As a Muslim-American woman, upcoming author K. M. Awad faced a lot of discrimination and racism in different areas of life. In school, she was bullied for her religion and ethnicity, she struggled to make a lot of friends as well. At home, Awad’s parents tried to incorporate Arab culture heavily. She found herself torn between two cultures and like many other Muslim-Americans lead a double-life. When it comes to the restrictions and oppression that women specifically face in Muslim and/or Arab households and countries, it is due to the cultural values rather than the religion.
Many people mistake Islam as a religion that oppresses women, but it is quite the opposite in reality. Arab and Southeast Asian cultures are the root of oppression on women. Muslim American women face numerous amounts of challenges at home and step out in the world to just face more challenges. In a research paper by Seren Karasu, the challenges faced by Muslim American women are discussed thoroughly. Here is an excerpt from the paper:
Muslim-American women face the challenge of reconciling different aspects of their identities. It is important to recognize categories of one’s identity (i.e., gender or race) are not mutually exclusive, and intersectionality underscores that multidimensional nature of identity (Crenshaw, 1989; 1991). Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) coined the term intersectionality to encompass how the interplay between one’s race and gender changes one’s experience. Therefore, Understanding a Muslim-American woman’s identity involves understanding the intersection of her gender, religion, and in most cases her race. Sirin and Fine (2007) discuss how a “hyphenated self” (p.152), can be used to understand how one’s identity can be “at once joined, and separated, by history, the present socio-political climate,” (p.152), etc., especially during the global conflict. Muslim-American women’s identities, therefore, have become hyphenated in the aftermath of 9/11 in the United States. How much a Muslim woman chooses to identify with her faith is subjective. However, perceptions of Muslim women differ depending on how visibly religious they appear by both in-group and out-group members.
Having a better understanding of the variation amongst Muslim-American women is important in exploring how discrimination occurs within Muslim communities. Muslim-American women face “political intersectionality” (Crenshaw, 1991, p.1251-1252) because there are two or more conflicting politically associated facets of their identities. A Muslim woman is subordinated through both her gender and her religion in the United States and in most cases her ethnicity or race. Members of Islamic communities come from different ethnic backgrounds, making visual markers of religiosity through the Hijab an additional explicit variation in the intersectionality of Muslim-American women (Crenshaw, 1991; Sirin & Fine, 2007). Categorically three levels of identity (i.e., gender, religion, and race or ethnicity) apply to Muslim-American women who are either explicitly religious or not. The effect each level of their identity has on how a Muslim-American woman experiences “lived Islam” (Jeldtoft, 2011, p.1140) is subjective. Lived Islam refers to the way religious practice or non-practice is incorporated into one’s life. All Muslim-American women do not practice Islam in the same manner; however, practicing Islam is commonly viewed as a homogenous practice. On one hand, women not visibly practicing (e.g. wearing the Hijab) are assumed to not be practicing Islam by women who veil (Droogsma, 2007). On the other hand, some Muslim women view veiling or wearing Hijab to be moving backward to a more oppressive lifestyle (Jelen, 2011).
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