Wearing "our sword": post-September 11 activism among South Asian Muslim women student organizations in New York.

• Date: 22 June 2008
• Author: Maruoka, Etsuko
• Published date: 22 June 2008
• Author: Maruoka, Etsuko

At the time after September 11 happened, the campus was dominated by joking and all that stuff like, "Oh, you look like a terrorist, you dyke." It was like blame was imputed to us. So, it was very sad.... But for me, I think that the experience made me feel even stronger about our decision to wear the hijab outside.... If I had had to take my hijab off at that time, I would have become extremely weak and broken down.... You know, taking off a hijab was like giving up our sword (Aisha, Pakistani-American college senior). (1)

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THE SEPTEMBER 11 TERRORIST ATTACKS AND THE CONSEQUENT POLITICAL TENSIONS profoundly affected the lives of many Muslim women residing in the United States. Those who wear the Islamic headscarf (or hijab) became an especially easy target for scapegoating, since this religious dress code had been seen as the most definable marker of the faith. Along with a dramatic increase in hate crimes targeting Muslim individuals and institutions, the local media and affiliated associations stressed a dramatic increase in human rights violations specifically targeting women. Such acts include the attempted forceful removal of their hijab and public taunting with ethnic aspersions. (2) This swift rise of violence centering on this cultural practice has reasserted continuing racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism against ethnic minority women. Focusing on this striking challenge in Muslim women's social lives, this article explores the forms of collective activism that these rigorously persecuted women develop against this social injustice. The examples presented here are based on the author's four-year ethnographic study of two student groups of South Asian Muslim women in two socio-geographically different campus communities in New York. By describing the process whereby members expand the meaning of their religious practice of veiling to a political one and use it as the major tool for their collective resistance, this article suggests how "being different" and "marginalized" becomes a significant, driving force for group mobility, solidarity, and strength in "identity movements" (Melucci, 1995, 1996; Alcoff, 2000, 2005). According to Melucci, the women's movement is based on "the themes of identity and difference as an assertion of the priority of the right to be before the right to do and as a claim for a life-space in which to withdraw from the structures of social control" (1996: 136; emphasis added).

In the models of Goffman's study on stigma (1964) and the work of assimilation theorists, difference has typically been conceptualized as a point of weakness and frailty for ethnic minority groups (Gordon, 1964; Alba and Nee, 2005). Responding to this conformist view, Chin (2000) and Nagata's (2000) historical studies on Asian American women suggest that "difference" should be considered from the perspective of resiliency and strength, as well as the ability to cope with adversity. These findings concur with the recent increasing voice among scholars of Asian American feminism and "identity movements." As the above narrative, "taking off a hijab was like giving up our sword," metaphorically underlines, the women in this study are not simply resigned to the stigmatization of their religious practice; instead, they transform it into a symbol of might and dignity, as well as loyalty to other Muslim "sisters," asserting their right to be Muslim. Revealing such women's perspectives toward their political action is especially important for the study of South Asian women and their identity movement by providing a window to see forthcoming issues, coping strategies, and boundary formation among future generations of South Asians.

(South) Asian American Women's Activism

Many scholars of women's movements have suggested that the strategies and views chosen by Asian women in their activism differ from those that white and Black women's groups embrace. In contrast to mainstream white women's leaders, who typically situate gender as the central agenda, many Asian women activists view gender as only one part of social relations (Shah, 1994; Purkayastha et al., 1997; Espiritu, 1997; Khandelwal, 2003). They are deeply committed to women's struggles for empowerment, as are white feminist groups. Yet, for them women's issues are inextricably linked to their community and to other societal obstacles that are mainly associated with their racial status. This suggests that sexism and racism are not parallel, but intersect and interact in their social experience.

Although the viewpoints of activist Asian women and Black women are similar in terms of facing their gender and race issues, they are disparate in approach. Whereas Black feminism primarily focuses on racial oppression and associated economic exploitation, recent Asian leaders stress women's issues in connection to cultural imperialism and discrimination, resulting in what they call "bicultural feminism" (Shah, 1994). The "the plea for bicultural feminism is," according to Shah, "a call for an agenda that subverts the black/white paradigms, articulates cultural discrimination and how it illuminates and connects to other processes of oppression, and politicizes the process of cultural reconciliation for feminism and liberation" (Ibid.: 155). It highlights the significance of understanding the struggles of women who physically and psychologically live in two (or sometimes more) different cultural worlds--one based on their ethnic traditions and the other on the mainstream American system--due to their immigrant history, as well as racial and socioeconomic status (Tan, 1997).

For instance, George (2005) shows that Indian female nurses from Kerala, who emigrate before their husbands do, grapple with the reconstruction of gender and class relations in their marriage lives along with their professional achievement in the United States. Also, studies on the South Asian women's social movement against marital violence describe the angst and trepidation women experience for taking their "private problem" outside their community, because by doing so they feel they are betraying members of their own ethnic group (Abraham, 1995; Chiang et al., 1997). With these unique circumstances in mind, Shah (1997) outlines the three agendas for Asian, and especially South Asian, women's activism: (1) to connect gender issues to immigration matters, cultural practice, and community representation; (2) to transcend the boundaries of more distinct identities, such as national origin and religion within its own community; and (3) to establish linkages between local and global feminism. The narratives of women presented in this article show some of the ways in which the younger generation of South Asian Muslim women interpret, internalize, and embody "bicultural feminism" in their identity movement in the post-September 11 era.

Method

This study is part of a larger project on the identity reconstruction of second-generation Muslim women. To examine the influence of local racial relations on coping strategies, I conducted my fieldwork with two groups of women associated with the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at two public universities in New York from December 2001 to 2005. One, which I call Eastern State University (EU), is located in an upper-middle-class suburban area, consisting predominantly of an established community of European-origin Christian families. The other, which I call Metro University (MU), is in a lower-middle-class metropolitan area and is mainly comprised of recent East and South Asian immigrant enclaves. Each group consists of about 50 religiously devout second-generation female college students. They are predominantly of South Asian origin, ranging from ages 18 to 23. Over 80% of them are Pakistani-origin, followed by Indian, Bangladeshi, and Afghan, along with a small number of Middle Easterners. Most of them are Shi'ite Muslim. In each of the two areas, most of the group members are from middle-class immigrant families. However, EU does include some from extremely wealthy homes, while MU consists of some from working-class backgrounds. The overwhelming majority of both groups practice hijab daily. With few exceptions, members of both groups came from families in which veiling was not practiced by their mothers; most of them started the religious dress code after they joined these associations. (3)

The following sections illustrate the experiences of these women in the aftermath of September 11, from their own perspectives. I then examine the coping strategies developed by each local group to realize their political and cultural resistance. After discussing their identity reconstruction, the article demonstrates how their sense of "difference" and "marginalization" promotes these particular...