Neither can she accept that the Allah-invoking terrorists who held hostage the Russian schoolchildren, parents, and teachers in the summer of 2004 were true Muslims. No religious person, she says, would have sponsored a mass kidnapping that led to the tragedy of more than 300 dead, including many children. A mass killing, to her mind, is an act of barbarity no religion would condone.
The terrorist killings in Iraq add to her sorrow. These are times no one can understand, she has observed. Nevertheless, she and others will continue to do good to offset the evil that has inflicted so much pain in the world.
10
THE ENTERPRISE OF EDINA
JUST FIVE YEARS AGO, Edina Lekovic was applying for a job in southern California as a broadcast television journalist. As editor in chief of UCLA’s student newspaper she certainly possessed the journalistic credentials. She was stunned when one TV news boss told her bluntly, “You should give up the idea of being in front of a camera. It’s just not going to happen.”
The reason: “I was wearing a head scarf,” Edina says.
This exchange occurred before 9/11, but discrimination against Muslims was already in play, to the extent that the television executive felt comfortable telling Edina that as a Muslim woman wearing a hijab she would never land a job on TV.
For Edina, to be told such a thing was a blow. But what she soon learned was even worse: He was right.
Despite interview after interview, she couldn’t land a reporting job. She ended up a school teacher, then an editor for a Muslim magazine, and now the communications director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a national policy institution with offices in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. At twenty-seven, she feels fulfilled in her position at the council. It’s the perfect blend of all her interests—journalism, education, Islam, international affairs—and it allows her to advocate for people with unique stories (and these days, in her opinion, Muslims are especially vulnerable).
Nevertheless, it rankles Edina that this is America, the land where one can realize one’s dreams, and Edina finds it hard to accept the fact that religion might hold someone like herself back. Her own parents had flourished here when they had arrived as immigrants from what was then called Yugoslavia.
The irony is that she probably could have landed a broadcast television job had she been willing to forgo the hijab, which she hadn’t worn for that long anyway. Edina and her sister had decided to wear it after meeting some other Muslims—for the first time—on the UCLA campus.
“But to take off the scarf—it wasn’t even a consideration,” Edina says, adding, “I have no misgivings. I am not willing to settle in order to get a job.”
It’s not that she thinks she is required as a Muslim woman to wear the scarf. It is because her scarf is a constant reminder of what she gained: her faith. And that faith is also something her parents were long denied in the formerly Communist-controlled Yugoslavia. The post–World War II government, led by Tito, did away with religion—or tried to—including Islam and Christianity. As the so-called ethnic cleansing in the Balkans would later show, the old Yugoslavia remained ethnically and religiously diverse long after Tito’s demise.
Edina and her sister grew up in southern California. They looked like stereotypical California girls: blue-eyed and with sandy blond or light-brown hair. “To our friends and the outside world, we were like most any other Becky or Jody,” Edina says.
But she and her sister knew they were different. They didn’t celebrate Christmas like their school chums and other Americans—although on one occasion Edina asked for what she called a “New Year’s tree.”
“We would go to the mosque for major holidays, for Eid, maybe for some Friday prayers when there was time,” Edina remembers.
But how they looked and practiced Islam seemed quite different than what they saw on American television. They knew their family members weren’t fanatical Middle Eastern terrorists, and these seemed to be the only kind of Muslims shown on American television. And while her parents were strict, they never required them to cover their hair. Nor did they tell their daughters not to wear shorts in public. In retrospect, Edina feels that during her high school years, “being Muslim was weird. There were no other Muslims in my high school. I never knew anyone like me. I always felt alone in my religion.”
That all changed when she went to UCLA, soon followed by her sister, who transferred there from another school. For one, Edina was stunned to meet on campus an African American who had converted to Islam. “I was dumbfounded that someone would choose what I had spent most of my life running away from, or at least distancing myself from.”
Piqued by curiosity, Edina picked up a Quran to read for the first time. “It changed my worldview tremendously and my relationship with my God.” She started praying five times a day.
She and her sister also happened to pass by a booth on campus run by a Muslim students’ association.
“We’re like, ‘hi’!” remembers Edina.
The young man appeared a bit taken aback by the two young coeds in shorts and tank tops, but cheerfully asked if he could help them.
The sisters told him they were Muslim and wanted to find out more about the association.
Now the student was really taken aback.
“He told us there were prayers on Friday. He was trying to get over his shock,” Edina says laughing, “but he was very kind and giving.”
The sisters began going to prayer services and Muslim student functions. Edina’s sister, in fact, ended up marrying that very Muslim volunteer who turned out to be the son of Egyptian immigrants and a graduate student, and who went on to earn a doctorate.
But Edina has paid a price for her regained faith.
When she was about to be named editor in chief of UCLA’s newspaper, there were questions: Could she really do the job? Not that she wasn’t competent, but there was skepticism that she could be nonbiased. “Even members of my own staff questioned if I could separate my religious beliefs,” she says.
Those doubts were a foretaste of what Edina would find in the real world. When she graduated she decided to try to enter “mainstream” journalism—she wanted to be on TV. She had, after all, an impressive résumé. But she encountered resistance at the thought of hiring a woman wearing a hijab. The one editor who spoke to her candidly was the exception. Others who interviewed her were polite, but she never got past first base.
“There is still this notion from the old boys’ club that no reporter should display outward symbols of his or her religion,” she says.
Later, however, the public school system did hire her, and she ended up teaching English and history to fifth and sixth graders in Pasadena. “It was a very positive year,” she remarks before adding with a laugh, “I think it was the hardest job I have ever done in my life.”
Soon afterward, she was offered a job as managing editor for the Muslim magazine Minaret. She loved being back in journalism and being able to explore a broad range of issues. Her stint with Minaret also allowed Edina to further explore her faith and talk with other Muslims from around the world. In 2003, the country of Malaysia invited her to be part of an international conference of Muslim leaders that included discussions on how Muslims could help stop violence worldwide. Attending was an eye-opener for Edina. Other Muslims from around the world pounced on her to tell how they despised the United States for sending troops to Iraq and causing thousands of deaths of civilians there. Edina took pains to explain that many Americans agreed with them and were against the Bush administration’s war policy.
Now that she has joined the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles, she is busy with outreach to the community, promoting a positive image of Muslims, and helping to protect against civil rights infractions. “It’s been a rough time for the American Muslim community,” she says.
But she’ll be there to help out.
PART II
The Blenders
In her mid-twenties, Sofia Shakir wears stylish flowi
ng pantsuits to work at the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office. No hijab for her, thank you. Instead, she welcomes new fashions just like any other young American woman. Yet she feels as drawn to her Islamic faith as her younger sister Sadia, who began wearing the hijab while in law school in Michigan. “Islam is in my heart,” Sofia maintains. “I don’t have to wear clothes to show it.”
Many other American Muslimah feel the same way. They are the Blenders. They fit seamlessly into the American fabric. Indeed, their co-workers and neighbors might be surprised to learn they are Muslim. Scholars believe most Muslimah in America are Blenders. They don’t wear any head coverings or other clothing traditionally associated with Islam.
Blenders can be first- or second-generation Muslim Americans. They rarely include converts, though. The converts, or reverts as they are called in Muslim circles, tend to be the most enthusiastic about veiling and donning traditional clothes. They also stand out in American society, unlike the Blenders, most of whom prefer anonymity.
“I’m doing fine, living my life, obeying my God and not attracting any attention,” says one Blender, an accounting professor in the Chicago area. She says the hijab was on its way out in her native Egypt when she was growing up in the 1950s. Her mother did not wear one and she wasn’t expected to, either. It was mostly a habit of poor rural women. Now, however, the professor notices the hijab is making a comeback. On her yearly trips back to Egypt, she sees chic young women sporting them. In Chicago, she notes the young Muslimah donning head scarves. That’s fine with her. Just don’t expect her to wear one.
She and other Blenders says they are as spiritual as those who do wear some sort of covering. They say they do not need to show their religion with “a bit of cloth.” Blenders says they attend mosque services in as great a number as those women who do wear the traditional Islamic head covering. But the Blenders take pains to find a mosque where they will be accepted and not be drawn into any “cloth war.” Wearing a hijab “is not something that I think shows my faith as a practicing Muslim,” Sabrina Hossain maintains. She has an ally: her husband.
Some American Muslimah are unwilling blenders. They would like to wear a hijab but they fear harassment or discrimination. Indeed, some employers have complained about Muslim refugee women showing up for work wearing hijabs, according to a report by the Washington-based Cultural Orientation Resource Center, which receives federal funding to help the refugees. (The refugees’ social workers tell the bosses that they must allow the women to wear their scarves.)
Many other Blenders, however, chafe at their fellow Muslims dictating a dress code. “They say, ‘You can’t do that,’ but why?” asks Farrukah “Fay” Pershimam, who grew up in India and now lives in Florida. She opts to go bareheaded. She thinks other women should be able to decide for themselves as well.
As a founder of the Progressive Muslim Union of North America, Sarah Eltantawi strongly agrees. In an article called “Yes or No to Hijab: Not for Men to Answer,” she wrote: “I fear that unless Muslim women stand up for the right to make their own decisions about what they are going to wear…while they still have the chance, the fundamentalists will have completely succeeded in convincing yet more women that the simple act of wearing what makes them comfortable and adjusted is somehow shameful, traitorous, or haram.”
She herself doesn’t wear one. She says she can still be religious without covering her hair. Many religious scholars support her assertion. “The Quran prescribes some degree of segregation and veiling for the Prophet’s wives, but there is nothing in the Quran that requires the veiling of all women or their seclusion in a separate part of the house,” writes noted religious scholar Karen Armstrong in her book Islam: A Short History. “These customs were adopted some three or four generations after the Prophet’s death.”
Besides, says Nashville feminist Zainab Elberry, “Islam has progressed and changed so much. We have more important issues to tackle than what people should wear.” Indeed, she and the other Blenders you will read about are among the most active in their American communities, whether they are volunteering in schools or fighting for women’s rights.
11
ZAINAB: A PIONEERIN MUSLIMAH FEMINIST
ZAINAB ELBERRY, A POET, young mother, and Egyptian émigré, was attending a Nashville governor’s conference in the mid-1970s, listening to a speaker give advice on where women should be looking for work, when insurance was suggested. Zainab, who came from an affluent family in Egypt, was struggling in Nashville just to get by, so a good-paying job in the insurance field sounded great. She liked business. She figured that insurance offered flexible hours, ideal for a working mother.
Little did she know how hard it would be for a foreign-born Muslim woman trying to make it in the white-shoe, good-ol’-boy town of Nashville. “Talk about [glass] ceilings,” she now jokes. “I was a woman, an Arab, and Muslim. You learn about frustration.”
In 1984 she told a local magazine frankly “When a foreign person, such as an American, is living in the Middle East or Egypt, he is highly regarded, well-paid and receives good treatment. It is the reverse in this country: A foreigner has a handicap—he’s foreign; he has an accent. But you have to face the problems and live with it.”
Through sheer grit, she ignored jokes made at her expense, slights against her, harassment, and the bad pay. She played by the rules of the game, even though they were tilted against her and other women. She still remembers how carefully she followed the “dress for success” guidelines for women—that is, to dress like a businessman but in a “feminine” way. That translated into wearing skirted suits (never pantsuits) and donning floppy silky bows, the feminine version of a tie. On this score, having been born in the Middle East was an asset: She used her old-world charm to fit in with men who were more comfortable with conventionally feminine Southern women. That charm also helped her convince businesses to buy healthcare insurance from her for their employees.
With 50 million Americans still lacking any health insurance coverage, this is a subject about which Zainab is passionate, and that passion helped her to create her own business, including a “good-ol’-girls” network that has served her well. She helped start Nashville’s first business club for women—and some of the members who eventually started their own businesses later became Zainab’s clients.
She remembers taking her young son into the office: He played, she worked.
She rose in the ranks to become a representative and underwriter at one Fortune 500 insurance company in Nashville and after a while became a manager and million-dollar-club member at another top national firm, as well as being listed in Who’s Who. Then, after more than twenty years at the company, she was asked to resign. She joined a class-action discrimination lawsuit that eventually was resolved with the women given a settlement. “It made me sick to my stomach what was done,” Zainab says now. Still, she is glad the lawsuit made the company agree to a two-page list of reforms that will benefit its present and future female employees.
Today, after more than two decades in the business, she is president of her own independent insurance brokerage company, PINC Financial. She is married to Moroccan-born economist, Dr. Nour Naciri, who is also a lay authority on Islam. Their son, Nadeam Elshami, is on staff for a U.S. senator after having served as communications director and deputy chief of staff for a congressman.
In Nashville, Zainab is heavily committed to working for the Democratic party, to the extent that a Bill Clinton aide once wrote to her, “Your energy, devotion, commitment and belief in the United States only renews that same spirit in all of us who know you.” At her home she displays autographed pictures from former president Clinton and vice president Al Gore, fondly sent to her for her volunteer work. (She became known as the “pie lady” for keeping Gore’s staff supplied with pastries during the 2000 election.)
She’s also on the board of directors for former representative Paul Findley’s Council for the National Interest. “He is my political mentor,” Zain
ab says. “I learned a lot about our democracy from him during the past fifteen years.”
Zainab has been a major mover-and-shaker in Nashville where the local newspaper once nicknamed her a “one-person embassy” for her volunteer work helping educate locals about the Middle East and Muslims. (She has produced Muslim fashion shows that highlight apparel from twenty countries, started annual international art, cultural and food festivals, and helped promote such exhibits as “Empire of the Sultans” that highlighted the rich heritage of the Ottoman Empire.)
By all accounts she is a remarkable success. Yet she doesn’t rest on her laurels. She still remembers the pains that led to those successes. And, some thirty-five years since arriving here, Zainab says she is still fighting misperceptions, both as an Arab American and a Muslim.
“America is not an easy place to work in,” she says. “You have to be strong. It’s very hard. It’s still a male-dominated world.”
She considers herself a feminist—she is on the board of the Women’s Fund of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee—and a devout Muslim. She sees no disconnect between these two aspects of her life. Islam promotes learning for both men and women. Furthermore it’s a religion, she says, “that asks you to improve yourself, especially through education and learning.”
For Muslim women, that includes handling their own inheritances, charitable giving, and income. Islam also gives a woman the option to keep her maiden name, which Elberry did.
The Face Behind the Veil Page 8