Muslims in America: Beyond Stereotypes

Source:

Touré, Halima. “You Seem So Intelligent. Why Are You a Muslim?” Taking Back Islam,

edited by Michael Wolfe, Rodale, 2002, pp. 122-126.
About Halima Touré

Halima Touré, a linguistics professor, was born in Brooklyn in 1943, she lives in Teaneck, New Jersey.

Voice 3: Halima Touré

Vocabulary

agnostic a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God

credo a statement of the beliefs or aims that guide someone's actions

demeanor outward behavior
extoll to praise
fraternal of or like a brother or brothers

of or denoting an organization for people, especially men, that have common interests or beliefs

freelance working for different companies at different times rather than being permanently employed by one company

Idul-Fitr Eid al-Fitr, religious holiday for Muslims that marks the end of

Ramadan

Voice 4: Keith Ellison
NPR host Farai Chideya (FC) talks with Keith Ellison, the first Muslim congressman in U.S. history, about his politics, his faith, and where the two meet….
FC: Tell us a little bit about your district and your voters.
ELLISON: Well, we have a very engaged active group of folks in Minnesota. …I can tell you that somewhere out on the prairies of Minnesota, people got the idea that people of this country are sovereign, and that the people should lead the nation, and the public good should be first and foremost, not the private gain of a few. And where they actually found that idea might be found in the native tribes that were there; could be found in the liberal ideals that come from Scandinavia, where many Minnesotans come from; or could be from our strong labor tradition….
FC: So you're originally from Motown and I understand that you converted to Islam in college. Why did you convert and what does that religion mean to you?
ELLISON: Whoever knows exactly why a person chooses to follow a different spiritual path, I'm not sure I could tell you that. But what I can tell you is that I'm strongly attracted by the social justice, egalitarian ideas in Islam. But you know - it only - again, you know, a person's faith is like a marriage, you start out, seeing if it's going to work out - overtime, it just grows and deepens and becomes part of who you are.
FC: Part of your history also is environmental activism, environmental justice....How did you get involved and what were some of the things that you've done that you're proud of?
ELLISON: Well, you know, just walking around my district, I found that there was just a large number of kids who had inhalers and they were relying on these inhalers to get through the day. … I began to think about how we deal with this …we had to look at traffic and how close kids live to traffic, which is highly correlated with asthma. And then proximity to coal-burning electricity plants, and of course, we live right near one in North Minneapolis….

So, you know, those two things became a big concern and so I got active in trying to get community to help convert the coal plant in our neighborhood to natural gas, which has much lower emissions, particulate matter, mercury and a lot of other dangerous emissions.

FC: Were you successful?
ELLISON: … I helped start an organization called the Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota. And we worked on protecting people from lead, worked on mercury, worked on other pesticides and things that really have a negative impact on our health from an environmental standpoint.
FC: So what in your upbringing or what in your childhood led you to have a passion for justice?
ELLISON: …I was raised in a household where issues of civil rights and justice were discussed on a regular basis. You know, my mother's father, whose name is Frank Martinez, was organizing black voters in rural Louisiana in the ‘50s, you know. And she grew up telling us about how they would receive threats and had crosses burned on their front lawn. And it really was a topic that made a great impression on me.

And, you know, my father was one who discussed issues in politics around the dinner table. And so it really wasn't that unusual for me to gravitate toward political activism, trying to make a change, trying to include more people, make our society live up to the ideals that are stated in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

FC: I talk to a lot of younger people about politics…who are just like, it's a fool's game. It's rigged. Everyone is dirty. How do you deal with that kind of attitude for example?
ELLISON: … the most activist thing you can do is to get involved, is to play a role. And you know…slavery was a horrible epoch in American history 243 years of…slavery - horrible. But we have to remember that the abolitionists were there fighting it and the abolitionists won.

We got to remember that till 1920, till all adults could vote…Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and…and Frederick Douglas… fought for universal suffrage and they won. And you know, the people in the Civil Rights Movement, they defeated Jim Crow.

So every time you point to some negative piece of American history - and there have been some ugly periods - there have been people who have stood up for what was right and have generally prevailed over time. And so I say to my brothers and sisters and the hip-hop generation, you know, write a song about how, you know, how we got to have more justice, how we got to expand democracy, how we have to respect the sisters and the women in this world, and how we got turn away from this crass commercialism and materialism that is promoted so aggressively. Talk about making America live up to its noblest ideals, that's what I say….
FC: Now, as a Muslim, do you feel obligated to bring your religion to the table, simply in terms of trying to address issues like the war; address issues like detainees; address issues like Israel and Palestine and the conflict between them, or are you going to try to leave your own personal background out of how you lead in Congress? -
ELLISON: You know, Farai, I don't know what role I will play in that regard. My faith, my Islamic beliefs are ones that are not exclusive to Islam. I mean, you know, every faith system - Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, all - you know, we believe in caring for the poor. All of us believe that. All of us believe that we should have justice and real fairness in economics and economic opportunity. And every ethical and religious system you can name talks about the importance of peace, non-violent resolution of conflict. You know, these are not the exclusive province of any religious system. Now I may come at it from - my faith informs my values, but other people's faith informs their values. But we arrive at the same place, cause the values are universal even though we may have different ways of seeking God and of praying and engaging in religious ritual.

…I see my faith as something that builds bridges - doesn't build walls. I mean, for example, if somebody got up on the House floor and said something misinformed or even bigoted about Islam, of course I would stand up and correct the record and put forth the truth. But that's not something only I would need to do. Anybody could do that if they studied the subject matter.

You know, people who are within this same religion don't always see the faith the same way, right? Because just like you know some evangelical Christians who are to the far right, politically

So, you know, religion and faith is part of the American fabric. It's one of the reasons why the first amendment says that Congress shall make no law establishing a state religion. That's so we can all pursue God as we see fit. And, you know, this issue of how religion plays out is going to be messy. And we're not always going to agree. But hopefully we can agree that, you know, the state should be neutral ground in which everyone can participate and that the big religious value questions will be played out in our daily lives every day….

Source:
“First Muslim Congressman Prepares to Take Seat in Congress.” National Public Radio.

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6513386&utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20180717&utm_campaign=npr_email_a_friend&utm_term=storyshare. Accessed 19 July 2018.

About Keith Ellison

Keith Ellison is an American politician and lawyer. He was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1963. He has been Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional district representative in the US House of Representatives since 2007 and Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee since 2017. Before being elected to Congress, Ellison served in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Before entering politics, Ellison spent 16 years as an attorney specializing in civil rights and defense law. Ellison is the proud father of four children – Elijah, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Amirah and is running for Attorney General of Minnesota.

Voice 4: Keith Ellison

Vocabulary

abolitionist a person who advocated or supported the abolition of slavery 

in the U.S

commercialism practices and attitudes that are concerned with the making of profit at the expense of quality, or being obsessed with buying things

egalitarian relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities

evangelical

Christians technically speaking, evangelical refers to a person, church, organization that is committed to the Christian gospel message that Jesus Christ is the savior of humanity



gravitate move toward or be attracted to a place, person, or thing

sovereign a supreme ruler, especially a monarch, or possessing royal power and status


suffrage the right to vote in political elections

Voice 5: Shams Aljuwude
“Daughter of America”
My parents grew up in the same village in Yemen. My father fell in love with my mother after watching her from a distance while she did her chores. He being the handsomest young man in the village, married who he thought was the most beautiful girl. My soon-to-be mother moved into his family home and shortly thereafter started a family.
My parents both came from peasant farming families. What food they had to eat came from what dairy products they owned and from whatever crops they were able to harvest, if it rained and the crops grew. Because my parents had a difficult existence, my father had to leave the country to find a decent job. He worked for a while in the Persian Gulf island nation of Bahrain. Eventually, my father looked to America the land of tremendous opportunity for those who seek it, where he had a cousin who worked at a factory and earned a decent living. This cousin was the man who helped my father find work in the United States, and the same man who would later convince my father not to allow my sister and me to immigrate to America with the family.

I sometimes think about the difficulties my father must have had when he decided to go to America—to leave a culture that was his own, the country where his ancestors were buried; to go to a new land with another language, a land where people dress, look, act, and believe differently than would a Yemeni farmer’s son. The one thing that my father had in common with other Americans, he believed, was that he sought a better way of life, just as the earlier immigrants to America did. He felt that because it was a country founded by and made up of immigrants, he would only naturally blend in.

He told me about how, after he arrived in Detroit and was met by his cousin, he was immediately sent on a Greyhound bus that took him to California, where he would work picking grapes and asparagus stalks as a migrant farmworker. I asked him how he communicated, because I knew that he did not speak any English. My father explained that he did not speak to anyone, and that when he had left his cousin in Detroit, his cousin gave him a piece of paper with the word “chicken” on it. His cousin advised him to follow the crowd on the bus and do whatever they did. If they stopped off at a place to eat, he was to show the piece of paper. He eventually got to the camp where he lived and worked with other Yemenis and sent whatever money he earned to Yemen to support his growing family, his parents, and his siblings.

After working a while in America my father would travel back to Yemen to be with his family, and then he would go back to America and work. When I was born my father was in Yemen. When it was announced that my mother had given birth to a girl, my father wore his meshedeh (turbanlike head covering) loosely to show his disappointment. He was hoping for another son because boys traditionally earn money and help support the family, whereas girls are just more mouths to feed and do not contribute to the financial well-being of the family. Little did he know that I would capture his heart with my cleverness as a child and that he would announce to the family that I was his favorite.

My family immigrated to the Southend of Dearborn in the summer of 1972, a year after I was born. My father had a well-paying job working on the assembly line in the Ford Rouge Plant and was able to have us brought close to him. We rented a flat in a house owned by my father’s cousin, the same man who always insisted that females should not immigrate to America. In fact, when we did finally come here so that we could live with my father, we left my sister behind. We immigrated to the United States without her. My father also wanted to leave me behind, but my mother would not allow it because I was only a baby.
My sister was eight years old when she was left behind. She was told that we would be back in a year or two and that she would take care of our grandparents until we got back. This was my father and his cousin’s idea. They felt that girls, should not be raised in the Unites States, that they were better off in the old country where they could be protected from any and all evils that might be found in the new country’s foreign culture and ideas….
My earliest memory of being aware of my identify is when I was five years old. We had moved to a neighborhood in Detroit that year out of the safety of the Arab culture of the Southend. We moved into a neighborhood where we were one of only two Arab families. One of our next door neighbors did not appreciate that we had bought the house next to theirs. They made sure to let us know this at every opportunity.
One day when I was five, I was sitting on the front sidewalk playing with some rocks—an innocent child not knowing what kind of hatred lurked in the world. The teenage girl who lived next door approached me and started calling me a camel jockey…I remember sitting on the sidewalk staring at her in awe, not really understanding what she was talking about, but realizing …she was saying…a very negative word.
…I sometimes wonder about bigoted people like our neighbors who believe they are superior to others and have the right to hate immigrants. Do they know that they live in America? Do people have to keep reminding them what that means? Are some people just so stupid that they think immigrants traveled to their exclusive homeland to live and not to America? This country is only about two hundred years old. It is a baby. The only people who have a right to be angered at immigrants being here are Native Americans.
Sometimes I feel that I might be discriminated against because I dress differently than the average American and that it threatens people. But when I was five, and I was sitting on the sidewalk being called a camel jockey, I did not dress differently than any other five-year-old-kid in this country….
My family bought a house in the Southend because many of the other people there had the same culture we did. My mother had new neighbors that she could communicate with. We felt embraced by other Arab families who had the same concerns that we did about being in a different culture. Like us, they wanted to be a part of it, but they did not want to give up their own identities. Since this is a free country, there was always the sense that if we did not want to give up some of our traditional Yemeni customs, we did not have to. So my parents sent us to schools, and I got to go to school because my mother felt it was safe.
The older...I got, the more [I] became aware of our dual cultures. One culture was that of television, which, more importantly, we also found in our school. The other culture was that of our home.
When we were in school six to seven hours a day, we were exposed to a curriculum that catered to Christians of European descent. I remember how absurd it was when we Arab Muslim children would sing in the Christmas concert that was done every year (the school was made up of mostly Muslim Arab children) and that the teachers would say “Merry Christmas” to us when we did not even celebrate the holiday. The teachers didn’t even ask us if we celebrated it or not. I wondered if they assumed that we did or if they did not care whether we did. Needless to say, it was a very awkward situation where two cultures met and assumed not to notice the difference they had.
After the long days with our teachers who were all, as I recall, ethnically European Christian people, the same kind of people who belonged to the culture that we watched on TV, when we went back home.
As soon as we walked over the threshold into our house, we walked into Yemen. We would immediately be met by the mother whom we spoke to in Arabic. We would be in a home decorated with pictures of Muslim holy places and hand-woven Yemeni debegs used to serve Yemeni breads. …My mother would also remind us of our religion when prayer time came (five times a day). She would do her ritual washing before the obligatory prayer, then spread the neatly folded prayer rug toward Mecca and start praying where we could see her….
As I got older, my mother started asking me to wear the hijab, the head scarf that Muslim women wear. When I started wearing it, it was easy since all the Yemeni women I knew wore it. When I asked what it was about, my mother said that we wear it because we are Muslims, that it is part of our religion. That was a good explanation as I at the time needed. Later in my life when I was faced with a crisis and was looking for help from God, I had a profound religious experience during which I realized the significance of wearing the hijab. I understood my identity as a Muslim woman, and that the hijab identified me as one of the “believing women” the Holy Quran talks about. I realized that my ethnic heritage is significant and legitimate and cannot be ignored. It is significant to the extent that those who hate Muslims hate me because I am one, even though they have never met me. I knew and loved who I was historically and became able to see how beautiful people of other cultures were. My recognition of my Yemeni history helps me to know which way I should ne heading in my life. I choose to dress like a Muslim so that I may honor my religious beliefs and my identity. I wear my hijab and also my jilbab (a long robelike dress) in order to feel sacred and in touch with God.
I felt, at the same time, that because I lived in a free country and the Bill of Rights guaranteed my religious freedom, that I was blessed to even make such a decision. I felt that I must be the ideal American. I am a Muslim Yemeni woman who espouses her identity wholeheartedly, but who also cherishes the ideals of freedom. By my very existence in this country, I believe that this is truly a free country because I can be who I am, not who the conformists want me to be. If I am made to submit by assimilation into the dominant culture, then how could this country be called “free”? Certainly many of my beliefs are Muslim, but I also sincerely believe in the ideas that this country was founded on, in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights, and I do consider myself an American who would fight for the cause of freedom.

Source:

Aljuwude, Shams. “Daughter of America.” Editors Abraham, Nabeel & Shryock, Andrew. Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000. 

About Shams Aljuwude

Shams Aljuwude is a pseudonym for a Muslim American woman who was born in Yemen in 1971. She immigrated to Dearborn, Michigan the next year and still resides there. Aljuwude was pursuing her undergraduate degree in 2000.

Voice 5: Shams Aljuwude

Vocabulary

bigoted having or revealing an obstinate belief in the superiority of one's own opinions and a prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others

camel jockey a racial slur for Arabs

migrant farmworker a person who moves from place to place to get work, 

laborer who harvests crops seasonally
Voice 6: Ibtisam Barakat
“…I invite you to become me for the duration of this essay—take a walk in my moccasins as a person from the Middle East.
Identity

You are Palestinian, a woman, and a poet. Your language is Arabic. You write from right to left. Your religion is Islam. People in your culture pray to Allah, the Arabic word for God. They fast

in Ramadan, a month in the Islamic calendar. Many of your female relatives wear the hijab. The color of your eyes is coffee brown. Your name means “a smile,” but few people outside the Middle East know that or can say your name easily. Your IQ is high. IQ stands for I Question everything.
War and Words

You are three years old when war happens in your country. Your mother has cooked a lentil-and-rice meal. You and your siblings are waiting for your father to come home so that you can

eat together. But when he arrives, his first words are, “Hurry. Tell your mother the war has started!” In the chaos that follows, you are separated from your family for a night. The war ends with Israeli military occupation of your city and other Palestinian cities.
So you blame lentils for how you feel. Without knowing it, you take out all the anger of the Middle East on one tiny lentil seed to make it understand how powerless and small you feel. …
Letters to Freedom

You wake up every day dreaming of al-hurriyya, freedom. You do not want to live in the Middle East under a crushing military occupation that denies you so much, including the freedom to say

the name of your country—Palestine…The minute you learn about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you copy it by hand and carry it in your pocket, until your mother washes your pants with the paper inside; all is pulp. But you have memorized your rights and personalize the Declaration to sing it with wishful joy to yourself….