originally published in 2005<\/a> by Common Ground News Service.)\u00a0 The author, Hiam Nawas, is described as \u201ca Jordanian-American expert on political Islam.\u201d<\/p>\nThe article makes the important point that attempts by mainstream women\u2019s organisations in the U.S. to try to support women in Muslim countries are often misguided and therefore not welcomed by Muslim women.\u00a0 Nawas argues that \u201cAmerican women need to understand that what is best for them is not necessarily what is best for Muslim women.\u201d\u00a0 The second half of her article looks at some changes that need to happen in the way that issues facing women in Muslim countries are understood.<\/p>\n
Some of the article\u2019s points were okay, and I liked the emphasis that not all women are the same or have the same needs (she even made a point of illustrating the diversity among<\/em> Muslim countries, which often doesn\u2019t happen).\u00a0 But it drives me crazy<\/em> when I see \u201cAmerican women\u201d and \u201cMuslim women\u201d talked about as if they\u2019re mutually exclusive categories.\u00a0 Perhaps it seems obvious that we should be understanding this as \u201c[non-Muslim] American women\u201d and \u201c[non-American] Muslim women,\u201d but I do think that this language is important, and that it\u2019s a serious problem if the many women who identity both as American and as Muslim end up excluded from these discussions.\u00a0 For non-Muslim Americans (or for non-American Muslims) reading it, it could reinforce the idea of \u201cAmerican\u201d identity as inherently non-Muslim, and of \u201cMuslim\u201d identity as inherently foreign to the United States.\u00a0 There are likely other assumptions being made about the category of \u201cAmerican\u201d that exclude many other Americans for various other reasons.<\/p>\nAlthough Nawas finally acknowledges the presence of American Muslim women at the end of her article, the language used throughout the rest of the piece makes a more lasting statement.\u00a0 This quick mention of American Muslims therefore seems almost token-istic, and she refers to them as a group that \u201cAmerican women\u2019s organisations\u201d should work to include, rather than as Americans who may themselves already be organised and active in a whole variety of ways.<\/p>\n
The article further positions \u201cMuslim\u201d women as always the ones who might need help from \u201cAmerican\u201d women, and assumes that there is<\/em> a need for \u201cAmerican\u201d women to help if they do it in certain ways, which is also debatable.\u00a0 While she acknowledges that, for example \u201cmany women served in high-level government positions when Saddam Hussein was in power\u201d in Iraq, and that Indonesians even elected a woman as president, there is still an assumption throughout the piece that \u201cMuslim\u201d women are in need of help and that there is a place for \u201cAmerican\u201d women\u2019s organisation to provide that help.\u00a0 In reality, I would argue that all of the countries that she mentions\u2013the United States included\u2013contain a wide diversity of class backgrounds, and ethnic and racialised groups, all of which shape the experiences of the people who live there, and their realities are far more complex than the \u201cAmerican\u201d or \u201cMuslim\u201d narratives that Nawas describes.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve been doing some research lately on spaces where \u201cMuslim\u201d and \u201cCanadian\u201d are talked about as if the two identities are completely separate, so of course I rolled my eyes when I saw the headline about \u201cAmerican and Muslim Women Working Together\u201d from an article on Media For Freedom.\u00a0 (As it turns out, the article […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,18],"tags":[96],"class_list":["post-2381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-politics","category-web","tag-american-muslims"],"yoast_head":"\n
For the millionth time, "Muslim" and "American" are NOT mutually exclusive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've been doing some research lately on spaces where "Muslim" and "Canadian" are talked about as if the two identities are completely separate, so of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/2009\/01\/for-the-millionth-time-muslim-and-american-are-not-mutually-exclusive\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For the millionth time, "Muslim" and "American" are NOT mutually exclusive\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I've been doing some research lately on spaces where "Muslim" and "Canadian" are talked about as if the two identities are completely separate, so of\" \/>\n<meta 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