Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Hello and salaam folks. You're listening to History Speaks and I am your host, Roshanikvan. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Shabana Meer, Associate professor of anthropology at American Islamic College in Chicago. She's the author of the award winning book Muslim American Women on Undergraduate Social Life and Identity.
Through rich ethnographic work, Dr. Meer takes us into the lives of Muslim women navigating elite American university spaces, showing how their religious identity is constantly negotiated, resisted, and at times strategically softened in order to belong.
The book asks, what does it mean to appear Muslim in spaces that read that identity's excess as foreign or as political threat?
In that light, let's talk about one of the most hopeful pieces of news we've seen in almost two years. Zoran Mamdani's recent victory in the New York City primary.
An openly Muslim pro Palestinian Democratic socialist candidate winning against a super PAC backed opponent is not just a political moment. It's a cultural and symbolic rupture. For so many Muslims who, like the students in Dr. Meir's book, have felt like they needed to shrink or adjust their identities to be accepted. Mamdani's win offers a counter narrative. It, it tells us that being fully visible, unapologetically Muslim, does not have to mean standing on the margins. I'm so excited to speak with Dr. Mee today about the insights from her book and how they resonate in this political moment. Let's dive in. Dr. Mee, tell us, let's start at the beginning. What drew you to explore the experience of Muslim American women in university settings?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Hi Roshan, this is such a good question because it brings me back to that time in 2000 and 2001. My proposed research was Muslim American Youth identities. And I was really interested in the inter religious aspect of Muslim youth identities.
Since I had not yet done my ethnographic research, I thought that the religious identities of Muslim students and their Christian and other peers were really important.
But then when I stepped into this research, I realized that it was the Judeo Christian secular nature and the leisure culture aspect of campus culture that became much more relevant to this research. So you know, and you know of course how it is you and I are both immigrants. So as a Pakistani immigrant, I was really fascinated by these familiar yet strange youth. They were sort of Pakistani, sort of Indian, sort of Arab, and yet they were not right. So this is, it was, it was kind of interesting to see those shadows, but at the same time to see how they were different. And in some ways it was also my Reflection on my own identity as an immigrant Pakistani who was also in the process of becoming sort of an American. At that time I wasn't even a US citizen. I might have applied for a green card, but that took a long time. Of course this was like 911 and everything. So I was curious to know what this process of living in the United States did to Muslim and immigrant identities over a generation or two or three.
So I proposed my doctoral research before 9 11. And this is something that sometimes I even have to remind myself that it was actually before 911 that I was interested in these identities. And for, for some of my mentors they were like, why are you interested in Muslims? Are Muslims even a group that is researchable?
Yes. I actually had somebody say, why don't you look at Pakistani? So there was the, you know, the American racial ethnic focus was very much there. And so I was asked, why don't you just study Pakistani Americans as a cultural group? And I said no.
And of course I was like thinking ahead, right? And this became true.
And at one point I even wanted to do research, comparative research on British and American Muslim youth. And at that time I was told, well this, why would you do that? That's not relevant. And so fascinating because I was at.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Cambridge in the uk Those Muslims are so different from American Muslims. Such a fascinating study.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: It would have been so interesting. Right. And then afterwards they became into. Afterwards the British also became interested in Muslim youth. And they could have like started before, but then nobody listens to us, do they? So, so there was. And at that. And the other aspect of why I was driven to this research was the endless opining on the Muslim woman by white non Muslims. Right. Of course you remember this surged after 911 as consent for a war upon Afghanistan was manufactured through the, you know, the bodies of Muslim women. And at that time before I was considering actually doing my fieldwork in a high school.
I had actually picked out this high school in Virginia and I was thinking about doing that. But then as I thought about the ways that Muslim women are weaponized in military and geopolitical ways, I realized that I wanted to hear from college aged Muslim women who had experienced and to some degree also processed the attack upon their identities in college classrooms, in news media and so on. So I kind of wanted to reach that level of analysis. So I was really motivated to listen to, and then to boost the voices of these young Muslim women of various ideological persuasions of various cultural backgrounds on how Muslim women, Muslim youth and Muslim Americans were harmed by old fashioned yet Newfangled Orientalism. And by these American geopolitical objectives, I.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Mean, I think the richness comes across in your work and the understudied space comes across in your work. And you know, universities often present themselves as inclusive, liberal environments, but your work reveals how those spaces can also be sites of subtle exclusion and identity negotiation.
This kind of leads me to think about some of the core tension your book explores. And in your research you highlight the idea of being Muslim enough or American enough. And you've sort of touched on it a little bit, right? Now when you were talking about your experience thinking about this topic. How do these tensions show up on a daily campus life? And what struck me was how these tensions aren't just internal. They're shaped by peer groups, by professors, even the architecture of the campus.
[00:07:17] Speaker B: Yes, that's such a good question. Because in my book I particularly focus on this idea of these Muslim American women as being under double cultural surveillance. On the one level, they're under cultural surveillance by the dominant majority. Are you American enough? Are you youthful enough? Are you like a normal college student or not?
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Whatever.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: Normal is exactly normal, quote unquote, right? And then on the other hand, they're also under surveillance by the community, by intra community surveillance. Are they Muslim enough? And Muslim, of course, in selected ways, right. Are they Muslim enough in public ways that affect the community and its representation? Right. Because women are always at the vanguard of community representation. So of course it affected women's lives and life opportunities, how they kind of represented the community in so many ways. And of course it affected women much more than it affected Muslim men, right?
So of course there's that interplay of, you know, Muslim men are the terrorists, but Muslim women are the representatives of terrorists kind of thing. So that becomes this issue where you are either proving your American ness or you're proving your Muslimness, right?
And then there are the community intra community spaces, which of course bleed.
And then you have these campus, mainstream campus public spaces. And so Muslim women constantly felt this binary tension, right? It seemed that, it almost seemed to me in their experiences that Muslim being Muslim and being American was a zero sum game, right? And very often you just had to choose one way or another. And sometimes, and it's funny because this, this, actually this, this research participant who I called Roshan, called her Russian.
This is before I knew you. So I called her Russian. And she said that she was trying to do both things. So she had her one foot in two boats, like one. She was trying to be like the normal American college student. And in the other, she was trying to be Muslim, but eventually she would fall into the water.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:45] Speaker B: And so eventually she decided to put both feet into the Muslim boat and decided that she had tried enough. Right. And so if you're Muslim, for example, you're constantly being interrogated. Are you a terrorist sympathizer? Are you in favor of, of course, at that time, Al Qaeda? Are you at war with the West? Are you culturally backward if you don't partake in drinking culture?
Are you, like, uptight? Are you anti modern? What. What kind are you really? And if you do do these things, then are you Muslim enough?
Like, non Muslims would also ask them, like, so you're not really, like, you're, like, nominal, right? You're not really a Muslim. So, yeah, like to.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
So kind of interesting.
I want to now turn to one of the most unexpected but powerful lenses that you use to explore these dynamics. The drinking culture. What made culture a useful frame for understanding their experiences in your study and what you talk about when you talk about drinking culture in your research, what exactly do you mean by that? Are you referring just to alcohol consumption or something broader? How did you use drinking culture as a lens to study Muslim students? What did you find about how Muslim women students navigate or negotiate drinking culture?
[00:11:05] Speaker B: So this was also very unexpected for me. You know, as somebody who grew up in Pakistan in a pretty conservative family, I had never encountered drinking culture. So for me to, like, face up to this in my data was sort of almost like I was forced to look at it, right? I was interested in the nerdy things. I was interested in, is there pluralism happening? Is there diversity? What kind of things are happening? Is there integration happening? And then I'm like, forced to think about the fact that these women are mostly talking about drinking culture and also and about how they navigate drinking culture and about how they are positioned by others vis a vis drinking culture. So their decisions and their positioning in drinking culture were important in terms of how they thought of themselves as religious and in terms of how others positioned themselves as normal or not. And so when I sat down to look at all the data, you know, that really scary time, that's like data analysis and you've got, oh, my God, all this stuff. And now I have to, like, make this into a pattern. Oh, my God, it's so scary, right?
[00:12:21] Speaker A: And you're, like, doing interviews and it would be fun, or reading it would be fun.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: This is a big mess. And what do I do? How do I make this into some kind of story?
And is it going to be the right story? Right. So as a Muslim also, you want to be the truth, truthful person. Right? You're not just a researcher who has to make a thing. You also have to be faithful to the data. Right. And you have to be fair and ethical towards your research participants.
You know, So I sat down to look at this and it's like drinking, drinking, drinking. And whether they were drinkers or not, drinking culture remained important in how they position themselves. So, for example, whether they drank a lot or they drank sometimes or they never drank, drinking was essential still to campus culture. And so if they opted out of it, this had social repercussions.
Right. And of course, for many of them, particularly the more conservatively religious ones, if they participate in drinking culture, if they are, you know, for example, there's people, many people believe that if they're in the presence of alcohol, that this is religiously compromising, spiritually a compromising thing. And so this was not an easy choice.
Yeah, yeah, this was not an easy choice for them. And so, for example, if you participate in alcohol culture, you could have social belonging, you could have some emotional rewards, and if you don't, you won't.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: You can be in the group.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Yeah, right. And then you have to come up with alternatives.
So not drinking, if you want to be normal and accepted and maybe popular, you know, your parents are paying money for this college experience. Right. Keep that in mind. Your parents are paying money for this thing that is very expensive. And it's not only for the classes, it's also for the networks that you're supposed to establish. For many of you, you are like first, second generation Americans, you're like trying to establish yourself, your family, you're not sure what your future is going to be. And so you have to like, have friends.
Right. And so when you choose to opt out of that culture, then you choose to inhabit the Muslim bubble, Right. Is that a good choice financially?
Right. For the, for your future. So when I talk about, and you ask the question, when I talk about drinking culture, I mean, the whole culture of it, even if you don't drink, how you maintain your presence within it, whether you drink sometimes or you pretend to drink.
Yeah, yeah, that's the other thing, right. You pretend to drink or, and maybe like, like Heather, my participant said, everyone is so drunk, it doesn't really matter if you drink or not. Right.
That you can just pretend to be drinking or you don't drink, but you don't say, sorry, I don't drink, I'll have A Coke or whatever, Right? And so then you kind of play it down because you want to belong, right? And that's a very strategic choice on the part of those people. So.
So the cult. There is this culture. My advisor once said that, you know, in American cultures, the sort of the.
The very nature of soc is around alcohol, right? What do we. Even our academic conferences, that's where the academics actually, like, you know, let their hair down, right? Yeah, exactly. They let the hair down. They start to talk about things like, hey, I've got a place at my. In my department. Do you. You know, those kinds of things happen when people are drinking, and otherwise it doesn't happen. So you make a choice, right? So. So. Yes. And. And so the sociability happens in these places, and it's a place where you are seen.
You are seen there. And so when you're a freshman and you're like, oh, my God, will I ever have any friends?
You're a freshman. You're not sure who you're gonna be. Are you gonna be a lonely person for four years? So you're really trying to establish there's a lot of anxiety around the college experience.
Like, people really don't think about the fact. Like, in people. When we study higher education, we studied, like, the party stuff and all, but we don't look at the fact that these young people have a lot of anxiety. Of course, now, like, 20 years since that research, the anxiety has gone way up.
Will the planet be around?
There's so much more anxiety now.
So, for example, Yasmeen, who was a sophomore, she would say. And she did drink sometimes, and she said, oh, people have parties, and they have posters of drinks on their walls, and they talk about how much they drink, what it was, how good it tasted, how much it cost, et cetera. It's like drinking talk, right? And you can do this when you're hanging out with people. And she said. I said, so what about if you give it up?
She said, if I refuse to drink, other people wouldn't care, I don't think.
But you would just be like, what do I talk about now?
What do we talk about in, like, a drinking setting? And here you can be like, I like white wine. I hate beer, blah, blah, blah. And she said, and it's really stupid, but once you get started and you know how to have conversations like that, it's hard to just stop, right? It's kind of like being a master of the setting.
So they become masters of the setting. And when you.
How do you choose not to Be a master of that setting, not be like, you know, in Urdu we call the shamme mephil. You are like the cat in the whole much list. Like, how do you stop doing that? How you stop being, like a center of it? And be at the periphery nursing a Coke and saying like, oh, yes, you know, like, everybody's talking about, yeah, we went there and we threw up. And you're like, we're not talking about adult drinking, we're talking about college drinking. It's different. It's a different, like, quality. Right. It's not like one glass or something. It's different.
So.
So, yeah, so that's drinking culture. And it's also one of the things that you notice that you become, again, like I said, a master of that culture. And you also become a participant in the remaking of that culture over and over. Right.
And.
But the thing is, if you're Muslim and you don't drink, there is a peripherality to your participation in it.
[00:19:13] Speaker A: Well, I mean, it's interesting to me, I guess maybe growing up in a homogenous Muslim society where Muslims drink, I didn't think they were not Muslim because they didn't drink. And coming to America and being part of, quote, unquote, the party scene, but not drinking because I don't drink, I didn't feel like outside it, I didn't want to belong so much in the sense I saw the stupidity of it. But, you know, I didn't feel like I didn't belong because I didn't drink. So it's interesting. I think maybe it has something to do with growing up in a homogenous society where your identity as a Muslim is stronger. And it's not something under question.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: This is something I often think about the security of growing up as a member of the majority.
And I'm told by people that I'm being a nationalist when I say this, but there is something to it. It that there is a security to it so that you can then play with that identity while remaining within it.
Whereas when you are a minority within it, then it is insecure. The boundaries of it are insecure. Right. And so this is actually going actually to a different sort of area of my research.
Many of the parents of these young people were pretty liberal in their Pakistan days. So they were. They were dating each other, they. That's how they got married, etc. But when they lived in America, they were like, don't talk to the boys. Like, don't, don't do this, don't do that. There's like segregation between them and the kids are like, well, but you. Like, how is this different? Right. But. But in the United States, when they come here, then there is this fear of losing them and then becoming the dominant majority and sort of blending in.
[00:21:14] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, your kids can become alien to you.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: It's a really painful thing. I mean, your discussion on drinking is fascinating, and I feel like drinking served both as a social map and a litmus test. And it wasn't just about the act of drinking, but about access, visibility, and being part of the ingrown.
I think moving on to the second sort of research lens that you bring, which is clothing and how it operated as a different kind of social marker.
What made clothing and fashion such a compelling lens to you? And when you write about fashion and modesty, how are you defining those terms in your research? What does modesty mean in this context? What did you learn from the woman you interviewed about how they experienced or expressed modesty through clothes?
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So clothing, fashion, modesty, hijab, all of these things became very important in terms of, again, what the data were telling me. Right. And so obviously, you have to say things like, you know, what is modesty, really? And when you look at the Muslim community, there's no real agreement on what this means. There's a huge range of opinions, whether you look at the. The textual sources, whether you look at the community kind of groupings, the range of opinions on this. So, of course, each perspective can marshal, like, large quantities of evidence. Right. And so, but here on campus, whatever choices that you made in the sartorial era, particularly whether you wore hijab or not, these were momentous decisions in terms of your identities as Muslim and Americans, but also in terms of how what then your job was in some ways. Right. So they were. But not only were they, like, singular religious decisions, they were also political decisions, and they were very closely connected with competing notions of class, sexuality, and femininity and also race, for example.
And so if you.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: I think the audience would like to hear a little bit more about that.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Actually, let me bring in the example of this one young woman. She was a black convert, and she had just recently converted at the time. I think she was a junior at the time. And she spoke about how she was, like, highly encouraged to wear hijab. Right. In her. And she wasn't averse to it. She was fine with it. But she said everybody is just so very encouraging about wearing hijab. Right. Particularly for her as a convert. Right. And so almost like the appropriation of this convert must take place. But when she goes to these events.
And then, for example, this was, I think she went to an MSA national event. And I remember at the time being quite startled that she told me that this MSA national event actually had a code for clothing. And so they required hijab and they required loose clothing and they required, like, long sleeves, etc. These things. And she said, this is really hard because my body type, she was, you know, tall and, like big boned. And she just like, said, like, you're like, you know, little Pakistani girls, like, you can talk about this. It's very easy. They don't make these things loose in my size.
Right. And so it became this really interesting kind of racial, kind of racial, sexual categorization that broke. Basically. It just broke, right? And I was actually listening to Ghamedi discussing the kind of the talk about modesty in that it breaks apart in dissonances, right? Like the whole idea comes apart because it doesn't work.
You have to make exceptions here, there and everywhere and so distinct.
But then she would talk about how I don't want to start wearing hijab and proper modest clothes until I'm knowledgeable and until I'm able to speak about these things. Because once I put that thing on my head, I am a representative. It's almost like a uniform, Right. It's almost like you're, I don't know, your communist cap or something that now I will answer for the party.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Other things have to align, I feel. Yeah, I can hear. I can understand that.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Yeah. So, so, like, your distinctive attire, whatever it was, could signify religious devotion, but at the same time, it was like a mnemonic device as well, right? Like, if I want to good, right. If I didn't, if I wasn't good before, but I want to be good, then wearing hijab is a useful kind of divider from certain activities. For example, right? And if I like this young woman who was a convert and she used to smoke, and she said, well, now I can't smoke outside the library wearing this hijab, everybody. It's going to be so weird, right?
[00:26:48] Speaker A: And we wear our politics and in that sense it shows up that if you're wearing a hijab, like, it doesn't. It's exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: But, but see, like, that was a different time, but now we can watch. For example, we are lady parts, where you have this naqabi woman who's like, you know, smoke emerging from right now. We're playing with things. But at that time, we were not playing.
The boxes were very much present.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: I mean, yeah, dual grammar has changed to a great degree now than it was like, what it might have been like. And I've seen the show shift, so. I understand.
[00:27:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But. But, you know, it did. It did function primarily for most people as a public and a representative practice. So, for example, because you were turned into this representative of all the Muslims, right, Your person kind of shrank within it as well, who you were kind of disappointed because you were speaking for so many things. Right. But at the same time, some. Some young women who did wear hijab said, when I speak, I'm treated like it doesn't really matter what I'm saying because I'm supposedly brainwashed and biased.
[00:28:08] Speaker A: It's so complicated. I mean, when I speak to my students in class, I always say, to me, it seems like those who are wearing the hijab or African American, a particular African American way of dressing, these are the only people who are fighting the monoculture in which we are being trained to appear.
And these are the only people who are coloring outside the lines that it is so hard to be doing this, but they're like, you know, soldiering on. So.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's so true. It's so true.
But then other women who didn't wear hijab got interrogated about it.
So actually non Muslims would ask them, like, oh, why don't you wear that? And like, for example, sometimes they would say, why don't you wear the burqa? Like, it's crazy. Like, these people were like, are you. What's wrong with you? Why are you asking me this very personal question? And you don't even know anything about us, but you're gonna ask me that? I don't wear burqa.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Like, where did you heard from. From the Agwan, like, discussion on your NPR or something?
[00:29:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: I was struck by how fashion became a side of agency as much as constrained. And it was just. It was not just about covering or uncovering, but communicating a particular thing. And then I feel like the same push and pull really comes through in your discussion of dating as well.
And what made dating a useful lens for you through which to understand Muslim American student life? When you talk about dating in your research, what exactly do you mean? Are you referring to the formal romantic relationship that involves physicality, casual interactions, or just something in between?
What did your research reveal about how Muslim women students negotiate dating, whether through participation, rejection, or redefinition?
[00:29:56] Speaker B: So this was a really interesting. I think this was my longest chapter because there was so much in it and in some ways, so many different things in it as well. Right. So.
So. Okay. So. So, Yasmin. And one of my favorite participants would say, like, this is the most stressful thing. Like, you live in a culture where most people are, like, of course, the head in the heterosexual culture, most people are boyfriends and girlfriends in campus culture. And you struggle with that. Right? And that's the number one hardest thing. And where you. And she said, where you stand on it defines you in a way. Right? Where you position yourself in this way, it really kind of defines you. You. And so what I found that on the. You know, that there was no stable, consistent, kind of, like, generally held set of, like, rules. Like, this is what the Muslim American, like, men and women are gonna do vis a visuality, for example. This is the way to do it. They're like, okay, so our parents had these. Some of them had these arranged marriages, and some of them fell in love. And, like, what are we supposed to do? They were. Was no clarity. And in many cases, in. In actually, most cases, the parents didn't really provide any clarity because they were also like, wait and see what happens.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: We don't want to talk right now.
[00:31:19] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't know what's gonna happen. We have no idea. And sometimes they would say, so what do you do? And. And she's like, well, I think it's. It's okay to, you know, to date. And. And then her mother would be like, yeah, I think that's okay too, you know, as long as you're not, like, like, really promiscuous. So that these kinds of things were very unclear and again, a source of great anxiety.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: Right? So.
[00:31:45] Speaker B: So in some cases, like, for example, Sarah. So this. This is a young woman whose parents fell in love. They, like, fell in love at a high school and, like, Karachi. Karachi Grammar School type things. And they were. And. But they, for her, they were like, no, no, no, you have to.
None of this kind of thing. But then she says, well, how am I supposed to get married? I'm in college.
Where else is there going to be a good time to consider this? But also, in many ways, they felt like, this is my time to have experience.
And then there was the question of what do you mean by experience?
And they were all very coy about this. Now, I think 10, 20 years later, people are a lot less coy about. About this. I think that so much has changed since then, but also, even Then a lot of the kind of coloring or outside the lines that was happening, people weren't talking about it. For example, Hasina, who is one of my Pakistani participants, she goes in. She's very conservative, very conservative family. But then she ends up with a Pakistani boyfriend. And then they are like fully boyfriend. And everybody knows this, that they are boyfriend and girlfriend different. But then she's very anxious about it. What are we. This is not okay. This is not right. What am I supposed to do? But what's interesting about it is that the very conservative people in the Muslim student group made a kind of almost like a collective decision that these people are.
They're monogamous, they plan to get married, they're waiting for their parents to agree, and this is okay, and it's nobody's business.
Really interesting to me that these people who were otherwise very concerned and themselves, they had this like, okay, we are courting now and we are not touching, et cetera. For their part, they were very conservative, but for them, they said, nope, this is what we're going to do. And as long as you are not, like, you know, having sex in public, it's nobody's business.
So they really kind of put, like, a variety of different kind of modalities of Muslimness into play in understanding of the complex situation that they were faced with. But like others, for example, I was talking about Sarah just now, and she had these white friends who were like, okay, let's set you up. And so they found one other Muslim guy, and they said, okay, let's set you up with him. And they actually did set her up where she was not actually in, like, in the decision. She was not in the room where this decision was made, and they just kind of set her up. And she was very annoyed by this, and. And she. By this very, like, almost paternalistic voyeurism. So they were set up like an experiment, right? And then when she said, I'm not. I don't think we're a good fit for each other. And this white woman is like, I hope you're not going to be mean to him, because that would mess everything up. Like, who are you? Why are you this person who thinks they have the right to do this? But this was common. The pressure.
The pressure to start dating was everywhere.
Like, why aren't you dating? Don't you want to date? And then, of course, they were. At that time, they were talking about dating. But then, of course, it's a very different story now. Now you have hookup culture on campus, which is much More common now.
But at that time, this was what they were talking about. And on the other hand, the lack of clarity was so pervasive that very often you had people who were strung along.
Every Muslim woman knows what this is about to be strung along.
He wants to call you all the time. He wants to hang out all the time. And he never says, what, why, right? He never says anything. And then you, he strings you along and along and along and you're waiting for the day where you know he's going to say it and then he just kind of drops you and says, well, this is not appropriate for us to like meet like this, you know, like this kind of thing was very common.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: And I mean it's both true for like non Muslim culture also. I'm just laughing because there's so many things like all my friends telling me the same thing about like, what's happening, clarity, when his intentions be known to me and I'm like, I don't know.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Dude, like, what should I. Yeah, yeah.
[00:36:20] Speaker A: That I'm talking about.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: Absolutely. I absolutely agree with you. But then at the same time, in the, in, in the Muslim community, to be seen all the time with this guy had a whole other level of valence implications.
Like you're hanging out with this guy all the time, right? You are not like improving your, your opportunities.
Right?
And so, yeah, so this was, this was really difficult. And so for many of them, you know, like what choices they made in dating culture, they were fraught with like danger to their marriage prospects, to their reputation. How much do you socialize with men? How publicly should it be? What if you, what if people start calling you a slut?
What if you are so uptight that people say, oh, she's not cool. I don't even, I can't even think of her as a positive. Like, what kind of balance are you supposed to keep? Right? And so this was very, very difficult to maintain.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: You know, when I was thinking about your book, I was thinking you were ahead of your time. That's one of the contributions of your book. You were ahead of your time. But I feel like now we're at a time where like you could do workshops around your book where you talk to young Muslims about how it is okay to select, like fully select your Muslim identity and like, what are the concerns that might come up and how to navigate it, especially if parents are not talking about it. I'm assuming parents now talk more about this type of stuff.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: I would hope so. Certainly. Yeah.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: Important one of the concerns we have right now in the Muslim community are, how are Muslim women going to meet Muslim men? Right, right.
[00:38:01] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:38:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And so that's really important. So how do we navigate that? But then you don't want to, like, do it at the cost of your Muslimness. And this is something actually, like, I talk about in my book where there are, like, moral, like, repercussions about sexuality that we need to be thinking about. And I sometimes think it would be nice if I could do. I could develop a workshop around my book and, like, take it to msa, but I don't have time. Maybe once I have sabbatical, I can do that.
That you should think about. Like, so you've had real conversations with real, like, on the ground, young Muslims, and it would be so interesting to kind of, like, turn the book into kind of a workshop for MSAs around the country.
It is an intimate space, like dating is an intimate space where larger cultural scripts are colliding. Religion, family, modernity, sexuality, it's all there.
Given how much the landscape has shifted in recent years, I'm curious. Curious how you think these dynamics are evolving now.
You studied the recent changes with social media, rising Islamophobia or evolving campus politics. And then there is the rise of, like, online Muslims, right? Like Muslim visibility with TikTok, Instagram activism, Muslim. What do you call, influencer influencers. Has it reshaped how students perform and protect their identity, do you think?
[00:39:26] Speaker B: I think that the number one impact here is technology, and that has changed so much. Right? So having your own personal smartphone and being able to speak on social media without the mediation of any gatekeepers, I think has changed the culture entirely. Like, your parents are watching TikToks, right? Your voice, you are not silent anymore because other people can also speak for you and speak your opinions, and they're being beamed into every home. Right? At that time, you would say, well, what does the local imam say about this or that? And you can have those opinions, but now everybody is talking about everything.
And you can author your own story and have it published. Right? So this is a huge thing.
Your own story as a young person can be. Yes. Can be published and can have like, like widespread kind of, like, impact. Yes. So. So. And also the other thing also is that because you have this smartphone, you can also speak to other people without having to go outside and be watched by other people. So. So those two things, like the. The. The freedom and the independence that gives you, but also the cultural impact that that gives. So, I mean, of course, who owns Tick Tock? It's young people who owns these things? It's young people, right? Of course you can listen to Mufti Manko, whatever, but at the same time, like, like your young people are the ones who are actually speaking about these things. So there's no hiding the youth now. They are the ones who are being beamed into your phones. And so self expression is widespread and so your questions about how are you supposed to interact with other people, how are you supposed to do these things, they are widespread.
Multiple responses are also being spread about them. And the multiplicity, the sort of, the poly vocality of those questions is becoming much clearer now. At that time when I wrote this book, who had access to like for example, publishing a website, right? Like not many people had those. Like you had. Okay, maybe if isna listens to me and et cetera, like you can have these things. Like no, you didn't really have access to, to a, a wide audience if you were a young person, but now you do, right? So that generational change that has shifted many things. And the questions that these young people had when I did the research with them, they, the answers are now widespread about them, right? And you can choose any of those answers.
That's the other thing, right. You're also not alone. And you know this because of social media and because of technology. So if you're sitting there alone, you're like Sara and you're like, I don't know if I should date or not, blah, blah, like now you know, you're like one of so many, right? And you can come up with and navigating that. Yeah, yes, navigating that. So you're not navigating it alone now, right? Whether you want to wear your hijab like this style or that style, everything is on there, everything is on social media and you can just plug into it and not feel alone and nervous about it.
So that is, that is a big change that's happening in. And this, this of course affects us in terms of like whether we're talking about Muslim American youth, cultural like sexual, cultural, sartorial practices, etc.
But also in terms of their abilities to fight back against the homogenizing culture.
Because you, if you're not drinking, you're also one of so many.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's a thing now. It's like after they have all these stores that they sell all this different non alcoholic.
[00:43:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: It's like a cool thing to be right now.
[00:43:31] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. So any kind of before.
Yeah, absolutely. You're absolutely right. And there's so any kind of homogenizing impact, any kind of like heavy hegemonic cultural force, it has to really struggle now.
[00:43:49] Speaker A: So given like these changes, what kind of support or guidance do you think students need today? And this advice, I'm not saying just for Muslim students, really, any students struggling with campus culture, what would you sort of say?
[00:44:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so, you know, at that time we used to say, oh, it's 9 11, 911 happened. We're being this, that, we're being stereotyped. You have to speak for the Muslims, you have to like represent them. And I say don't, please don't.
Don't let anyone turn you into an object of your own story.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Educate yourself. I'm not here.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: You are not responsible for speaking for the entire Muslim community. You are not responsible. And if somebody puts you in that position, tell them not to be racist.
Just don't play into it. It's not your job. You're a young person. You're going to college. Your job is to get an education and to protect yourself from the psychological damage that this extremely Islamophobic Western world like culture is doing to you, doing to all of us. Protect yourselves and do not put yourself on the front line of it. This is not your job. We want.
You are precious and we want you to protect yourselves. We don't want you to like lay down your lives for this thing.
This is a racist kind of like environment.
Yes, exactly. A stereotyping orientalist kind of culture that like ruins Muslim identities. And we don't want you to be ruined. We want you to protect yourselves and to be the subjects of your own story and not to be the objects of somebody else and not to kind of like play into this idea that you're supposed to represent all Muslims and answer for why are you terrorists and why are you a misogynist? Like you are not. This is not your job and this is a racist person who's asking these questions. So that's my advice.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: I love that, I love that you say that you are precious and idea that you don't have to choose between authenticity and belonging to even when the campus culture suggests otherwise. Dr. Me, thank you so much for your generous and thought provoking conversation, your insight and the generosity with which you've shared your research. Muslim American Woman on Campus is one of those rare books that is both deeply academic and deeply human. It sheds light not just from the experience of Muslim students, but on the structures and cultures that shape all of us in universities and spaces as we think about what it means to belong, to resist and to be seen, not just tolerated, but understood. Your work reminds us that identity is not a checkbox, but a daily, evolving negotiation. And in time, when the political tide can feel heavy. I'm grateful for your book and for voices like Zoran Mamdani's that show us what is possible when people lead with integrity and live their value, values unapologetically. To our listeners. Thank you for joining us for this episode of History Speaks. I am your host, Roshanikval.
