Being A Muslim In The US

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Being a Muslim in the US

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I am an American and I love America not because I have the mere perception of the ‘Great America’, but it basically allows me, the son of Muslim immigrants from Africa, to contribute in its progress, to carve a path in its promise and to play a part in its possibility. I am a Muslim. I am an American. I am an American Muslim. But I often wonder, when they say ‘make America great for White People again’, where do I stand? Do they believe me when I tell them that I am a Muslim America? I have always hated the way my individuality has been ignored by my heritage. In these years of my life; living, loving and working here, only in the recent few years have I felt the strangers staring at me with wide open curiosity, the kind that awaits my identity to disclose itself without any prejudices. More often, their stares have been full of their perceptions and ideas about me, all based on the watching the television news. I am either a freak, a fanatic or a non-religious person. I am either a radical or an Americanized, cleansed and sanitized of my differentness. I am either one of them or one of us, though my status is primarily probationary. It may be annulled at any time based on any events that would not even be in my control.

With the complex and the shattered confidence in myself and my identity, I had been spending my days in America and would often ask my parents to go back and see what it is like to have lived among people of our own kind and those who think of us as theirs. Albeit I was happy, I was kind of satisfied as well, I always tried to participate in the progress of my community, there was still something that would often remind me of my individuality. But there was a turn of events when I met a girl in a public library once. I was reading Alice Walker’s ‘Living by the Word’ in a silent corner of the hall, when I saw a white girl holding a book ‘No God but God’ by Reza Aslan. It shook me a little for I, a Muslim guy, running away from the very thing I was supposed to carry on as my legacy, my identity, an American Muslim. Yet there was this white Catholic girl so eager to learn about my religion. I instantly waved at her and offered her a seat beside me. That was a special and a changing moment of my life. The discussions that I had with her made me realize that the ideology of the Americans towards Muslims is very strange and hollow. That there exists a proportion of good and evil in every religion and there is no logic in the generalization of a concept associated with the Muslims ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"McGefBZL","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Bayoumi)","plainCitation":"(Bayoumi)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":328,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/KAWGFVLF"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/KAWGFVLF"],"itemData":{"id":328,"type":"book","title":"This Muslim American life: Dispatches from the war on terror","publisher":"NYU Press","ISBN":"1-4798-3684-2","author":[{"family":"Bayoumi","given":"Moustafa"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2015"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Bayoumi). Since then, I have been quite confident about my identity. I am a Muslim and I am a citizen of the United States of America. I am entitled to the same respect, privilege and rights as any other citizen of this country.

Today, the question is of the perseverance of the future of our inherited faith, having enlightened but anchored moral uprightness that would infer our prosperity. The question is of the liberty to think our own thoughts, feel our own sentiments and remember our parental generation with honor and pride but not in fear and anxiety ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"pQkPAmD3","properties":{"formattedCitation":"(Grewal)","plainCitation":"(Grewal)","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":329,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/3USQYLW3"],"uri":["http://zotero.org/users/local/9Hfkg8Y0/items/3USQYLW3"],"itemData":{"id":329,"type":"book","title":"Islam is a foreign country: American Muslims and the global crisis of authority","publisher":"NYU Press","volume":"22","ISBN":"1-4798-0056-2","author":[{"family":"Grewal","given":"Zareena"}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2014"]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"} (Grewal). America might be gradually on its way of accepting us and learning what we feel and believe at heart. Let there be some living, let there be some hope, confined in the dust and darkness and no light but for that glow of a fading hope.

Works Cited

ADDIN ZOTERO_BIBL {"uncited":[],"omitted":[],"custom":[]} CSL_BIBLIOGRAPHY Bayoumi, Moustafa. This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. NYU Press, 2015.

Grewal, Zareena. Islam Is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority. NYU Press, 2014.