2013-14
JOHN NEAR GRANT Recipient
Islamic Student Experience in the Classroom after 9/11: A Holistic Analysis of Sociopolitical Influence on the Muslim Student Psyche
Connie Li, Class of 2014
The Islamic Student Experience after 9/11: A Holistic Analysis of Educational and Sociopolitical Influences on the Muslim-American Youth Identity
2014 Near Scholar
Mentor: Mr. Damon Halback April 14, 2014
Connie LiFor the first twelve school years of our children’s lives, we cultivate them daily in order to shape them into thoughtful, capable, and productive individuals who will serve their nation and humanity. The environment we craft, the curriculum we construct, and the behavior we instill all clearly reflect what matters to us as a society. On the other hand, student responses to education are just as telling: the way they interact with material also comprehensively reflects where we are as a society. It is therefore conducive to understand the effect of textbooks and classroom environments on student perception of important events that influence not only their subsequent interactions with their peers, but also the roles they ultimately play in an American future. Especially among current events, few have allowed us as much insight as the attacks of September 11, 2001. The post-9/11 social atmosphere Muslim students find themselves in reflects the future of multicultural life in America. In a tense, complex climate of simultaneous discrimination and universal awareness of political correctness, the study of what forms MuslimAmerican youth identity will require the deepest understanding of all. Thus, the Muslim youth experience can be defined by the struggle to forge and preserve a hyphenated Muslim-American identity, visible in the suppressed discussion of political issues in the classroom and resulting stifling of free thought. The skewed narrative told in high school history textbooks further complicates the level of comfort Muslim students feel interacting with their peers in the classroom. Finally, the climate of suspicion surrounding Muslim-Americans and its detrimental effects on their mental health paint a complicated picture of their attempts to define themselves in an increasingly public arena.
When 9/11 jarred a national, and indeed international consciousness, the blossoming of fear at home opened a new chapter of American history. Few had begun to predict what would happen next: the global mourning, the confusion of those trying to piece together a story, and
ultimately the revealing of the uglier nature of a wounded America as those left behind searched for answers. The American psyche created a special niche of insecurity and caution for matters concerning Islam, which morphed into a nationwide sensitivity towards Islamophobia that, too often, spilled over into the realm of bigotry. While today we still hold silent moments once a year and whisper when 9/11 is mentioned, efforts to reach and maintain a delicate understanding of Islam, its Middle Eastern followers, and Muslim-Americans are an equally crucial part of giving the event and the populations it affected the respectful thoughtfulness they are due.
Politics and the Classroom
United States involvement in Middle Eastern affairs before 9/11 played a strong role in constructing the current atmosphere of wariness toward Islam (Muslim-Americans). As Cynthia White Tindongan notes, the American bombing of Libya in the 1980s and the Gulf War of the 1990s are only two precedents that also “sparked incidents of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim rhetoric and crime.”1 Other political issues, such as conflict over oil, U.S. foreign policy, and relations with Israel combined to create a climate of intolerance against Arabs and Muslims.2 According to Wayne Journell, political opponents after 9/11 began to denounce each other as “ideologically and morally ‘wrong,’ a label that now stands for unpatriotic, bigoted, xenophobic, or indecisive,” thus closing the door to understanding between dissenting parties.3 Tindongan points out that an issue that often arises in the classroom is teachers’ avoidance of discussing current political topics, and thus the safest choice of discourse parrots official rhetoric.4 For fear of controversy, sometimes schools do not encourage the questioning of mainstream representation of current events––and when the U.S. is in conflict with other nations, students of multinational backgrounds are presented with the choice to either quietly deny their backgrounds without dissent or speak up and disobey an American model of citizenship that requires pledges of
allegiance.5 The difficulty and sensitivity of this matter was demonstrated in the post-9/11 experience of an Iraqi boy who wanted to participate in his school’s multicultural day parade, but was asked to hold an American flag instead of an Iraqi flag so as to “avoid discrimination.”6
Tindongan quotes J’Lein Liese’s explanation of the unique dilemma Iraqi-Americans found themselves in as a result of the American foreign policy agenda at the time:
The U.S.’s problem with Iraq was not with its people but with its President’s decision to invade Kuwait. Most Iraqi refugees in the United States shared similar sentiments about Saddam Hussein, but that doesn’t mean they had to feel shame or anger about their own ethnicity, culture, religion or country of national origin.7
But Iraqi-Americans like that boy were not the only ones to suffer. Americans of vaguely Arab or Muslim appearance had become candidates for discrimination, including unrelated Indian and Sikh populations.8 What might that Iraqi boy have gone through? Perhaps he questioned why he could not walk under the flag of one of his cultural origins and be seen as American at the same time. When multicultural American youths like the Iraqi boy discover in the classroom that their hyphenated identities are at odds with the American political agenda, they face an attitude that they have to pick one country over the other––and in doing so, must renounce an integral part of their selves.9
Textbook Representation of Islam
Textbooks are important to the Muslim-American student experience because they represent the mainstream narrative about Islam in a format specifically designed for easy consumption and memorization by students.10 Currently, the textbooks produced by four large publishing houses dominate the secondary school history textbook department, making up about 95% of secondary school textbooks in the nation.11 For instance, of the 32 history and social
science textbooks on the Virginia Department of Education book list, the majority are published by McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.12 According to analyst Jonathan Band, the textbook publishing industry is very profitable: textbook prices have risen 800% in the last three decades, and the profit margins of some publishers are as large as 25%.13 Mohammed M. Saleem and Michael K. Thomas find that the process is often politicized, and thus textbook content is sometimes actively skewed.14 After analyzing several of the most popular textbooks used to teach social sciences across the nation, they identified the primary objective of “Propaganda Making,” under which were assembled several goals (Table 1).
Table 1: Propaganda Making Goals Goal
Focusing
Labeling
Distancing
Categorizing
Creating an Agenda
Personalizing
Explanation
Distancing the acts of terror from the American identity.
Assigning names to individuals, groups of people, events, or actions of an individual or group that highlight certain characteristics while backgrounding others thereby exemplifying the process of focusing.
The process of drawing a distinction between “American” and “un-American.”
Categorizing events, places, cultures, people, etc. into specific groups, which are contrasted with something that is either American or un-American.
Facilitating the propagation of their ideas and to achieve specific goals.
Personalizing the events around [students] by asking them to reflect on the impact of those events in their lives.
Reforming immigration Giving the events of 9/11 a context in terms of immigration.
Source: Saleem and Thomas 2011, 17.
The combined effect of these goals results in an inaccurate representation of Islam’s worldwide significance, beyond the images of certain specific events that cannot offer students a basis upon which to understand Islam in its historical and modern roles. Approval processes can discourage publishers from discussing complex or controversial subjects in depth, leading to “very minimal, neutrally framed representations of controversial topics”15––which means students experience limited chances to engage in discussion themselves, and cognition can stagnate at initial impressions.16 The controversy over coverage of Islam centers around what constitutes an accurate portrayal of the religion and its people. On one hand, Gilbert Sewall of the American Textbook Council, a small partisan national research organization, asserts that some pro-Islamic American organizations aim to censor negative portrayals of Islam by persuading world history textbook publishers to “paint a rosy picture of Islam.”17 Sewall further maintains that misinformation about the true foundations of Islam and its ability to function in a twenty-first century world persists, and that its presence is intentional and a real threat to American security.18 On the other hand, Susan Douglass of the Center for Islamic Education finds the current depiction of Islam in world history textbooks in the Virginia state reading core standards to be biased and unbalanced.19 She points out that studying Islam strictly from the standpoint of its effect on the Western world is necessarily excluding other information and painting a portrait of Islam as an adversary to Christianity, which inevitably lends it an antagonistic character.20 The difficulty of relying on pre-2001 literature as guidelines for creating new textbooks lies in their foundation on aging, biased resources, many of which flatten Islam into a one-dimensional aggressive threat to Western Christian nations. This representation simply serves to reaffirm the “Orientalism” viewpoint––that is, the Western perception of superiority over the non-Western world.21 Today,
it is understood that Islam was historically one of the most significant contributors to world cultures, and its role today is ever shifting.22 Saleem and Thomas surveyed a history textbook curriculum and found that “the culture and history of Islam were generally not well-developed in any history textbooks except one....There is a continuing lack of knowledge of Islam amongst students and teachers and that the topic of 9/11 is presented in superficial ways.”23
Another issue in textbooks is the association of the word “Muslim” or “Islam” with terrorism and its effect on the social relations of Muslim-American students. While terrorism is objectively defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal,”24 oftentimes textbooks encourage students to think about terrorism as a foreign crime typically committed by Muslims, instead of pointing out the fact that globally, terrorists do not come from uniform cultural backgrounds.25 This skewed emphasis appears in Hunt, Thomas, Rosenwein, and Smith’s The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures Western Studies textbook. One of the few times Islam is mentioned in the textbook comes in the following context:
North-South antagonisms became evident in the rise of radical Islam, which often flourished where democracy and prosperity for the masses were missing [emphasis added]. The Iranian hostage crisis that began in 1979 and commanded the world’s attention revealed the antinationalism and anti-Western sentiment among Islamic fundamentalists [emphasis added]…Beginning in the 1980s and continuing into the 2000s, terrorists from the Middle East and North Africa planted bombs in European cities, blew airplanes out of the sky, and bombed the Paris subway system. These attacks, causing widespread destruction and loss of life, were said to be punishment for the
West’s support [emphasis added] both for Israel and for the dictatorships in the other Middle Eastern countries.26
“Democracy and prosperity for the masses” are concepts commonly defined as central to Western individualistic ideology. Thus, by asserting that radical Islam flourishes in the absence of these ideals, the authors imply that Islam is inherently antagonistic to Western values. The textbook also highlights this opposition explicitly when it attributes “anti-Western sentiment” to Islamic fundamentalists, and depicts the Western world as the victim of vicious terrorist attacks in retaliation to its political agenda. This textbook emphasis on radical Islam and neglect of everyday Islam make it difficult for students to connect their understanding of a MuslimAmerican peer with that of an anti-American Muslim extremist bent towards the destruction of Western ideals.
In July 2011 the New Jersey Department of Education further supported this portrayal, sponsoring a new online curriculum that represented the U.S. as virtuous victims and the “Muslim World as nefarious, oppressive, and inherently undemocratic,”27 or un-American and dangerous. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security also published a curriculum that confirmed its own 9/11 narrative.28 But across all these curricula is a widespread inability to definitively categorize terrorism in its respective sociopolitical contexts, since “one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.”29 This widespread, messy categorization only adds to the confusion and misinformation students face when presented with the melded concepts of Islam and terrorism and the presence of Muslim-American peers.
Not all textbooks take such a one-dimensional approach, however, instead choosing to explore a history that offers students a more comprehensive view of Islamic cultures. Peter N. Stearns’ World Civilizations: The Global Experience, for instance, provides an in-depth
examination of Islamic history and cultural significance. Starting from a modern perspective that addresses both Western and Middle Eastern viewpoints, the author points out that justification for terrorist acts targeting innocent civilians has been perceived as “religious fanaticism or political radicalism that is so extreme as to preclude negotiation and even rational explanation.”30 Thus, students are equipped to make the next logical step and realize that the American reaction to terrorist attacks is an equally extreme, violent repression that has never attempted to communicate with or understand the adversary it blames.31 By allowing students to see the complex motivations behind responses to 9/11, Stearns enables them to delve deeper than the 9/11 narrative the U.S. Department of Homeland Security published, echoed in many secondary school textbooks.32 Stearns also addresses the historic state of women in pre-Islamic Arab culture, seeking to examine a balanced judgment of their levels of freedom, and mentions the vast ability of the Arab empires to appreciate the intellectual and artistic diversity of their conquered lands.33 Finally, the textbook addresses potential misconceptions about Islam. It notes similarities with Christianity, one of which was the “ethical system that did much to heal the deep social rifts within Arabian society”––a depiction in stark contrast to that in The Making of the West, which implied that the presence of radical Islam was correlated with the absence of fundamental civil rights.34 Perhaps most importantly, Stearns offers the beginning of an explanation of radical Islam, noting that Muhammad taught Islam as the absolute, final, divine instructions from God in a refinement of Judaism and Christianity; therefore, students can reason that one characteristic that distinguishes today’s Muslims is their belief in the absolute truth of their religion’s teachings, which may motivate more extreme defenses of that belief. As for religious tolerance, Stearns also mentions that non-Muslims were treated well, though they had to pay a jizya (a non-Muslim tax), and they were allowed to worship as they pleased.35 By
painting a picture of Islam’s historical legacy with balance, Stearns enables students to form a much more balanced foundation upon which they begin to understand Islam’s role in the world today in relation to their Muslim-American peers.
Textbook representation of Islam that is not relevant to its modern-day American practitioners, in particular the students who study from those textbooks, can engender confusion and misconceptions about Muslim-American identity. When textbook conversations about the ability of Arab and Muslim-American citizens to assimilate or participate are omitted, students fail to obtain a balanced perspective that enables them to perceive these citizens as human, American individuals, not uniform, monolithic groups.36 For instance, Liz Jackson notes that “present-day Muslims are highly visible in many of the text additions as terrorists and as threats to U.S. society, but are otherwise invisible in the texts as ordinary, peaceful people.”37
Ultimately, after 9/11 incomplete or skewed textbook coverage of Islam broadened but still ranges from limited, uncontroversial, and neutral standpoints to negative depictions associated with terrorism.38 Textbook inaccuracy and unreliability and teacher usage of ofteninaccurate external supplementary materials in the classroom point to an overarching, more subtle and complex inattentiveness that combines in an absence of outright discrimination towards the Muslim student population and settles into a sharpened sensitivity of their identity.
When non-Muslim students begin formulating a generalized concept of terrorism that places their Muslim peers on the other side of a shield, Muslim students can feel isolated in their social environment. So strongly has this narrative of frantic protection of security persisted that casual interaction after 9/11 was redefined in the name of protecting American safety, though its real effect was to justify discrimination against Muslims and Arabs.39 However, despite the differing opinions about textbooks, students nationwide seem to have had significantly higher interest in
terrorism, Islam, and jihad after the attack.40 This evidences curiosity invested in truly understanding and comprehending the situation. Textbooks like Stearns’ would help those students explore answers to their questions. The Muslim-American student experience, then, consists of a blend of tolerance and misunderstanding whose true nature can only be discerned through a curriculum that encourages alternate viewpoints and the questioning of dominant narratives.
The Classroom Experience
The classroom environment provides key clues to the status of Muslim American student identity. According to Saleem and Thomas, when told to discuss 9/11, many teachers often lacked comprehensive, unified guidelines, and so elected to take a “scattershot” approach, where they attempted to cover as much as possible without regard for order.41 Jennifer Job, Assistant Professor of Curriculum Studies at Oklahoma State University., also notes that although 22 state curriculum guidelines currently require schools to discuss Islam in the context of the broader narrative of “world religions,” most major curricula overlook the details required to comprehend the nature of a religion as complex, storied, and misunderstood as Islam.42 Saleem and Thomas also found that pre-established curriculum guidelines that adhere to traditional Western perspectives lead teachers to instruct students in the dominant narrative of Islam as a threat to Western order and culture.43 They also found that this teaching style leaves Muslim and other minority students feeling that their school has the power to “threaten their values and their very way of life.”44 Some schools’ well-intentioned efforts to hold “celebrations of diversity” still cannot satisfy minority students’ need for true verification of identity, since sharing ethnic food and dance alone cannot replace the controversial discourse necessary for true cross-cultural understanding. As a result, it is difficult for schools to offer students the opportunity to share
with their peers in an educational setting the bridges where outsiders can begin to comprehend different heritages.45
However, Louis Cristillo’s New York City-wide survey of Muslim-American high school students, living in the city of one of the 9/11 attacks, adds a layer of complexity to this question of heritage in an educational setting. Cristillo found that “contrary to expectations—and the fears of many parents—Muslim youth have generally felt comfortable, safe and fairly content in New York City public schools since the events of September 11th, 2001, but these young people— even those who are not religious—have been made hyper-conscious of their religious identity,” in addition to instances of discrimination.46 Islamophobia has reared its head in so many other ways since 2001––in vitriolic hatred, even in random murders of Sikhs mistaken for Muslims,47 but friendship and socialization appears common between Muslim and non-Muslim students alike. Thus, religion proves to be no barrier for most Muslim students in making friends, nor does it seem to be a large factor in terms of friend choices.48 It also is worth noting the “tremendous ethnic diversity of most high school populations” in New York City, which means Muslim students also survive well in an environment with students of all sorts of ethnic backgrounds.49 Overall, Muslim students seem to blend in and thrive socially among their nonMuslim peers in New York City.
However, according to Louis Cristillo, many students have experienced some form of hurtful teasing or bullying mostly for their traditional religious/ethnic modes of dress. According to the survey, 17% of the students surveyed had experienced negative encounters with others because of their ethnic or religious background.50 Certain Muslim groups suffered somewhat more: Arab students were “twice as likely to experience a bigoted offense in school. Teasing and taunting are their most common complaints: being called a ‘terrorist;’ feeling the brunt of an
ethnic slur or an offensive remark about Islam; or being mocked for an article of clothing, usually a headscarf (hijab) worn by girls. More girls (58%) than boys (42%) are the targets of these sorts of bigoted behaviors.”51 Although the politically correct narrative finds that Muslim students deserve the same protection from everyday discrimination as other citizens, New York schools have not taken significant official action to curb bigoted actions. According to Cristillo, harassment of Arab and South Asian students increased in New York even though New York City school officials established policies in 2008 intended to combat ‘bias-based’ bullying and intimidation. The report found that many of those policies are rarely implemented,52 and that therefore bullying from racism and bigotry still remains a serious issue.
The Effect of Surveillance on Muslim Psychological Health
9/11 caused a complex combination of tolerance of and hostility towards Muslims. According to studies conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim-American population totals around six to seven million, and roughly 25% of average Americans hold anti-Muslim stereotypes.53 Before 9/11, about 80% of Americans objected to law enforcement’s use of racial profiling, particularly against African Americans. However, after 9/11, 60% were in favor of racial profiling directed towards Arabs and Muslims.54 Furthermore, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 52% of Muslims felt that they were targeted by the government for increased monitoring, and 38% of Muslims overall were at least somewhat bothered by it.55 This attitude was reflected in the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslim students in the Northeast in 2012, which Chris Hawley describes in The Huffington Post:
Police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and 13 other colleges in the Northeast. They talked with local authorities about professors in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed….The AP also published details about how police placed undercover officers at Muslim student associations in colleges within the city limits. Kelly and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg repeatedly have said that the police only follow legitimate leads about suspected criminal activity. But the latest documents mention no wrongdoing by students.56
As demonstrated by NYPD surveillance, suspicion of Muslim youth increased to the point of pervasive invasions of privacy that intrude on “the same freedoms and opportunities that [nonMuslims have],” says Tanweer Haq, chaplain of the Syracuse University Muslim Student Association.57 And even though no criminal activity was discovered, some Muslim students felt that concerns are justified. Ali Ahmed, one of the students monitored on the whitewater rafting trip, said, “I can’t blame them for doing their job…There’s lots of Muslims doing some bad things and it gives a bad name to all of us, so they have to take their due diligence.”58 Fellow student Adeela Khan agreed, but noted that the situation was “just kind of like a Catch-22,” implying that even though she understood the NYPD’s justification, it did not leave Muslims room to defend themselves.59
But even though some Muslims may understand the motivation behind surveillance, the real effect of this monitoring has resulted in psychological stress for the Muslim-American population. For instance, an American Psychological Association (APA) survey of Muslims
found that their sense of safety declined dramatically after 9/11,60 and 25% of surveyed ArabAmerican adults around Detroit “reported post-September 11 personal or familial abuse,” which was associated with higher levels of psychological distress, lower levels of happiness, worse health, and a perception of a lack of respect in American society.61 Furthermore, in 2012 psychologists Mona A. Amer, PhD and Joseph D. Hovey, PhD conducted a survey of 600 ArabAmericans in 35 states, most of whom were Muslim. They found that half of the subjects had serious depression and that 25% reported moderate to severe anxiety, rates higher than that of the general public and other minority groups, and attributed them to “ongoing racial profiling, discrimination, and other stressors unique to Arabs.”62 Public reaction to this information has even proved hostile: in 2011, when Amer’s previous work was covered in a U.S.A Today article, she received “emails from people who were very upset because the story was a little sympathetic toward Muslims and Arabs,” and even death threats.63 Though these studies measured the effect of anti-Muslim attitudes on adults, abuse is also directed towards the most innocent members of the Muslim-American community. For example, a ten-year-old Brooklyn boy trying to board a city bus in October 2013 could not find his pass and uttered a simple prayer to Allah, akin to the common “Oh Lord” or “Help me God” interjections of the English vernacular. Upon hearing the prayer, the bus driver called the boy a “terrorist” and kicked him off the bus.64 As Amer notes, Arabs and Muslims “receive constant messages about how [their communities are] full of terrorists, ignorant people, oppressive people.”65 Events like this are evidence that the message is still being sent, and when its intended audience hears it, the damage can extend all the way to identity.
Identity: Two Worlds Forged
Although Muslim-Americans share a large basis of their identity with other Muslims around the world, such as cultural customs and value systems, their blended identity is uniquely, distinctly American. In a 2013 Pew Research Forum poll of Muslims around the world, 63% of U.S. Muslims thought there was no conflict inherent in being devout and living in modern society, higher than the global median of 54%, even though the U.S. is more “modern” than many other countries surveyed.66 Eighty-one percent of American Muslims polled believed violence towards civilians in defense of Islam is never justified, while a great 39% of Afghan and 29% of Egyptian Muslims supported it.67 From these findings, says poll director James Bell, it is clear that “there’s something about U.S. Muslims that is distinctive”––and that something is the American portion of their identity, which makes them “more closely resemble other Americans than they do Muslims around the world.”68
This American-ness is evident in a survey conducted by Selcuk R. Sirin, PhD, who found that even though 84% of the twelve- to eighteen-year-olds he interviewed had encountered at least one act of discrimination in the past year, they were comfortable with their “hyphenated identities as both Muslims and Americans…and [didn’t] feel the need to pick one over the other.”69 In his survey, participants were allowed to indicate the degree to which they identified with their Muslim and American backgrounds. Sirin found that the majority had harmonized hybrid identities; a third had parallel identities between which they switched, and roughly 10% had conflicting identities.70 Sirin attributed this resilience and variety in identity despite incidents of perceived discrimination to the unique nature of American-ness, which asserts that all Americans have certain inherent rights for which they can stand up.71 The unique nature of a Muslim-American identity, then, lies in the American part: Muslim-Americans experiencing
high levels of discrimination still call themselves Americans, a phenomenon that does not occur anywhere else in the world, since many European Muslims are barred from full participation in European society even after they have settled for generations.72 Perhaps it is a unique type of American nationality that differentiates Muslim-Americans other Muslims around the world. With a naturalization policy of citizenship and a national understanding of America as a nation built by and composed of immigrants, Muslim-Americans may feel that America offers to them an identity, even when many of its occupants do not fully accept them. However, this “hyphenated identity” comes with its own embedded conflicts. For instance, Zainab Khan writes in The Islamic Monthly:
We’re a generation who grew up trying to synthesize a multitude of identities, several of which we were told were inherently incompatible [emphasis added]. We were Pakistani/Indian/Bangladeshi/Arab/Persian/etc., American, and Muslim. Growing up as the “Others,” we faced the well-known narrative of American non-acceptance, but we also faced a similar non-acceptance from our immigrant communities; we weren’t _______ enough, so we weren’t Muslim enough either – to our communities, the two identities went hand-in-hand. Many of us fought this double-edge non-acceptance by reclaiming Islam, and divorced our Islam from the Islam of our immigrant cultures in the process [emphasis added].73
From the viewpoint of many Muslim-American youth, Muslim-American identity is not always smoothly integrated; American value systems can clash with the value systems of Islam and other cultures, and when children of Muslim immigrant parents are raised with both at the same time, conflict and confusion can ensue. The Muslim-American identity of immigrants differs from that of natural-born citizens, and thus the identity young Muslim-Americans have forged
for themselves often faces attack from not just society at large, but also that of their family members.
The Muslim-American youth identity exists as a combination of two worlds that sometimes can be unstable or difficult to maintain. Cynthia White Tindongan describes this state as a “liminal space,” a place where its residents’ two worlds overlap and frequent navigation of multiple identities is required.74 One result of this state is a “double consciousness,” a state of mind that prevents an individual from growing into his or her identity in a way that permits that individual to privilege his or her cultural heritage. In other words, although Muslim-Americans might be accustomed to communicating in an American cultural context, switching to their Muslim voices presents the possibility of a distinct difference and conflict.75 Although melding identities is somewhat easier in modern America than in the past, what with a relaxation of the limits of generally acceptable identity such as sexual orientation, it is possible that many Muslim-American youths feel forced into the precarious balance of a double consciousness. But ultimately, usage of the term “Muslim-American” itself requires a deeper understanding of its origins. Sirin, Bikmen, Mir, Fine, Zaal, and Katsiaficas suggested in 2008 that this community is composed of a number of discreet populations that have been clumped together into a single monolithic identity because they shared similar post-9/11 experiences, namely the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.76 It is not American custom to hyphenate populations by religion––for instance, “Christian-American” and “Hindu-American” are rarely ever heard––but Muslim-American is a convenient term for those who share a religious background and the ensuing experiences resulting from external forces. As Sirin, et. al assert, “the study of a ‘Muslim-American’ identity, therefore, is not necessarily a study of religiosity or ethnicity, but rather is a study of an emerging collective identity, which is influenced not only by
religious background, but also by a specifiable historic (i.e., attacks of 9/11) and political (i.e., war on terror, U.S.A Patriot Act) contexts.”77 The Muslim-American identity is not an easily described concept, for it does not stem from traditional organizational categories. It might be compared to that of the Japanese who were imprisoned in internment camps during World War II, for both populations have undergone a systematic discrimination in reaction to political agendas. But Muslim-Americans do not share the same national heritage, and thus are more strongly bonded by the broad labels which society has affixed to them in the process of highlighting them as a target population.
But some Muslim-American voices dissent with the concept that identity is an issue at all. For instance, in March 2014, Laila Alawa wrote in The Islamic Monthly, “It has reached a point where we are continuing still to overemphasize the topic, a decision that overshadows the real issues our community faces, point blank….I reject the paralysis that arises when I am told that my identity as a Muslim American is not a natural one.”78 The issue at hand is not that a Muslim-American identity is not “natural,” or that the two worlds are mutually exclusive ––Muslim-American is as natural as a Chinese-American or Turkish-American, with all the blending that arises from a multicultural upbringing. It is the Muslim-American identity that has formed in response to specific American political events like the 1953 Iranian coup, the attacks of 9/11, and the Iraq invasion, and the ensuing social stigma that can perhaps be described as unnatural, in that it did not stem from cultural or ethnic traditions and consists of similarly persecuted populations. But it is a valid identity nevertheless, and one whose determination increasingly needs attention and protection.
Because some Muslim-American youths feel that they are living a contradiction––they want to preserve their American and Muslim heritage, but are often perceived as anti-American–
–they often seek ways to reach out and make it known that they are American, according to Professor Job.79 One interesting expression of this need is the Mipsterz (a portmanteau of the words “Muslim” and “hipsters”) music video, published in 2013. In the video, several Muslim women in hijab (headscarf) and “hipster” outfits skateboard, run, play, take selfies, and generally have stereotypical American teenage fun to the tune of Jay-Z’s “Somewhere in America.”
According to Yasmine Hafiz of The Huffington Post, the intent of the video was to “illustrate just one of the many ways that it’s possible to be [an American Muslim].”80 Despite the video’s intended positive message, criticism has abounded from both sides. The women have been accused of being “not Muslim enough,”81 or trying too hard to send the message “We’re not different–we’re just like you” and deny their individuality. Ultimately, however, the video is an aesthetically-minded expression of a unique Muslim-American identity. One notable concern raised by Sana Saeed in The Islamic Monthly is the use of image-based fashion and music to make this point:
What we as Muslim women don’t need in trying to own our spaces in our small and large communities is the use of our image for the purposes of fixing our image. More specifically: we don’t need to use a (“positive”) superficial representation of us to combat other (“negative”) superficial representations. The reason why stereotypes are oppressive and hurtful is that they dilute the diversity and power of our individual experiences by employing caricatures and images that do not allow, to any extent, for depth. The formula for creating stereotypes, mainstream tropes of assimilation and ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ should not be our formula for fighting against those very things. So, we need more than our image. We need us.82
Saeed makes a strong point––that hurtful images and appearances of Muslim-American women are not solved by replacement with “better” images, but by a truthful representation of the various ways Muslim-American women simply are, the ways in which they exist, embody, live, and function. The same can be said of all Muslim-Americans. While the Mipsterz video achieved an aesthetic goal and did indeed represent an expression of a form of Muslim-American individuality, at its best it would have done what Muslim-Americans need the most: illustrated how it is possible to blend both identities together in a celebration of harmonious heritage.
When Muslim-American youth must face a world where bullying, politics, and discrimination hang in the balance, it is difficult for them to know which way to turn to resolve their largest issue of identity. But if American society as a whole examines the climate they and other students encounter in the classroom, realizes that detailed thought can help minimize the damaging presence of stereotypes and inaccurate representation, and institutionally gives Muslim-American youth the space and understanding they need to forge their own identities, it can finally welcome an integral population whose multicultural existence is innately, delicately tied to the history of the American soul. If World History and U.S. History textbook publishers alike stopped relying on Occidental viewpoints to interpret Eastern cultures through a tinted Orientalist lens, and instead recognized their shared ability to create rich, thorough curricula on Muslim America, they could help young American minds truly internalize the sociopolitical implications of 9/11 and their powerful agency in effecting positive change on themselves and towards their Muslim peers. In the classroom and out, whether in the midst of discussion or walking on the streets, every one of us must understand that the heart of America lies somewhere in every one of its residents––and that to speak, endeavor to understand, and defend the rights of others where they are violated, is to be a true American.
Notes
1 Cynthia White Tindongan, "Negotiating Muslim Youth Identity in a Post-9/11 World," The High School Journal 95, no. 1 (Fall 2011): 83, accessed April 11, 2014.
2 Ibid.
3 Wayne Journell, "The Challenges of Political Instruction in a Post-9/11 United States," The High School Journal 95, no. 1 (Fall 2011): 6, accessed April 11, 2014.
4 Tindogan, "Negotiating Muslim Youth Identity," 85.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 87.
10 Liz Jackson, "Islam and Muslims in U.S. public schools since September 11, 2001," Religious Education 106, no. 2 (March/April 2011): 162-80, accessed December 18, 2013.
11 Ibid.
12 "Virginia History-Social Science Standards of Learning (1997)," Council on Islamic Education, accessed December 18, 2013.
13 Jonathan Band, "The Changing Textbook Industry," Disruptive Competition Project, last modified November 21, 2013, accessed April 11, 2014.
14 Mohammed M. Saleem and Michael K. Thomas, "The Reporting of the September 11th Terrorist Attacks in American Social Studies Textbooks: A Muslim Perspective," The High School Journal 951, no. 1 (Fall 2011): 17, accessed December 18, 2013.
15 Jackson, "Islam and Muslims in U.S.," 166.
16 Ibid.
17 Saleem and Thomas, "The Reporting of the September," 15.
18 Gilbert T. Sewall, "Islam in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell us," The American Textbook Council, accessed December 18, 2013.
19 Ibid.
20 "Virginia History-Social Science Standards," Council on Islamic Education.
21 Saleem and Thomas, "The Reporting of the September," 19.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 16.
24 "Terrorism." Merriam-Webster.com. Accessed March 3, 2014.
25 Saleem and Thomas, "The Reporting of the September," 21.
26 Lynn Hunt et al., The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, 4th ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2012), 1003.
27 Rachel Bailey Jones, "Intolerable Intolerance: Toxic Xenophobia and the Pedagogy of Resistance," The High School Journal 95, no. 1 (Fall 2011): 42, accessed April 11, 2014.
28 Jennifer Job, "Letter from the Editorial Board," The High School Journal 95, no. 1 (Fall 2011), accessed December 17, 2013.
29 Ibid.
30 Peter N. Stearns, World Civilizations: The Global Experience, 5th ed. (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2007), 855.
31 Ibid., 858.
32 Job, "Letter from the Editorial."
33 Stearns, World Civilizations: The Global, 131.
34 Hunt et al., The Making of the West, 1003.
35 Stearns, World Civilizations: The Global, 135.
36 Ibid., 22.
37 Jackson, "Islam and Muslims in U.S.," 172.
38 Ibid.
39 Saleem and Thomas, "The Reporting of the September," 19.
40 Ana Marie Cox, "The Changed Classroom, Post-September 11," Chronicle of Higher Education 48, no. 9 (October 26, 2001): A16, accessed December 18, 2013.
41 Saleem and Thomas, "The Reporting of the September," 32.
42 Jennifer Job, "Muslim-American Youth Identity Project," e-mail message to author, April 11, 2014.
43 Saleem and Thomas, "The Reporting of the September," 21.
44 Ibid., 23.
45 Tindogan, "Negotiating Muslim Youth Identity," 72.
46 Louis Cristillo, "Religiosity, Education and Civic Belonging: Muslim Youth in New York City Public Schools," Muslim Youth in NYC Public Schools Study, accessed December 18, 2013.
47 Ibid., 8.
48 Ibid., 6.
49 Ibid., 9.
50 Ibid., 7.
51 Ibid., 10.
52 Cristillo, "Religiosity, Education and Civic," Muslim Youth in NYC Public Schools Study,” 10.
53 CAIR NY, accessed March 31, 2014.
54 Tindogan, "Negotiating Muslim Youth Identity," 72.
55 Michael Lipka, "New Muslim American Council Aims to Measure a Diverse Community," Pew Research Center, last modified March 20, 2014, accessed March 20, 2014.
56 Chris Hawley, "NYPD Spied On Muslim Students At Yale, All Over The Northeast," Huffington Post, last modified February 20, 2012, accessed March 31, 2014.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Rebecca A. Clay, "Muslims in America, Post-9/11," American Psychological Association 42, no. 8 (September 2011), accessed April 4, 2014.
61 Aasim I. Padela, "The Association of Perceived Abuse and Discrimination after September 11, 2001, with Psychological Distress, Level of Happiness, and Health Status among Arab Americans," Am J Public Health 100, no. 2 (February 2010): 286.
62 Clay, "Muslims in America, Post-9/11.”
63 Ibid., 39.
64 Selim Algar, "Bus driver boots praying Muslim boy: suit," New York Post
65 Clay, "Muslims in America, Post-9/11,” 39.
66 Mark Trumbull, "How U.S. Muslims Are Different: Pew Poll Sheds Light on Global Contrasts," The Christian Science Monitor, May 1, 2013, accessed March 31, 2014.
67 Ibid.
68 Ibid.
69 Clay, "Muslims in America, Post-9/11."
70 Ibid.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
73 Zainab Khan, "Deconstructing the Hijabi Bride: Even Islam in America Is Hegemonic," The Islamic Monthly, August 30, 2013, accessed April 4, 2014.
74 Tindogan, "Negotiating Muslim Youth Identity," 74.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid. 77-8.
77 Ibid.
78 Laila Alawa, "Let’s Stop Talking about Being Muslim in America," The Islamic Monthly, March 12, 2014, accessed April 11, 2014
79 Jennifer Job, "Muslim-American Youth Identity Project.”
80 Yasmine Hafiz, "Why Islam Needs More 'Mipsterz,'" The Huffington Post, last modified December 6, 2013, accessed April 11, 2014.
81 Ibid.
82 Sana Saeed, "Somewhere in America, Muslim Women Are Cool," The Islamic Monthly, December 2, 2013, accessed April 11, 2014.
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