My sister, Ayisha Karim, and my cousin, Mareisha Reese
In the fight against Islamophobia and racism, I collaborated with my aunt Mary-Frances Winters, owner of diversity and inclusion firm The Winters Group, to contribute companion pieces to HuffPost Religion Blog.
Speaking at Howard
University for the first time, I revisited the legacy of Malcolm X. A month ago
at Duke University, when I spoke on the legacy of Malcolm X and Muslim women, I
strategically prioritized the struggle for civil rights over the struggle for
women’s rights, though I honored both.
Malcolm X did not play a direct role in advancing women’s status
in the Nation of Islam. Worse, Malcolm X made chauvinistic comments in his
autobiography. Despite these problems, Malcolm X had a profound impact on women
as he raised the race consciousness of both women and men and led thousands to Islam
through his autobiography.
My challenge, therefore, was to show the way in which Malcolm’s
legacy elevated women at the same time that I recognized that gender justice
was not Malcolm X’s legacy. Reconstructing what his legacy has done for women
without carrying out a feminist critique of Malcolm X, I strategically
prioritized the race struggle over the gender struggle. At the same time, I
constructed a narrative of gender liberation and demonstrated Muslim women’s
leadership and resistance.
As I revisited Malcolm in preparation for my Howard talk and
picked up the book Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil
Rights Movement by Lynne Olson, I
realized that through my approach to Malcolm, I was following in the legacy of
black women civil rights activists who helped to inspire the women’s rights
movements through their leadership but, at the same time, saw alliance with black men, even when they were sexist, an important strategy for race
liberation.
I began the Howard talk highlighting my appearance on WUNC’s “The
State of Things,” and describing how my interest in contextualizing Malcolm X’s powerful
but patriarchal words instead of critiquing them demonstrated one of the ways
in which I negotiate race and gender struggles as did the countless black women
activists before me.
Here’s the beginning of my Howard talk:
February 21, 2015 marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination
of Malcolm X. That Friday, I was a guest on WUNC’s “The State of Things,” alongside two other Islamic Studies scholars, discussing the legacy of Malcolm
X. The host, Frank Stacio, broadcasted this audio clip by Malcolm X: (It's always better to hear Malcolm X in his own voice; the start of quote highlighted by Stacio begins at the 2:15 mark of youtube video.)
"The most disrespected person in America is the black woman.
The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected
person in America is the black woman. And as Muslims the Honorable Elijah
Muhammad teaches us to respect our women and to protect our women and the only
time a Muslim really gets real violent is when someone goes to molest his
woman.
We will kill you for our woman.
I’m making it plain, yes. We will kill you for our woman. We
believe that if the white man will do whatever is necessary to see that his
woman gets respect and protection, then you and I will never be recognized as
men until we stand up like men and place the same penalty over the head of
anyone who puts his filthy hands out to put in the direction of our
women."
Addressing me after the clip, Frank Stacio noted that Malcolm’s
words "do not sound terribly progressive from a feminist point of view, [this
idea of] women needing protection, a kind of infantilization; you can read it that way in that context. Also,” Stacio continued, “it rings of the
very provocation for lynching which began around the turn of the twentieth century: this idea
that we white men must protect our women.”
Stacio’s comments echoed the black
feminist critiques of the Nation of Islam and other black power groups,
particularly SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. From a
feminist perspective, the problem with Malcolm X’s words is that they present
men as the ones who control women. Men must control and protect women; and
men’s manhood is defined by their ability to do so. Women and their bodies are
objectified. They are the symbol of a race’s honor; and the protection of women
serves as the justification for violence against men who violate the race.
As Stacio
suggests, the idea that men must protect women provided white men the rationale
to lynch African American men for the “protection” of white women, and
ultimately, the white race. Not only does Malcolm X borrow from the ideology of
the white oppressor, he unapologetically brings attention to white men’s
violence in the name of protecting women when he says, “We believe that if the
white man will do whatever is necessary to see that his woman gets respect and
protection then you and I will never be recognized as men until we stand up like
men and place the same penalty over the head of anyone who puts his filthy
hands out to put in the direction of our women."
Indeed, this idea that black men can
only be men if they stand up to white men speaks to what visionary civil rights
and women’s rights activist Pauli Murray wrote in
her 1970 article “The Liberation of Black Women.”
“For all the rhetoric about
self-determination,” she wrote, “the main thrust of black militancy is a bid of
black males to share power with white males in a continuing patriarchal society
in which both black and white females are relegated to a secondary status.”
But of course, I did not outline the problems with Malcolm’s words
when I responded to Stacio because I was not interested in carrying out a
feminist critique of Malcolm X. And Stacio did not ask me to. After suggesting
the problems with Malcolm X' s words, he asked, "Heard with this historical distance, how do you place that in context?"
I answered that Malcolm X’s words must be understood in the
context of his goal, and that was to highlight the systematic sexual violence
against black women. After giving this issue more thought, I would further
answer that Malcolm X was not trying to be a feminist. He was a man of his
time, when the women’s rights movement had not yet gained the momentum and
raised the consciousness that it would in the late 1960s and beyond. The goal
of the black freedom movement was to dismantle racism. Given this objective,
Malcolm X’s words are remarkable and effective. They profoundly resonated with
black women and men, which is clearly demonstrated in the applause of Malcolm’s
audience.
His words are brilliant because they immediately evoke the brutality
of white racism and bring attention to two of its devastating practices: 1) the
systematic rape of black women during and post slavery, and 2) the lynching of
black men.
Malcolm X’s lack of gender consciousness is characteristic
of the black freedom fighters of the 1950s and 1960s. Sexism existed in almost
all of the civil rights organizations as they denied women formal leadership
positions. Johnnie Carr, a member of the Montgomery Improvement Association,
remarked:
"Now of course when you spoke out against things like that, a lot of
times you were even criticized by other women that felt like...this is not what
we ought to be doing. I think we just accepted the servant role and ...[did]
what we could because we felt like togetherness was the point.”
White women
civil rights activists, on the other hand, finding themselves increasingly
alienated from the movement, created alternative spheres to protest sexism,
which eventually led to the women’s rights movement of the 1960s.
Unlike Pauli Murray, who firmly resisted the idea that black women
take the backseat so that black men could reclaim the manhood stolen from them,
most black women activists did not concern themselves with the question of
women’s rights. Eleanor Holmes Norton, another prominent black woman civil
rights activist noted, “Pauli resonated with feminism at a time when any young
black woman who was in the movement would have been far deeper into civil
rights…Black women were fully included in the civil rights movement, so that
talk of feminism, in the way Pauli was absorbed in it, seemed remote to where one’s
energy and attention had to be.” This observation points to two reasons why the
emerging feminist movement did not resonate with most black women activists: 1)
civil rights was their greater concern and 2) black women did not experience
gender discrimination in the same ways as white women.
White women in the movement saw this
difference, notes Lynne Olson, author of Freedom’s Daughters. White women, Olson wrote, “Saw that
the [black] women in the..movement did not take a backseat to anybody. They
were out front, leading with a boldness that [white activists] had rarely seen
before in women.” One white SNCC activist noted that “the views of [black women
activists]. . .were heeded. ‘Maybe not as much as they should have been, but
they were listened to. It was more of an equal society.’”
As white women left SNCC as it grew militant, they turned to
organizing for women’s rights. At the same time, the black women of SNCC grew
more willing to surrender women’s leadership and let their men lead as they
subscribed to the popular belief that black communities could not thrive
without the restoration of the black family, and particularly the restoration
of the black man’s manhood. Marian Wright Edelman, one of the founding members
of SNCC, provides an interesting case of women determined to push “black men to
the forefront.” After starting the Children’s Defense Fund in the early 1970s,
Edelman offered to step down and let a male colleague run it. Her rationale, in
her words, was: “Among other things our children need, they need the image of a
strong black man running things, changing the course of events.” Her male
associate declined, and, as we know, she went on to lead the organization
herself.
African American Muslim women too had subscribed to this
idea of pushing black men to the forefront as the Nation of Islam focused on
reforming the black family through embracing traditional gender roles. But
also, like the women of the civil rights movement, Muslim women accepted the
ideal of men’s leadership in a context in which black women were always
working, organizing, leading, and making sure that they were heard.
It was Janet Saboor, a former Nation woman in Atlanta, whose
strong spirit and fighting words made me realize how much alike were the women
of the Nation of Islam and the women of the civil rights movement. In an
interview with Janet for my new book, when I asked if she found the Nation of
Islam oppressive, she answered, “I was not oppressed. And the reason why I
wasn’t was because first of all I came into the Nation of Islam when I was 23 so I
had pretty much formulated on some level or another who I was, what I was
about. And then the training that I got from my mother. My mother was a very
strong woman and she raised three children. She was the breadwinner. She took
care of us, she nurtured us, [and she taught me to be] my own person. So when I
came into the Nation of Islam…if [something they told us to do]...didn’t feel
right, I didn’t do it. If it didn’t make sense, I didn’t do it.”
The life experiences that nurtured Janet’s assertive spirit were
the same that nurtured the black women activists of the broader black freedom
movement. Quite literally, Nation women once were the women of SNCC, of the
NAACP, of the Urban League, before converting. And most telling, almost all
Nation women had membership or affiliation with the black church, the
institution that gave birth to the civil rights movement.
So when black feminist Pauli Murray wrote that “many black women
have been led to believe that the restoration of the black male to his lost
manhood must take precedence over the claims of black women to equalitarian
status,” it was an observation that applied to both Christian and Muslim women
who felt that they could afford to continue their focus on race consciousness
over gender consciousness.
I am one of
the daughters of the black power movement. Both of my parents joined the Nation
of Islam in the 1970s. My family or community did not raise me with a feminist
consciousness but certainly a race consciousness guided by God consciousness.
At the same time, however, my community provided me women role models who were
leaders, organizers, and activists, viewed and treated as the equals of men. In
my personal life, I saw women generally surpassing men in spirituality and
level of education. With this sense of pride and advantage as a black Muslim
woman, I can understand why women found the idea of prioritizing men’s
leadership important as a race issue that would collectively improve the lives
of African American men, women, and children.
My response
to Frank Stacio, in which I justified Malcolm X’s words instead of rendering a
feminist critique, exemplifies a moment of prioritizing solidarity with male
leadership in the movement over feminist consciousness. Following in the legacy
of Freedom’s Daughters, I’ve made this choice in my broader reflection on
Malcolm X.
****
It was at this point in my Howard talk that I explained that upon my invitation to speak on the legacy of Malcolm X at Duke and UNC, I felt compelled to speak on his legacy and women, but without rendering a feminist critique. "I strategically
prioritized the race struggle over the gender struggle," I said. "At the same time, I
constructed a narrative of gender liberation, similar to the way in which the
black women race activist before me raised gender consciousness through their
everyday acts of leadership, even though they were not trying to be feminist. The angle from which
I argued that Malcolm X provided a platform for women’s leadership and
resistance is through Malcolm’s Muhammad Speaks legacy." I provide a
glimpse into my paper describing Muslim women building upon the Muhammad Speaks
legacy in an earlier blog post. My ability to align myself with Malcolm X and
at the same time highlight and encourage women’s leadership is an example of
scholar miriam cooke’s concept "multiple critique," inspired by the negotiations
of black feminist scholars. Multiple critique sees women fighting various
struggles—race, gender, class, and religion—that often overlap and intersect.
At times, they fight in the name of multiple causes, but there are moments in
which they strategically prioritize one cause over another, without entirely abandoning any one cause.
I ended both
my Howard and Duke talks with a sentimental touch as I highlighted the way in
which the late Tayyibah Taylor walked in the Muhammad Speaks legacy. In fact,
when what I describe below occurred, it felt like a divine moment, a moment of
gratitude for the Muslim men who led during the civil rights era and for the Muslim women who lead today. But first, I share my paper's abstract for a better appreciation of my ending: Two key factors made Muhammad Speaks thrive from the beginning: 1) the high journalistic quality of the newspaper led by editors who were not members of the organization, and 2) the NOI’s requirement that male members sell a quota of newspapers every week. This paper will consider the ways in which the Muhammad Speaks legacy of quality journalism and men’s dedication to Nation building provided an unexpected platform for women’s leadership, agency, and resistance in the Nation of Islam, especially during women’s transformation to Sunni Islam under the leadership of Imam W.D. Mohammed. And here's my ending, a very special moment for me:
From the beginning of my consideration of women and the legacy of
Malcolm X--before I learned of Malcolm X’s and the Nation of Islam’s role in
advancing the black press--I intuitively imagined Tayyibah Taylor and her
creation Azizah as following in Malcolm’s Muhammad Speaks Legacy.
And then, three weeks ago, as I was casually flipping through the latest Azizah
issue, I read this letter to the editor:
"I must say that looking at Azizah Magazine is like looking at the
night sky from atop a mountain. It is stunning and hypnotic, or is that just
me? Thank you a thousand times, alhamdulillah. May Allah continue to bless you
and your staff for going beyond the call of duty. Azizah Magazine is a top
quality production done by Muslim women for Allah’s Flowers. Sometimes my mind
is stuck on the days when I would stand in the cold for hours just to sell one
Muhammad Speaks newspaper. I was so proud of that publication because it was
done by us for the benefit of those whom we considered lost and rejected. Now,
I am elated with joy. Allah is truly tayyib to His Creation. Thank you." Signed,
Muhammad AbdurRahim. As you can imagine, this former Fruit of Islam’s
comments to “Allah’s Flowers” delighted me as they confirmed the connection
between Azizah and Muhammad Speaks, both “top quality”
productions. During the black freedom era, men were in the forefront doing the
early work to present Islam to the American public for the first time. Now to
see Muslim women present Islam to the world via their own quality creation, AbduRahim
says he is elated. We are too, as women take the lead with grace, wisdom, and
beauty.
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 speakingthose wordstothese
peoplewas 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: theconcern
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. Theshuyukh[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.
