Nation of Islam primarily in a negative way. They felt that we were too black, or we cared too much about our black issues, and we needed to think more broadly about what they saw as the really important issues in the ummah. We resisted this and constantly had conversations around these issues, and I felt like we did a lot of educating. (Years later Sherman Jackson’s book Islam and the Blackamerican had influence among second generation American Muslims who finally acknowledged, “Yeah, the Nation of Islam is important.”)

Given the diversity among Muslims on campus, did your interactions with the children of immigrant Muslims influence your faith life?
The children of immigrants were learning from us African American Muslims at Duke University, but we were also learning from them. They definitely influenced my change in Muslim dress. I used to wear the head wrap that a lot of African American women wear. Now, there’s a diversity of hair covering in the black community because of the influence of all these different cultures. But still we tend to show our ears and our neck. So I started to cover my hair differently because I was considering the various interpretations of dress. I wouldn’t say others were doing it wrong, but I was starting to think that possibly this is the way that I should cover.

When I traveled to Cairo, I wanted to fit in so I started to cover this way (with scarf draped down across neck), and I actually preferred this look. When I came back to the US, I decided to continue this style. I also saw that it gave me even further passport into the immigrant community.  If I went to a masjid, no one was looking at me a certain way; no one’s tucking my hair under my scarf, because it’s a major complaint among African Americans. In some mosques, when you go in there are women who start rearranging your clothes for you! Some black women take it personally and think it only happens to us. But just the other day my mom and I were somewhere with a diversity of Muslims and it was a Pakistani woman who had a piece of her hair come out of her scarf and another Pakistani woman was pushing her hair under her scarf because we were about to pray. So I said to my mother, “See!  It doesn’t just happen to the black women”.

I found that when I covered like them, just like in Cairo, people think you’re one of them.  I could really pass in Cairo – as long as I didn’t talk - because some of them were my complexion. So that was one of the things that I learned to do to better fit in during my research, which was important for me because I wanted to get authentic information.  So the more comfortable women felt with me, I was able to achieve and it really worked well.

Your research includes Muslim women in the United States from various ethnic backgrounds, not just African American. How did women react to you and your study?
I think women of all ethnicities welcomed me.  They were very happy to see a woman who was pursuing her doctorate, especially one in Islamic studies.  So women were not hesitant to talk to me. They welcomed me. They were proud of me, and they wanted to assist me.  But second, I think women did want to speak to me about their experiences. They’re not often given that opportunity regularly.

I was looking at race and ethnic divides but also ways that they were crossing divides.  For my first book, I was focusing mainly on South Asian women. But also I was interacting with a lot of Arab women and some East African or other African immigrants, both the first and second generation. I was coming from an African American community so I hadn’t had that interaction prior, but going to school at Duke really helped prepare me.

Do you have examples from your research where attitudes based on ethnicity or race surprised you?

I’ll never forget how I was invited to a South Asian woman’s home. I had met this second generation South Asian American woman at the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN) Office; IMAN is known for bringing a diverse group of Muslim youth to do inner city work. They work in Latino, Black, and Arab neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. She and I set a date for me to meet her family, to come to her home in Bridgeview, which is an Arab Muslim suburb.

The daughter spoke quite differently compared to her mom (you can see this in my book). Her mother was talking about why she didn’t send her kids to public school or why they moved to the suburbs.  She was explaining these reasons, including that black kids were mean and would fight her kids.  Her daughter told me later that she disagreed with that.  She said that it was the white kids who were the meanest; they were mean in ways that you couldn’t imagine. I came across this repeatedly where young Indian/Pakistani Muslim Americans would say they were really traumatized by their experience in public schools as minorities. That was new for me, because I wasn’t familiar with their particular forms of discrimination.

Later at the same home, the husband started to speak very negatively about Imam W. Mohammed, in a way that he wouldn’t have spoken if he knew where I was coming from.  It showed the insensitivity and the arrogance to not even consider that I was part of that community. It shows that he didn’t really understand the black community, wasn’t familiar with it, or didn’t care enough to even think about the possibility that I come from that community, which has the largest following of African American Muslims.

During my research, I had this mixture of very pleasant, loving, and enlightening interactions with the children of immigrants, second generation Americans, and also times of really feeling like I had to fight to educate about African American Muslims, convincing that we are real Muslims, and that we are following the faith.
 
How have people reacted to your research? Has it resonated with any particular communities?
Recently I gave a talk at a library that was sponsored by a Somali refugee woman; there is a large refugee community in Atlanta.  Conversing with her, I saw how my work could also be relevant to her particular community – and also the relevance of looking at race and faith. She told me how African American and Somalis are actually pitted against each other, similar to what we hear about Latinos and African American immigrants.

In the case of the Somalis and African Americans in her Atlanta suburb community, she noticed there is a lot of social outreach from Emory students targeting Somalis. These are mostly white students presenting this work as “multicultural social work to fight racism”.  African Americans in the community feel that the Somalis are taking away their resources. This created tensions between two communities that could actually benefit from working together, because Somali young men are inexperienced in the realities of being seen as black men in America. They need to know how to navigate that.

Based on your research, how can immigrant Muslims arriving in the US learn from African American Muslims?
Muslim women immigrants are trying to navigate how to be a Muslim woman and how to negotiate their culture with American culture. How do you use your faith – or become more educated in your faith - to figure out what things are cultural and what things are not? Muslim immigrant women are doing this independent of us, but they can benefit a lot from African American Muslim women. But because of such tensions, it’s very difficult to do that.

I think there is interest in how groups are collaborating and how they’re not in certain spaces and why. That kind of study is important because these are all minority groups, and sometimes they live in the same neighborhoods. In the United States, Indians are the minority group most clustered with whites, and they’re least likely to be clustered together. Generally Indian Americans are more likely to not live in ethnic enclaves and they’re able to live with white people. But immigrants living in the same neighborhoods with blacks are more likely to create moments of solidarity.

Your research points to the complexities and challenges of diversity within Islam [in the US], but what about the concept of the “ummah”?
This is the whole impetus behind my first book: we make up this ummah - this community - and there’s a lot of rhetoric about how we’re supposed to be united. We’re one ummah, right?  For a lot of reasons, historically and culturally, this has symbolic significance for Muslims. But given this religious solidarity, why are we separated?

In the US, it’s because of the race and class dynamics and inequalities that existed before Muslim Americans came to this country. This influences how we’re able to connect as one ummah. In the US, most Indian and South Asian immigrants are professional. They came over through the 1965 Immigration Act, which preferred professionals and technocrats, so they are mostly wealthy immigrants. They’re not going to live in the same neighborhoods with African Americans. Toni Morrison and others have written about the ways immigrants are taught to despise African Americans and distance themselves from African Americans as part of the acculturation process.

Gender is important in many development strategies. How do you see Muslim women within development settings and in such projects? 

The topic of Muslim women – on a global level – is being looked at critically. As an example, this summer at an event at Yale University, another scholar spoke about her work with women in Afghanistan. She spoke about the narrative of elevating or liberating Afghani women – and the critique that this narrative is used to justify current wars. But it had also been used during European colonial rule: elevating or liberating Muslim women has always been a part of the colonial project and justified the colonial project. We’re just seeing that reoccurring now, it’s nothing new.

This scholar went on to critique the way Western women feel they have to save these women. She watched Western women speaking at a meeting in Afghanistan to women, speaking down to them. Speaking slowly, like the same thing that immigrants talk about happening here where they’re assumed to be unintelligent or un-American because they’re immigrants. But in reality, these Afghani women were doctors, lawyers; they were educated women.

How can non-Muslim Westerners better work with women and girls in Muslim majority contexts?

I think that Western women need training and cultural sensitivity and humility, trying to really understand culture and going beyond to see how they can benefit from these women.  But also to re-read how we imagine these women’s empowerment or lack of empowerment.

It’s also important to look at how we teach about Islam. The Yale event was a conference for high school teachers about how to teach students about Islam. It had different professors to talk about everything from Sufism to Islamic art to Islamic politics. I was invited to talk about women. One scholar, a South Asian Canadian woman, spoke about the global piece, especially her work in Afghanistan, and I talked about the work here in the US This combination was great.

I talked about how Muslim women in the US are redefining what the hijab means for them. I referenced the lyrics of rapper MissUndastood. Her lyrics, which are really witty, include great lines about our modesty. For example, why do women in Islam seem oppressed when we look like Mary? She’s responding to this narrative that we’re oppressed and flipping it around and saying that we’re empowered. I was able to have the audience rethink the hijab and the way it means something different and is liberating.

Why do you think storytelling about Muslim women is important?
In my academic work, I’ve been reporting what happens in my Muslim community and mosque, and people are amazed! I’m simply talking about amazing black Muslim women, but people are just not used to thinking of Islam and black woman in that way! I’m writing their stories and analyzing it in an academic way.

There is a need for a platform for our Muslim women’s voices. If not at Friday Jum’ah, we need it in other spaces in the mosque.  The second book, Women of the Nation, it looks at the way that Imam Mohammed was very gender progressive and in fact, he appointed the first woman minister to the Nation of Islam. Women who followed his advice to step up in local communities were met with resistance. I want to further those discussions as I have book talks in the community.  I’m doing a webinar with women of my generation soon to talk about the book, and I’m interested to get their feedback.

What do you hope to do next in your career and what kind of impact do you hope to have?
I want to branch out and reach a larger audience.  I’m very grateful for my experience in academia to provide me with the tools to write about race, gender, class, Muslim women, and faith, but I do feel that because of the misconceptions about Muslim women in the popular culture, we need more voices in that arena to challenge the narrative – in popular culture. So I want to branch beyond academic books and speaking to academic audiences.

I want to target non-Muslim communities since there is already a lot of empowerment in the African American Muslim community. They are already challenging the narrative of oppressed Muslim women.