Introduction to the WGSS
Muslim American Women Project
Throughout the 2016-2017 academic year, eighteen students enrolled in Introduction to Women's Studies at Purdue University created a microexhibit within the Muslim Neighbors initiative. The course, taught by Pamela K. Sari, gave students the opportunity to work with Muslim Neighbors to explore the ways in which feminisms and spirituality intersect in everyday individual and institutional levels. Students learned about community-based, participatory
research and environmental portraiture as well as how to conduct oral history interviews. We discussed ethics, identified key themes, and connected individual stories to each other and concepts from their coursework. With these students, we were able to expand Muslim Neighbors to include eight additional stories, focusing on the experiences of Muslim American women.
Stories told in the media often position Muslim women as victims and in need of western liberation. These stories and images are also overwhelmingly preoccupied with the veil, a visible identity marker and a politicized signal of foreignness and difference. [1]
Yet, stories from Muslim women, who may or may not choose to wear hijab, disrupt these ideas that have been constructed through a post-9/11, ideological, and often Islamophobic lens. For the women who wear hijab, there is a strong sense of representation, what Noor describes as a “walking, talking Islam.” Wearing hijab is empowering, especially in a culture that defines femininity via sexuality. In this sense, being Muslim separates the individual from society. Hijab is, for some, a feminist statement. It places a limit on social and media expectations and beauty standards. Tuscany, who wears the niqab, or face veil, chose to do so “because I realized that people don’t have a right to my body….I find a lot of women here in the West that choose to wear the niqab wear it for similar reasons...We’re like, “No, at the very heart of things, we’re all human.’”
However, one woman who does not cover is quick to assert the politicization of dress. Who fits the part? Who looks Muslim? Who fits the stereotype? Because, “You don’t know that they’re Muslim unless they wear a hijab, right?” It is an important assertion, as many women do not cover for as many reasons as those that choose to, and the multiplicity of reasons directly challenge the singular narrative placed upon Muslim women by representations and the associations connected to them.
The women here challenge these notions, not only through their varied dress, but also through their manners. Asma describes how one friend was surprised to find that she was “loud and funny.” Wearing hijab, for many, is a form of resistance, and one that often initiates self-reflection in establishing a sense of belonging that is often challenged not only by their dress but by the association of foreignness with wearing the veil.
Noor describes it as a “limbo that the younger Muslim generation is always trying to balance: where do you want to be?” Noor has found, as others have, that now, through a negotiation of multiple identities and often competing polarities (what one scholar as a third space[2]), she “march[es] to the beat of my own drum self…as I’ve grown older I’ve understood that to get across to the people, to every person, to my audiences, to whoever I’m speaking to, you can’t always be so set in your ways. You have to adapt.” There is a flexibility of identity and ideology that comes with the intersectionality of gender, religion, perceived citizenship, race, ethnicity, and other identities. For those who successfully navigate these waters, it comes down to learning how to wear different hats as minorities.
The ability to bridge divides and bring communities together has come to define Muslim American experience. It is a difficult and ongoing challenge, bringing together Muslims from many cultures and practices into one space, as is the case in greater Lafayette.
Many of the women have learned about what it means to be Muslim women from their mothers, role models who have formed a religious feminism for many through their service to the community, their resilience, and through practicing their faith as a family. It is much more than the way they dress. And when feminists, particularly in the West, talk about taking off the hijab, for example #nohijabday, they are, as one woman puts it, “undermining a decision Muslim women choose to make every single day. That's not okay.” It also limits the boundaries of feminism as it intersects Islam. For Mayesha, “Being a Muslim woman does not mean that you just cover yourself up and go about your day. It means that you show others you have strength, you have resilience, and that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. There’s literally nothing stopping you but you.” It is ownership of individual choice, the capacity to make change, the pursuit of knowledge, and the emphasis on social justice that defines, in these stories, the intersection of feminism and Islam.
[1] Mishra, S. 2006. “Saving” Muslim women and fighting Muslim men: Analysis of representations in The New York Times. Conference paper.
Ahmed, S. & Matthes, J. 2016. Media representation of Muslims and Islam from 2000 to 2015: A meta-analysis. International Communication Gazette, 1–26.
[2] Khan, S. 1998. Muslim Women: Negotiation of the Thirds Space. Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 23(2), 463-494.
research and environmental portraiture as well as how to conduct oral history interviews. We discussed ethics, identified key themes, and connected individual stories to each other and concepts from their coursework. With these students, we were able to expand Muslim Neighbors to include eight additional stories, focusing on the experiences of Muslim American women.
Stories told in the media often position Muslim women as victims and in need of western liberation. These stories and images are also overwhelmingly preoccupied with the veil, a visible identity marker and a politicized signal of foreignness and difference. [1]
Yet, stories from Muslim women, who may or may not choose to wear hijab, disrupt these ideas that have been constructed through a post-9/11, ideological, and often Islamophobic lens. For the women who wear hijab, there is a strong sense of representation, what Noor describes as a “walking, talking Islam.” Wearing hijab is empowering, especially in a culture that defines femininity via sexuality. In this sense, being Muslim separates the individual from society. Hijab is, for some, a feminist statement. It places a limit on social and media expectations and beauty standards. Tuscany, who wears the niqab, or face veil, chose to do so “because I realized that people don’t have a right to my body….I find a lot of women here in the West that choose to wear the niqab wear it for similar reasons...We’re like, “No, at the very heart of things, we’re all human.’”
However, one woman who does not cover is quick to assert the politicization of dress. Who fits the part? Who looks Muslim? Who fits the stereotype? Because, “You don’t know that they’re Muslim unless they wear a hijab, right?” It is an important assertion, as many women do not cover for as many reasons as those that choose to, and the multiplicity of reasons directly challenge the singular narrative placed upon Muslim women by representations and the associations connected to them.
The women here challenge these notions, not only through their varied dress, but also through their manners. Asma describes how one friend was surprised to find that she was “loud and funny.” Wearing hijab, for many, is a form of resistance, and one that often initiates self-reflection in establishing a sense of belonging that is often challenged not only by their dress but by the association of foreignness with wearing the veil.
Noor describes it as a “limbo that the younger Muslim generation is always trying to balance: where do you want to be?” Noor has found, as others have, that now, through a negotiation of multiple identities and often competing polarities (what one scholar as a third space[2]), she “march[es] to the beat of my own drum self…as I’ve grown older I’ve understood that to get across to the people, to every person, to my audiences, to whoever I’m speaking to, you can’t always be so set in your ways. You have to adapt.” There is a flexibility of identity and ideology that comes with the intersectionality of gender, religion, perceived citizenship, race, ethnicity, and other identities. For those who successfully navigate these waters, it comes down to learning how to wear different hats as minorities.
The ability to bridge divides and bring communities together has come to define Muslim American experience. It is a difficult and ongoing challenge, bringing together Muslims from many cultures and practices into one space, as is the case in greater Lafayette.
Many of the women have learned about what it means to be Muslim women from their mothers, role models who have formed a religious feminism for many through their service to the community, their resilience, and through practicing their faith as a family. It is much more than the way they dress. And when feminists, particularly in the West, talk about taking off the hijab, for example #nohijabday, they are, as one woman puts it, “undermining a decision Muslim women choose to make every single day. That's not okay.” It also limits the boundaries of feminism as it intersects Islam. For Mayesha, “Being a Muslim woman does not mean that you just cover yourself up and go about your day. It means that you show others you have strength, you have resilience, and that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. There’s literally nothing stopping you but you.” It is ownership of individual choice, the capacity to make change, the pursuit of knowledge, and the emphasis on social justice that defines, in these stories, the intersection of feminism and Islam.
[1] Mishra, S. 2006. “Saving” Muslim women and fighting Muslim men: Analysis of representations in The New York Times. Conference paper.
Ahmed, S. & Matthes, J. 2016. Media representation of Muslims and Islam from 2000 to 2015: A meta-analysis. International Communication Gazette, 1–26.
[2] Khan, S. 1998. Muslim Women: Negotiation of the Thirds Space. Signs: A Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 23(2), 463-494.
