It’s very tricky to talk about being in the minority when you are a white person and so clearly a part of the larger power structure. But it’s something that white converts to Islam, particularly women, have to deal with. It’s something that I’m dealing with and the facts of it are driving me away from Islam so it’s better to talk about it than avoid it.
Let me stick to “I” statements as much as I can.
First let me say that I feel allegiance to women, as a class of world citizen, ahead of allegiance to other Muslims, as a class of world citizen. I’m white and middle class and while I work to combat racism both personally and within institutions, those are the facts of my life and my experience and I cannot escape how they have shaped my personality. I would like to say that the values I have adopted as an adult who has considered how she wants to move in the world reduce the impact of the social power that I wield without conscious thought but that it not always the case. I don’t apologize for choosing gender as my ultimate dividing line.
And I don’t wield much power or influence within a Muslim community for the very same reasons that outside of it, in the broader landscape of American culture, I am privileged. I am female. I am white. I am a convert. I am not married to a Muslim man. The last time I was active in a Muslim community I was also quite young, and so that was a strike against me in the realm of influence (but a mark for me in the marriage market which I discovered to my surprise).
I was quite satisfied with the imposed separation of men and women when I converted in 1988. There was literally a wall between men and women at the mosque in Ann Arbor where I prayed, and the women’s section was both much smaller as well as physically situated behind the men’s section. I never walked into the men’s section. I never looked into the men’s section (there were no windows). The wall could be pulled back, but it wasn’t very often.
The community was divided along gender lines outside the mosque as well. My Muslim friends were other women, mostly converts but not all.
According to the Pew Research Center (love the Pew Research Center):
More than three-quarters (77%) of Muslim Americans say they have always been a Muslim, while 23% say they converted to Islam; 9-in-10 (91%) converts to Islam were born in the United States, and almost three-fifths (59%) of converts to Islam are African American. Two-thirds (67%) of all converts to Islam in the U.S. came from Protestant churches, 10% came from Catholicism, and just 5% from other religions. Nearly one-in-seven converts to Islam (15%) had no religion before their conversion. A 55% majority of converts identify with Sunni Islam and another quarter (24%) identify with no specific tradition. Only 6% of Muslim converts in America identify themselves as Shia.
When I went off to college I identified as a feminist and drifted away from religion. I was happy then to live in a relatively separate world of feminist ideology, swimming at the co-ed gym during women-only swim hours and studying in the women’s lounge in the union and living in one of MSU’s last women’s dorms.
In any case, now I’m a grown-up in search of a religious community, not just a faith, and in looking at my options, re-joining a community where I am on the outside looking in does not appeal. Re-joining a community where men and women are separate and unequal does not appeal.
I made a donation to the East Lansing Islamic Center a number of years ago (where they also have a wall between the men and the women) and they subsequently sent a newsletter addressed only to my husband although both our names were on the check. I sent a letter saying I contributed to the mosque and would appreciate it if mail they sent to the house was addressed to both of us. I guess they don’t have a newsletter anymore because I haven’t received mail of any variety from them in years.
While my social allegiances are still first and foremost to women and women’s issues, I don’t want to join a segregated faith community. I don’t want put my heart into a place that holds me as less deserving of influence than other members due to my gender or my race or the fact that I am not native-born to the faith. I want to work with men and women together, and with people of all races, on issues of social justice. And I’m not willing to do it from the back of the building.
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