The Face Behind the Veil

by Donna Gehrke-White

  Some of these Muslimah refugees are running not only from their country’s violence but from arranged marriages or abusive men. One twenty-three-year-old I interviewed might become the victim of an “honor killing” if she returns to her country. Her fiancé remains enraged that she “humiliated” him by leaving for a trip to the United States and refusing to come home. He has gone so far as to attack members of her family who remain in her South Asian country. The United States now allows asylum for such endangered women.

  There is also a new generation of Muslimah—the grown-up daughters of the newcomers. Most either were born here or came as small children. Many already have families of their own. The second generation also includes the daughters of converts. Some have foreign-born fathers and American mothers who converted to Islam. For others, both of their parents are converts. This new generation of Muslimah varies widely. Some went back to a covering their mothers abandoned. Others are the first in their family not to wear a hijab. Many chafed at the restrictions their parents imposed upon them: They were not allowed to date, for example.

  What they have in common is that they tend to be educated. Many hold professional jobs. They also tend to be devout, pray regularly, and observe Ramadan and other Islamic holy times. Many view their local mosque as like a church, part of their social life, not merely a place for weekly prayer service. They go to the mosque for home-schooling clubs, Daisy troops, and canned-good drives to help the poor. In that, they and the converts have helped Americanize the mosque.

  Many Muslimah want their mosque to reflect how they live in America as equals with men. They want to have access to the same prayer services as men and demand that their spiritual needs be given the same weight. Some are considered radicals. A mixed prayer service was held in March 2005, in New York, in which a woman led the prayers and—even more scandalously to many Muslims—allowed men and women to pray side by side. Change is coming, predicts Ingrid Mattson. She should know: She is the first woman to become vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, the largest Muslim organization on the continent.

  Also fueling the change and growth in American Islam are the Muslimah converts who, for the most part, are among its most enthusiastic practitioners. Many of these converts say they are relieved to find a faith that finally suits them. Most are former Christians who have had problems accepting the Christian idea of the Holy Trinity (God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit). Islam, by contrast, recognizes only one God but acknowledges Jesus as a prophet.

  Most converts are African Americans, who are resuming what may have been their ancestors’ original faith. Historians and religious scholars estimate that up to 30 percent of African slaves who arrived in the New World were Muslim. Ihsan Bagby’s latest research indicates that fewer Muslim slaves reached the American colonies than were sold to buyers in the West Indies and Latin America. Still, he says, about 10 percent of the United States’ newly arrived slaves were Muslim.

  As soon as slaves arrived in America, their new masters brutally suppressed their religion and forced them to become Christians. Hundreds of years later, their descendants reclaimed Islam. Indeed, for decades, Islam has been part of a black movement such as the Nation of Islam. While today most African American Muslims adhere to a more orthodox Islam, Ihsan Bagby estimates about 10,000 are still part of the Nation. (The Nation of Islam does not release its membership numbers.)

  Because of a spike in curiosity about Islam after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, more Americans are going to the mosque—and staying. Since 2001, Islam appears to be attracting more whites and Hispanics, and in one study at Detroit mosques Bagby found that whites and Hispanic Americans now make up 40 percent of the latest converts. In a national 2000 study, just four years earlier, white and Hispanics were only 25 percent of the converts, he says.

  The Muslimah converts I interviewed are as varied as their immigrant sisters. A white woman in rural South Dakota converted as a college student, collects hijabs, and started an Internet matchmaking service for Muslims. A young Mexican American photographer in Texas became one of the first Hispanics at her mosque. Master Zakia Mahasa, who sits on Baltimore’s judicial bench, as a Master in Chancery in the Family Division of the Baltimore City Circuit Court, converted as a teenager, has traveled to Mecca on a hajj, and now leads a national Muslim charity.

  Surprisingly, many of these new members say they were first attracted to Islam by what they perceive as its feminist message.

  Despite the message of some leaders in the Muslim world who invoke Islam to suppress women, most Muslim women in the United States see their religion as a liberating force. They say their faith has helped them develop spiritually and intellectually, and they consider themselves feminists. In fact, some of the Muslimah I interviewed played prominent roles in the U.S. women’s rights movement during the 1960s and 1970s. Today, a new generation of Muslimah feel they are the new American feminists, see themselves as part of a sisterhood, and claim they are better able to balance work and family than other working mothers in the United States because their religion requires men to support their children. They also point out that religion’s traditional separation of the sexes actually helps women achieve.

  Deedra Abboud, former executive director of the Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, says Islam is more feminist oriented than the Christianity she grew up with. “I found I liked Islam and what it stood for,” she says. Islam has none of the Biblical teachings traditionally used by some Christians to malign women, such as Eve being portrayed in the Book of Genesis as the temptress who cajoles Adam into eating the forbidden fruit.

  Interviews and surveys indicated that American Muslimah are economically much better off than their European counterparts, who have been traditionally relegated to the lowest level of the workforce. European countries brought in low-skill Muslim workers to do the jobs that their own people would not do. American Muslim immigrants, on the other hand, have until recently tended to be much more highly educated, entering the labor force as engineers, doctors, teachers, or postgraduate students.

  Their children, the United States’ emerging second generation of Muslims, are becoming equally well-off and educated. Both daughters and sons are encouraged to go to college. Even the refugees who arrive in the United States with only the clothes on their back are striving hard to join the middle class, and if they don’t quite make it, many of their children will. The American-born converts to Islam are also relatively comfortable financially, with many of them educated and holding professional or managerial positions. As a whole, American Muslims tend to be affluent. Ihsan Bagby’s 2004 Detroit study of 1,298 male and female mosque congregants found that the average Muslim is thirty-four years old, married with children, has at least a bachelor’s degree, and earns about $75,000 a year.

  Like other American women, many Muslimah work outside the home to contribute to their family’s income. They are career-focused women who practice law, sell insurance, head nonprofit agencies, and start their own businesses and nonprofit organizations. They run the gamut, from a New York–born attorney who has never worn a veil—and never will—to a veiled Seattle convert who has made a business out of designing clothes for other adherents.

  Many of the interviewed younger Muslimah moms opt to stay home with their children, at least before the kids are old enough to go to school. Some also home-school their children. They want careers—but later. Their focus is to have a rich family life with well-raised children. They tend to marry early (some before the age of twenty) and have their own children while in their twenties. Then, after their children start school, they pursue a higher education, or go to work.

  American Muslimah tend to have at least started their college education by the time they marry. The exceptions are the newest refugees, but even these women who were denied the right to read and write in their countries are now eagerly attending classes in the United States for the first time. (They credit the Qurani
c emphasis on education for their own appetite for learning.)

  American Muslimah tend to vote Democratic like other American women, according to Mukit Hossain, president of the Muslim American Political Action Committee. They also vote in greater numbers than their Muslim male counterparts: 53 percent as opposed to 47 percent of the men, according to one of the committee’s studies. Indeed, more women are becoming politically active and running for office, from the California state assembly to a county office in Virginia.

  Many Muslimah, however, have traditional family values that are more associated with Republicans. Fewer than 10 percent of the Muslimah interviewed have never been married—about half the rate of American women overall. Of the women older than thirty-five, only two Muslimah interviewed were childless.

  Many of the immigrant women interviewed had marriages arranged by their parents. For the most part, many American Muslimah, including those of the second generation and as yet unmarried converts, did not “date” their future husbands in the usual sense. Intriguingly, the converts tend to be the most enthusiastic about following tradition: One woman did not even meet her husband until they were married—an elder at the mosque selected him—and she says he has turned out to be a caring spouse.

  Although there are horror stories—one arranged marriage ended in disaster in Miami for a South Asian bride—most American Muslimah report that their traditional marriages have worked out surprisingly well. They and their husbands enjoy mutual respect and affection. The husbands are generally as religious as their wives and treat them well. Sarwat Husain of San Antonio, Texas, says that agreeing to an arranged marriage in her native Pakistan was her ticket to America, as well as to winning a good husband.

  “Since the marriages are not based on infatuation, looks, or money, the divorce rate is very low in that part of the world,” Sarwat says. “And, indeed, my husband and I were a good match. I call myself a hyperactive person, and my husband is very calm and mature. He has always been there to listen to me and he has encouraged me to do what I wanted to do.”

  Like other American Muslimah, Sarwat is becoming more vocal about civil rights violations in the United States since 9/11. Currently a volunteer with a Muslim civil rights advocacy group, she knows firsthand the need for such groups: She was once followed home and accosted by a group of anti-Muslim men. Another Muslimah I spoke with reported that she and her teenage daughter were handcuffed in their Virginia home after federal agents broke down her front door in broad daylight in 2002. They were never charged with any crime.

  Most Muslimah wearing a hijab say they have been harassed in some way, usually with foul language, threats, or an exhortation to “go home.” (When one young convert was yelled at by a driver from his Corvette, she replied, “I am home!”)

  American Muslimah are also increasingly concerned about helping other Muslim women in the U.S. and internationally. They are forming groups, for example, to help victims of domestic abuse. Muslims have the same rate of abuse as other Americans, yet many are reluctant to discuss the subject publicly, some Muslimah say. These women want to be able to talk frankly in their community about abuse—and how to stop it.

  Many Muslimah also want to be able to provide foster care to Muslim children. Under current policies, Muslim children sometimes have to go to homes where the foster parents are active Christians. One young woman told me she has not been able to see her siblings because they are in a Christian foster home, the same one from which she was expelled because she objected to going to church and eating pork, which Islam prohibits.

  One Muslimah I spoke with wanted to be able to talk frankly about polygamy, which Islam condones under strict conditions. The great majority of American Muslims practice monogamy but one woman says she was tricked into marriage by a man who already had a wife. She wanted to warn other naive women about men who use Islam as a way to justify having multiple wives.

  Another woman says she went back to Christianity because she was concerned that Islam promotes wife abuse, including polygamy and beatings. She is now a minister and has started a mission to help abused Muslim women. “The whole abuse thing—he said I made him do it,” adds the woman, who is now known by her pen name, W. L. Cati. “He says it was my fault that he hit me.”

  Some American Muslim women are abused. One woman was brought thousands of miles to Miami in an arranged marriage, only to be repeatedly hit by her husband. Later he would leave her and then report her to police for neglecting their children. She wound up jailed and institutionalized at a mental hospital until outraged Muslims fought for her release. One of those who worked for her freedom worries that a trend may be growing of men who take advantage of immigrant wives who are ignorant of their rights under U.S. laws, abusing them physically, emotionally, and financially, even stealing their dowry or family money.

  Still, most of the interviewed Muslimah report happy marriages and loving husbands who treat them as equals and support their careers. One Florida Muslim man took care of his two daughters so his wife could go to medical school. Another, an engineer, watched over his son and daughter while his wife earned her doctorate at the University of Chicago. There are also professional partnerships, such as a husband-and-wife medical practice. Happily, these women also say their husbands support them having an equal presence in the mosques.

  More than ever before, Muslim women in America are becoming an integral part of the mosque and part of the American Islamic leadership that is creating a new strain of Islam, one that adheres to the Quran and Islam’s heritage, as well as adapting to the needs of the Western world.

  “I think it is inevitable that as more educated Muslims come out with new interpretations [of the Quran and other religious books] things will change,” religious scholar Ishan Bagby says.

  Ingrid Mattson, for one, is confident that better times are ahead. “There will always be very conservative mosques,” she says. “But they will come to be marginalized.”

  Muslimah also have had an impact on American society through their open practice of Islam. Clareen Menzies, of Minneapolis–St. Paul, is a convert who remembers how her neighbors from Uganda hid the fact that they were observing Islamic holy days and praying the required five times a day while attending services at a church that sponsored them as immigrants.

  Emma Al-Aghbhary, of the Chicago suburbs, finds the United States a better place to practice Islam than her native New Zealand. In her opinion, Americans are more tolerant than New Zealanders, even in spite of incidents of harassment in the wake of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  “I have worn the hijab, including modest clothing and abaya [the outer garment that is long, loose and modest] since the beginning of 2002,” she says. “People’s reactions have not been bad in Chicago. In New Zealand many people don’t quite know how to react. Some say rude remarks or give rude gestures. Here in America, people usually mind their own business.”

  Muslims, she says, are “treated like anybody else.” And that’s just what the Muslimah want: to be part of the American fabric. “They are very desirous of becoming involved in society,” Ihsan Bagby says.

  Still, many do not find it easy. Areej Abdallah struggled for nine months to find work as a software engineer. She had her three children soon after her marriage, and studied for her computer science degree afterward. When she was ready to graduate, she discovered that major U.S. companies would interview her on campus at Arizona State University in Tempe, but she never heard back from them. She kept trying, though.

  “I thought to myself, it’s my hijab,” she remembers. “That’s why I can’t find a job.”

  When Boeing offered her a job, Areej remembers accepting excitedly before the offer from the airplane manufacturer was rescinded. “I thought I was going to collapse,” she now admits with a laugh.

  Other Muslimah say they face struggles in the American judicial system, claiming that their children were taken away from them by judges who viewed with suspicion their practice of Islam. Says o
ne Muslim convert, a Native American who now lives in New Jersey: “The court system gave custody to [my daughter’s] father after a nasty custody battle in which my religion played, it seemed, a major role in the decision of the judge. I had custody of her all her life before the judge turned her over to her father.” Still, she would not consider leaving Islam. It has meant too much for her. It is her spiritual home; it gives her strength to confront her many problems.

  She and the others, then, offer insight into what has perplexed other Americans: How would women in free-spirited America remain a part of—or convert to—Islam, a religion that supposedly discriminates against women?

  Their answer: Look at us. We are better for being Muslim.

  PART I

  The New Traditionalists

  Ask Sahar Shaikh about her hijab and the twenty-something says it’s all about identity. By wearing it, she says, “I found out who I am.”

  More and more American Muslimah are donning some sort of covering as part of their spiritual journey, from a head scarf to a veil that covers most of the face. Unlike others in the West, they don’t see the covering as a symbol of female inferiority. Indeed, many hijab-wearing American women are highly educated: They practice law, teach at universities, develop software, or treat the ill.

  As a social worker, Sahar wears a hijab and long gown when she sees elderly clients. She wants to clear up what she says is a common misperception. Muslim women wear a hijab because they want to, not because their husbands or fathers force them. “It makes me feel more at peace with God,” Sahar says. “It also makes me aware of time management: I ask what should I be doing, what is His purpose?”

  Sahar grew up in suburban Miami with blue jeans, Girl Scouts, and rock and roll. But she felt something was missing in her life. She found it on a tennis court in her freshman year at the University of Florida in Gainesville, surrounded by her Muslim friends. They were wearing their hijabs, even while running to lob the ball and then having to pat their head covering back in place. She was the only one bareheaded. “Look who is the outcast now,” they gently teased her.