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My point was that even if we didn't have this problem of homogeneous, outdated mosque cultures, we would always have and need third spaces, not competing with the mosque, but enriching it.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

Homeschooling with Charlotte Mason, but not forgetting my Ashanti Roots

This school year I've decided to use the Charlotte Mason homeschooling approach for my sons, ages 4 and 6. Features of Charlotte Mason that influenced my choice included:

1. Listening to or reading "living" books, characterized by their outstanding literary quality; readings followed by student's narration.

2. Short lessons, 5 to 15 minutes per subject, for children my age.

3. Good character and habit formation.

4. Emphasis on nature and spending large parts of the day outside.

5. A liberal arts curriculum including music, picture study, handicraft, foreign language, and scripture study.

I decided on Ambleside Online, a CM curriculum, because it has been thoughtfully created by a group of homeschooling parents, and it is free.

A challenge, however, is that the history readings, at least for Year 1, are Eurocentric. Hence, I'm on the quest to incorporate readings on African and African American history and culture. (In particular, I am looking to substitute a book on the history of Britain with one on the history of Nubia.)

I want living books as described here in Charlotte Mason's words as, "fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life." The authors of living books are both knowledgeable and passionate about their subject. They display "imagination, originality, and the 'human touch.'"

The pursuit hasn't been easy, none usually are in the beginning, but I was quite delighted this past Friday morning when we opened two books that complemented each other wonderfully and inspired the soul and intellect.

The first, Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, was recommended to me by amazon.com once it noticed my search on children's book/African history. Awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1974, this book has been described as a "stunning ABC of African culture." My children were immediately captivated by its beautiful illustrations, and the prose is a delight.

For each alphabet there is a vignette that colorfully tells of a custom of one of twenty-six African peoples. Each ethnic group is marked on a map of the continent in the back of the book, which helps me to achieve my goal to specify the people or country when referring to an aspect of this vast continent. Hence, Ashanti instead of African in the title of this post.

The second book, Langston's Train Ride, is the one that truly inspired me to finally write a post on the pursuit to incorporate "living" reads recounting African and African American history. I randomly picked the book off the shelf at my local library a month ago and just happened to read it for the first time after reading from Ashanti to Zulu.

It was beyond perfect, and that has much to do with the fact that my children have memorized, or partially memorized, three of Langston Hughes poems. The first was the "Negro Speaks of Rivers," which I began reciting to my eldest when he was just a baby.

The author of the book, Robert Burleigh, notes, "I love the poetry of Langston Hughes. In Langston's Train Ride, I wanted to capture just one thing: the moment when Langston Hughes came to believe in himself as a writer." The book recounts his train ride from Ohio to Mexico in which he wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," just out of high school.

Burleigh writes with rhythm and soul, channeling the spirits of our people. I loved that the book captures the process by which a young African American man, whose words my sons recite, was inspired to write poetry. Too, I loved that the vivid pictures and words reinforce our geography lessons, as the book traces Langston's train ride west and south, painting the varied landscapes of our country.

But most I loved its imagining Langston's thoughts as he crossed the Mississippi River:

    "I think of what this river means to my people. Slaves worked here on boats, in nearby fields, and alongside the banks, stacking sandbags to hold down floods. . . Whoosh. Words and phrases come rushing into my head. The names of other ancient rivers bubble up. African rivers. The Congo. The Nile. The Euphrates."

Of course the Nile and the Congo were highlighted on the map in Ashanti to Zulu, which we revisited.

Langston, the author tells us, looked at his reflection in the train window as he recited his new poem again and again. "Questions keep coming into my head: Am I really a poet? Is it possible? Can I sing my America, too, as other great poets have sung theirs? Can I?"

These lines, of course, alluded to Langston Hughes' poem "I, Too, Sing America," giving the boys and I license to recite.

Langston's Train Ride is truly a living book as it brought Hughes and his poetry to life for us one Friday morning.

#CharlotteMason #AfricanAmericanCharlotteMason #AfricanAmericanHomeschooling #ChildrensBooksAfrica 

Our legacy, too: Muslim women and the civil rights movement

“No one person owns this. This history is a history of thousands of people and we tell hundreds of those stories.”

When I heard former mayor of Atlanta Shirley Franklin speak these sentiments about the civil rights movement on the occasion of the opening of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in my hometown of Atlanta, GA, I could not help but think about the courageous women whose stories are told in my new book Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam, co-authored with Dawn Marie-Gibson.

Growing up in a Sunni mosque community in Atlanta, originally a temple in the Nation of Islam, I regularly heard the stories of men and women who converted to Islam to boldly protest racism and advance opportunities for African Americans. Through them, I felt that I had inherited firsthand the legacy of the civil rights movement. Later, however, I learned that the “Black Muslims,” as scholars called them, were not considered part of this movement. While the civil rights movement was marked by aspirations to integrate with whites, the Nation of Islam was labeled separatist because it promoted black pride and independence.

A few scholars, however, have resisted the tendency to write African American Muslims out of the movement. With efforts to see the movement beyond the black church and to include Muslim women among leaders of the civil rights era, womanist religious studies scholar Rosetta Ross devotes a chapter of her book Witnessing and Testifying: Black Women, Religion, and Civil Rights to Clara Muhammad, who contributed significantly to the NOI’s beginnings. Ross writes,

“Although she was not a part of what might be called the ‘mainstream’ Civil Rights Movement, Clara Muhammad’s role as one who helped construct the vehicle that transmitted notions of race pride to the Black masses made her a significant participant in the evolution of the Civil Rights Movement” (142).

It was during an interview with Karen, a former member of the Nation in Queens, New York that I realized that Nation women were not unlike the African American women of the civil rights movement. With a tone of “righteous discontent,” Karen described her dedication to the Nation of Islam but also her protest to some of the Nation practices that confined women. Her simultaneous alliance with and protest to male leaders in the organization immediately reminded me of the position of black Baptist women in the South as portrayed by Evelyn Higginbotham in her book Righteous Discontent.

Quite literally, Nation women were these women before converting. Before the Nation, they had membership or affiliation with the black church, and some were members of civil rights organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). No Nation woman that I met proved this connection to the civil rights movement as remarkably as Ana Karim.

Ana was no ordinary woman in the Nation—or person, for that matter. She was invited by Elijah Muhammad personally to join the organization. A SNCC activist carrying out voter registration work in poor, rural areas near Tuskegee Institute, where she attended college, Ana witnessed grave atrocities against African Americans. “I nearly lost my life,” Ana told me, her words bearing no exaggeration. Some of her peers were shot to death fighting for the rights of others. News of these courageous students made local newspapers that eventually fell into the hands of Elijah Muhammad. Upon his invitation, she sat with Muhammad who tried to convince her to join the Muslims. She initially declined, returned to Tuskegee, and witnessed one of the most horrific acts of inhumanity, perpetrated against a pregnant African American woman.

Elijah Muhammad’s call began to make sense to her: “It’s not that I feared death, but there was so much I wanted to do. I didn’t want to die not having accomplished anything—just die on a back road in some rural county and my body be buried in a cornfield or drowned somewhere in a stream. I didn’t want to die like that, so I left because I thought there was a higher mission, a better opportunity to help my people with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.”

Interviewing Ana was a highlight of my career for I had been chosen to tell the story of this remarkable African American Muslim woman. Ana went on to do extraordinary things in the Nation and in the Sunni community that emerged from the Nation under the leadership of Imam W. D. Mohammed. She rose as a leader of African American Muslims—men and women—because, she says, “I assumed the hardship of the civil rights movement. God prepares you for what’s coming in the future.” Ana proves that no one person or one religion owns this history.

Jamillah Karim is co-author (with Dawn-Marie Gibson) of Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (NYU Press, 2014).

This piece was originally posted at from the square, nyu press blog.

Muslim women’s dress, a tool of liberation

It was in a black feminist/womanist course at Duke when I realized that black Muslim women fit squarely within black women’s tradition of navigating the complex of race, class, and gender struggles. Not, though, because there were any readings on black Muslim women. I understood that black Muslim women had fascinating narratives to be told because I grew up in a Sunni Muslim community in Atlanta with historical roots in the Nation of Islam.

Although readily imagined as a sign of oppression and male control, Muslim women’s dress is a prominent example of the ways in which black Muslim women have used their faith to address overlapping race and gender struggles. Black women scholars including Patricia Collins, bell hooks, and Melissa Harris-Perry have analyzed the ways in which pervasive stereotypes of black women have worked to deny them dignity and rights. The “jezebel” image, stereotyping black women as sexually loose, has its roots in slavery to justify the systematic raping of enslaved women. It is in fighting this image that I see long dresses, or the hijab, as tools of liberation.

Growing up, I constantly heard women in my Sunni community making a case for dressing modestly. “It is a protection,” they always told me. Former Nation women shared these sentiments again during research interviews. Islah Umar, who joined in 1970s Queens, noted that she loved the Nation’s modest dress codes for women: “It was a nice relief from being [seen as] a piece of meat in the street.” Jessica Muhammad, of Atlanta, similarly notes that it was great to be a part of a group whose men “respected women who covered and who called black women queens…[and other honorable names] we didn’t hear in the streets at that time.”

Dress may have even played a role in the very beginnings of the black Muslim movement. One report notes that Clara Poole, soon to be Clara Muhammad, decided to attend a meeting by Fard Muhammad, the founder of the Nation in 1930s Detroit, after a friend told her, “There’s a man who’s saying some things about our people, said we didn’t always dress like we dress. We once dressed in long flowing cloth and we were royal.” Clara brought her husband Elijah to the meeting with her, who would later become the leader of the Nation of Islam.

Contemporary Nation women continue to use dress as a liberating tool. Minister Ava Muhammad of Farrakhan’s Nation has encouraged women to resist the portrayal of the black woman as “an over-sexed woman on display.” Tamorah Muhammad founded Modest Models, Inc. as a platform to prove that “the [demeaning] images can be reversed when black women who have awakened to their true consciousness grow in numbers…[and] create their own images.”

The modest dress that has been embraced by and made meaningful to black Muslim women—from the time of Sister Clara Muhammad to the time of Minister Ava Muhammad—indicates the persistent damage of false racial images on black women and their ongoing faith resistance.

Jamillah Karim is co-author (with Dawn-Marie Gibson) of Women of the Nation: Between Black Protest and Sunni Islam (NYU Press, 2014). The two authors anticipate that their book will help to correct the absence of black Muslim women’s voices in women’s studies scholarship.

This piece was originally posted on March 20, 2014 at from the square, nyu press blog.

Speaking at altfem magazine's launch

I am looking forward to speaking on motherhood and African American women at altfem magazine's launch this Wednesday in DC. The magazine is featuring my article "Mothers to Society."