Women & Islamic Cultures Family, Law and Politics

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feminist critique of the male gaze and the “beauty
myth” (Wolf 1992). £ijàbis seen as liberation from
mainstream American culture’s obsession with and
promotion of the beautiful, thin female body. In
newspaper articles, these young women emphasize
that their body is their own, that in ™ijàbthey are
not sex objects, and that they have been liberated
from the “thin is beautiful” pressures that lead
many of their non-Muslim friends into anorexia or
bulimia (Farooqi 2002, Bullock 2002).
The ™ijàbitself is usually an adaptation of main-
stream American fashion. Rather than a traditional
wide piece of cloth wrapped around the body,
many will wear Western dress – a skirt from Gap, a
shirt from Chateau, and shoes from Payless – with
a headscarf pinned under the chin. This outfit
allows for greater freedom of movement than the
traditional wrap. Many will play sport, attend a
gym, or ride a bicycle dressed in this way.
Another creative adaptation of a traditional
American institution is the emergence of an “all-
girls Muslim prom.” Since the pious Muslim can-
not date or attend dances with men, the high school
ritual of the prom is an existential dilemma for
many Muslims. Not wanting to succumb to the
pressure of being “too nerdy” not to have a date for
the prom, many girls want to attend, even without
a date. The prom occasions power struggles be-
tween parents adamant the teen should not go, and
the teen adamant she should. A creative solution
has emerged in San Jose and other towns across the
United States. For the 2003 graduates in San Jose,
a banquet hall was hired. The girls arrived at the
hall in their ™ijàb, but removed it once inside, being
dressed in a typical prom outfit, with make-up,
jewelry, and their hair done. They sat down to eat a
three-course meal, and then danced to Britney
Spears. And at sunset, they turned the music off,
donned their ™ijàb, and prayed the maghrib(sun-
set) prayer (Brown 2003).
Muslim women in this category of those attempt-
ing to synthesize being American and being Muslim
have a strong sense of their equality with men in
Islam. Many will argue that equality need not mean
identicality as liberal feminists promote; rather
they align more with the “different but equal”
school, more akin to French feminism (Badawi
1995). They believe, like Aminah Assilmi, a popu-
lar Muslim woman speaker at religious confer-
ences, that they adhere to true Islam, rejecting the
cultural “baggage” of practices from their coun-
tries of origin that may be oppressive of Muslim
women (Assilmi and Disuqi). Indeed, as Cayer
found for young women in Toronto, though it can
be replicated across the United States also, many

292 identity politics


young women embrace Islam and the headscarf as
a way of resisting parental pressures that they find
limiting and restrictive, especially parental pressure
to marry someone from their own ethnic back-
ground (“I have the right in Islam to say ‘no’ to your
suggested candidate”) or as a way to promote their
desire for education and a career (“Islam gives me
the right to be educated, and if I am covered and a
practicing Muslim woman, no one can deny me the
right to a career”) (Cayer 1996). So while embrac-
ing an observant Muslim lifestyle (praying, fasting,
wearing ™ijàb), these young Muslim women are not
jettisoning a modern or American lifestyle. Many
expect to have careers, and if they marry, to have
husbands who will do housework and share child-
care (Bullock 2002).
Another example of creative synthesis is the
growing Muslim music industry in the United
States: this conforms to traditional Islamic law’s
eschewing of all instruments but the drum, but
addresses the needs and concerns of the youth.
Songs in English, such as “Do you think you can
fool him?” by Mustaqim Sahir, or “Allah is enough
for me,” by Zain Bhikha, praise the Prophet
Mu™ammad, extol the beauties of Paradise, stress
the necessity of prayer, and warn of the dangers of
a United States “sex and drug” culture.
All this has also had an impact on immigrant par-
ents, and it is not uncommon, as I have seen, to find
mothers adopting the headscarf after their daugh-
ters have done so, or to find themselves praying and
observing Ramadan, while in their twenties in their
countries of origin they may not have (Bullock
2003). In addition, many Americans, from all
walks of life (Native, African, Latino, Caucasian),
are attracted by the vision of Islam this youth move-
ment adheres to, and are converting in large num-
bers to Islam, adopting an observant practice of the
religion. Thus many Muslims negotiate their iden-
tity in the United States as an effort at synthesizing
a modern American lifestyle with an observant
Islamic lifestyle.

Bibliography

Primary Sources
S. Ali, Building a movement. A woman’s work, in Islamic
Horizons(May/June 1424/2003), 16–24.
A. Assilmi and R. al-Disuqi, Rights of Muslim women and
their potential for impact in society, video lecture pro-
duced by MeccaCentric Da±wah Group.
P. Brown, At Muslim prom, it’s a girls-only night out, in
New York Times, 9 June 2003, 9.
CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), America
Muslim News Briefs, 2 September 2003, email distri-
bution list.
M. Farooqi, Wearing hijab changed my life, Las Postias
College Express, 29 October 2002, 10.
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