American Whore - January 5
We: slutty white-skinned women with blue-eyes and corn silk hair.
We: black women with round hips and ready quips.
We: demure, almond-eyed asians with petite frames and midnight hair.
We: obedient Latinas, hot mamacitas, of strong faith.
We: walking stereotypes.
We are daughters of American empire White women and Black, Asian women and Latinas, First Nations women. We, Western Muslimat, decendants of a rich and worthy heritage are so frequently the recipients of scorn, disdain and condecension from our Muslim bretheren. How easily the terms American whore, American slut or loose Westerner fall from the lips of our brothers and sisters. American women like to display themselves, are sexually available, loose and without self-respect. We are the victims of constant assaults on our dignity and chastity, objects of suspicion and ridicule. Our assumed sexual history hovers over us like a dark-cloud, no matter the length of the hijab it can not cover the scarlet letter W, for whore, stamped across our chests.
What is more dangerous, however, than the ignorance or even maliciousness of our brothers and sisters, is our own readiness to accept these labels.
We reject our selves to fit a mold cast in the image of a mythical Near-Eastern or South Asian woman. A woman who does not and has never existed.
Why?
From the day many of us find Islam, we are expected to reject our own culture in favor of "Islamic" culture, but what is Islamic culture? Are there foods, norms of dress, ways of viewing the world that are common to all Muslims? Of course not. There are no Qur'anic curries, no verse of Kibbe or Biryani to be found. There is no aayat forbidding the the stunning red silk scarves of China or the bursting floral patterns of the Indonesian baju kurang, nor is there one encouraging the black abaaya favored in Arabia.
What there is, however, is the firmly held belief in the moral superiority of cultures that have been overwhelmingly Muslim for the last several hundred years. New converts, just starting to establish a Muslim identity are often surrounded by a Muslim community with thousands of years of traditions that have had hundreds of years to intertwine themselves with Islam so that the two become almost indistinguishable. We have abandoned a way of life and way of seeing the world, and are in a desperate search to fill the void. This combined with a deeply sincere desire to live Islam as best we possibly can, or even to fit in with our new Muslim community leaves us vulnerable.
Culture is not a bad thing, cultural practices provide a necessary framework for how we live our beliefs. The question is often one of emphasis. As Americans we have traditions of modesty and chastity. For years Chastity was a popular name for girls. We value truth and sincerity highly and we like to think of ourselves as a charitable people. These are traditions that are also encouraged in Islam. What we must do is reclaim our own cultural traditions while we forge new ones that create a framework for living Islam in modern America.
There is no need to trade your A-line skirt and long blazer for the Iranian style chador-- a most ostentatious and impractical piece of clothing for modern American cities. No need to abandon meat loaf and mashed potatoes for kibbe nayye and tabbouli. And, no there is absolutely nothing wrong with speaking English without an accent. Haven't we all met the sister who suddenly loses the ability to speak her native language w/o the interjection of 'ya'anis' ad nauseum?
We do a great service to ourselves and future generations of American Muslims if we see ourselves as traiblazers, rather than inferiors. There is nothing inherently better about Iranian culture than American culture. We need not condemn all things western as evil, arising from evil roots and traditions. Iranians fought, and continue to fight, tooth and nail, the Arabization of their own culture while they whole-heartedly accepted the religion of Islam, love of our Arab prophet (saawaws) and eventually his ahl al bayt (as). I have heard Pakistani women repeatedly state that they see no reason why they need to wear what we call jilbab, that their salwar kameez's are equally modest and appropriate Islamic dress. Of course they are correct and what they have done in their refusal to abandon perfectly Islamic cultural practices is open the way for the Islamization of their culture.
Muslims never tire of pointing out the social ills of Western society: high rates of out-of-wedlock birth, drug abuse, and alcoholism, promotion of materialism, and illicit sexual practices. Magazines and newspaper articles, blogs, messageboards and all manners of media in the global Ummah from America to Arabia, Iran to Indonesia decry the commodification of women's bodies as degradation, a symptom of the decline of Western morality. I can not disagree. All of these problems are detrimental to the ideals that God has commanded us to strive toward, they hurt our bodies, minds and souls. They are each, in their own way, forms of oppression and they feed the basest of our instincts at the expense of our higher selves.
What is missing in this critical analysis of Western culture is the same scrutiny for Near-Eastern culture. Why isn't there an equally vociferous discussion of and denunciation of honor killings, oppression of ethnic minorities, sexism, racism, increasing drug abuse and out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and, of course, rampant obsession with materialism and keeping up with the Ahmed's?
We view our cultures as we view ourselves, usually in the best possible light. The social ills of Near-Eastern countries differ from those in the West, but they are just as bad. Yes, we have high rates of out-of-wedlock births, but when was the last time you heard of an American murdering their daughter because she was raped? Materialism is a disease that has infected almost all countries, it simply expresses itself differently in each culture.
We are daughters of American empire, the conquistador and the conquered, the products of over 400 years of murder, rape, love and baby making, cultural appropriation, indoctrination, exploitation. We are not less than the daughters of Turkish or Arab imperialism, the products of murder, rape, love and baby making, cultural appropriation, indoctrination and exploitation.
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