Inclusion with Intention
Inclusion with intention: black muslim women’s experiences with anti-blackness & islamaphobia
Those with the most resounding voices are still unheard. And we know, without a doubt, those voices belong to our Black sisters. They have always been the ones ushering in the most transformative changes. Yet, they receive almost no reciprocal love and acceptance in return - yes, even within the Muslim community.
With the “resurgence” of Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement this year has made us reflect. In fact, to label it a “resurgence” would be to suggest the movement dissipated. But these issues of discrimination, exclusion and outright dehumanization of the Black community have persisted for centuries. So we at MWP have researched more, read more, and reached out to our Black peers to focus on maintaining long-term, productive and transformative allyship.
So in this month’s newsletter, we’ve used this past year’s lessons to dive into the experiences of Black Muslim women. Amidst our election, their community will be the one of the most impacted in our country. So we must make sure their experiences are not just heard but valued and integrated into our political decisions. Only when we face the prejudices in our community can we make our ummah an inclusive, diverse, and embracing space for everyone. And we need to start with listening to our Black sisters.
I spoke to three inspiring Black Muslim women professionals: Amina Olajide, Azizah Ali and Fousia Abdullahi.
Amina is a Black Muslim woman who earned a Bachelor’s in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and is currently a master’s student in Computational Social Science. She is also a tutor, a former K-12 teacher and a podcaster for her podcast, Skiveo. She covers a variety of topics, including issues of racial inequality and equity.
Azizah is a Black Muslim mother, grandmother, and an educator for over 20 years. She is the principal and one of the founding board members for an Islamic school, Islah Academy. Along with being an Islamic school, Islah Academy, an inner-city community center founded by Muslim Americans to serve South Los Angeles.
Fousia is a U.S.-based Somali-Canadian Muslim mother with her own podcast, “Naptime Is Sacred”, and newly-formed freelance podcast consulting business.
Together, these talented women shared their personal experiences with anti-Blackness in the U.S. and more specifically, in the Muslim community, as well as and solutions to preventing these toxic norms.
October 23, 2020
How would you describe your connection to the Black community?
Azizah: I grew up in predominantly Black neighborhoods. I’m a second generation Muslim, my parents converted to Islam in the 1960s. I grew up in an African American community; however, I was bussed to predominantly White schools. So coming into a White environment gave me some culture shock, but there were a lot of “scars” I got in the process of that.
Fousia: I actually grew up in a predominantly Desi community. One of the things I noticed growing up was many people valued culture over faith, especially when it came to interactions with the older members of the community.
How have you tied your faith to your sense of love, community, and activism?
Azizah: It informs everything I do in all aspects. It’s a natural calling, a natural duty rather than an obligation [from my faith]. It’s the blueprint for how I conduct my life.
Amina: For me, my faith manifests in remembering that all I’ve been given could easily be taken away.
Fousia: Definitely. I, too, believe when you come from a place of faith, mercy, and love are tied to your interactions with people. I've always focused on the things we all have in common as humans when dealing with people and treat them with the respect our Prophet taught us through his actions.
How connected do you feel to your own cultural history? Do you have a preference between being referred to as “Black”, “African American”, or another title?
Azizah: I’ve used Black and African American interchangeably. I feel like “Black” is more inclusive, it includes everyone from the African diaspora. Sometimes African American can be exclusive because someone from Ghana or Jamaica, for example, may not identify with that, but they can identify with Black. But I like African American because it ties me to my ancestry. I like Black because it ties me to the rest of the African diaspora. So I don’t feel like I need to commit to using just one. I think my parents did an excellent job in connecting to my culture and history; they created a huge love for it through literature and art.
Fousia: I can relate to that, too. I come from a strong culture of East African Nomads. Our storytelling, poetry and music play a huge part in my life. I'm part of the Somali diaspora. I was born in Africa but grew up in Canada and lived there for most of my life. I prefer to be called Black or African because my experience differs from that of my African American brothers and sisters in some ways.
How would you describe your connection the Black Muslim community? How about the Muslim community at large?
Azizah: The truth is you can never find a Black community who doesn’t have a connection to Islam, period. Whether it be their knowledge of Malcom X, or they have an uncle who converted while incarcerated or an aunt who always covers her hair in a wrap. Many don’t realize Islam came with our history of Black people coming to the U.S. Many slaves who came were Muslim. Some of the first Muslims in U.S. came as navigators, but the second wave of Muslims came as slaves. So there still needs to be a lot of work to be done on educating the bigger Black community on what Islam truly is. We’ve come a long way. My mom converted when she was 11 and then some families have a grandmother convert in the 1920s and 1930s when no one knew a thing about Islam. So you had these people who were already discriminated against because they were Black but also because of how they dress and how they believe.
Amina: Honestly, in contrast, I would say my connection to the Black Muslim community is currently weak, with respect to feeling a sense of inclusion. And my connection to the larger, Muslim community is also currently weak, also with respect to feeling a sense of inclusion. But my compassion for either community is tangibly there.
How has the resurgence of the BLM movement affected your mental well-being?
Amina: The resurgence of BLM…is not really a resurgence for me. Even before 2020, I was a teacher at an Islamic school and the victim of ignorant/racist, colorist comments from students and even a fellow teacher’s child.
Fousia: Now that we’re here though, I'm all for the BLM movement. I think it reaffirms that other people feel the same way about racial injustice and are willing to put in the hard work.
Azizah: I’m just being fully aware of the fact that I need to create boundaries when taking in triggering media. The challenge is staying engaged whilst not letting it make you stressed or traumatized, hearing about people who look like you being killed. People don’t realize that Black people are candidates for PTSD in that regard. Then there’s people shaming others for not being engaged enough, when actually, there’s so many different types of resistance. Mine is being an urban educator. I teach Black kids how to read. That’s my resistance. There's so much you can do in the classroom to mold people into conscious leaders and changemakers for the future.
How has the BLM movement affected other areas: community relations, career, social life or family life?
Azizah: Sometimes you end up doing more than your job description says and there’s ways to work toward positive change. One big one is, again, education. The reason people are so shaken up by the “revelations” from this movement is because they’re so oblivious to what’s really going on. In school, we keep ourselves in a bubble. We need a comprehensive curriculum surrounding cultural competency to combat this.
Amina: As one response to the discrimination I mentioned earlier as a teacher, I wanted to incorporate more literature about racism and literature from Black authors in the English Language Arts classes I taught. The only books I had seen: a children’s book about Martin Luther King and another about Rosa Parks. My suggestions were not accepted as far as I am aware.
Undoubtedly, many in the Muslim community have “othered” Black Muslims specifically. Have you encountered anti-Blackness from within the Muslim community? If so, how has it manifested and how have you coped (or been unable to cope) with it?
Fousia: They've always manifested in either outright racism or through microaggressions, for example, being ignored or left out to people using racist using words in masjids or even in social settings.
Amina: When I was teaching, it was the year of the Christchurch shooting. So I was contending with racism/anti-Blackness, islamophobia, and fear of a potential school and mosque shooting as that place of employment was both a school and a masjid with minimal security. And the U.S. already has such a long history of school shootings. What non-Muslims or in truth anyone can do is act more excessively in their compassion and be anti-racist, which is not the same as not being racist.
Azizah: In some cases, there’s not othering but less attention and action toward Black causes. Like many non-profit organizations do fundraising for excellent causes overseas. Most of us, as Americans, are, financially, in a situation where we are able to help people in developing countries. But when you look at the initiative for people to help with issues here on U.S. soil, we don’t have the same amount of support. When it’s something local, or Black-focused, there’s not as huge of a response as there is for other causes. So we have to start looking at injustice, trauma and oppression and none should be valued over the other.
Sadly, Black Muslims must suffer from anti-Blackness as well as islamophobia. Have you experienced tensions between these two prejudices and what can be done by non-Muslims to alleviate these tensions?
Amina: There is a 2020 recent study, a meta-analysis specifically, of 25,000 people which shows that just witnessing prosocial behavior spurred them to behave kindly themselves. That must extend to every aspect of alleviating injustices like these. My core focus in combating racial oppression is addressing economic inequality. I recently published an episode featuring a conversation I had with Kate Poole, a white woman who co-founded an “anticapitalist wealth management firm.” It has tens of millions in assets specifically invested without the goal of economic return but rather for the purpose of reparative justice, of redistribution to Black and other marginalized communities. Understanding how we overlook the reality that economic justice isn’t possible in a country built off the labor of the stolen: this is critical, especially now in an unrelenting pandemic that has disproportionately impacted Black and other marginalized people.
Azizah: That’s a great point. At Islah, we’ve also been doing interfaith indirect dialogues by connecting to other communities. That interaction with non-Muslims in acts of service (like how our Muslim community offers a food pantry to many non-Muslims) can “kill” those negative assumptions about us. We also have “social justice circles” of dialogue around these issues. It's a format for having these difficult conversations together in a group. Afterall, when we have these talks, people may not be as forthcoming or they’re embarrassed about either their lack of knowledge or their actual anti-Black/racist ideas. So creating a “counsel” is huge because people feel less opposed to being vulnerable and being honest. It actually connects back well to our Islamic tradition of “Shura” or counseling that’s very structured.
Fousia: Yes, definitely. I’ve personally faced these issues along with sexism both in and out of the Muslim community. I think it will take people learning more about privilege, systemic racism, civil rights to have decreases in the amount of tension in our society. These methods, though, sound like great ways to start to bridge these gaps.
What support systems or dialogues would you like to see make Muslim spaces more inclusive and embracing for the Black community?
Fousia: We need to create a community environment and spaces welcoming to all Muslims regardless of race, gender, age, or level of religiosity.
Azizah: Of course. Getting to that place, I believe, works best when the change is organic and not forcing people to change. It’s about being intentional and making conscious decisions. For example, making sure we include Black leadership and consistent invitations to those in the Black community. And not in a “token” sense. Like always reaching out to masjids in different communities, for example. Just doing that can make everyone’s environment more inclusive, diverse. It’ll be better for us and importantly, our future generations.
Amina: Not only do I have the challenges of being a woman in certain spaces, but of being Black in many spaces and of being Muslim in many spaces. And then there are the intersections of those identities. Being a Black woman. Being a Muslim woman. Being a Black Muslim. Each of which additionally have their own challenges. So for any ally, addressing racism as someone who doesn’t suffer from it is not about feeling better about who you are. If you find yourself centering yourself rather than centering working-class people or Black and Brown people…
Azizah: Yes, and privilege of course comes sadly from the proximity to “Whiteness”. In that way, whilst we need to address privilege from White people in and out of our community, we also need to acknowledge the idea of “brown privilege.” Some brown people may feel that since they’re also a minority, they are totally oppressed. But there are actually privileges brown people have that Black people don’t. We also need to account for our own privilege, like with the exclusion of Black Muslims in our masjids. We have to ask: are we not only enabling it, are we perpetuating it? So just asking ourselves what privilege we may have due to our “closer” proximity to Whiteness, the kind of privilege that other groups cannot take advantage of. Then using that to uplift others.
As a Black Muslim woman, what do you feel are your unique struggles? What support would you like to see from the Muslim community against misogyny, anti-Blackness, Islamophobia, and other issues you feel othered by?
Fousia: I think not being taken seriously or allowed a seat at the table is one of the biggest struggles. Even in the online social media world, Black Muslim women creatives don't get as much recognition, followership, or even get paid for the deals that even other women receive. Also, I think the Muslim community needs to move away from the “back home” mentality, where keeping certain people down was commonplace. That way, Muslim spaces can support us. The masjid, for example, is for everyone, and women can have a place of leadership within our community. Afterall, the future of the next generation depends on there being a seat at the table for everyone.
What does the upcoming election mean to you and your hopes for the future? What do you hope Muslims allies advocate for Black people and/or Black Muslims specifically during this election?
Azizah: Like I said, we need all kinds of resistance. We need people in the political front, people protesting, organizers, educators, and really good parents to make the best decisions for our future. I focus on my talent, my resistance, and what God charged me to do and have that be an offering for this revolution unravelling all over the globe. But a big piece of organizing for causes is really teaching people emotional intelligence. Because there is no battle that will be fought well without emotional intelligence. We’ve done things in the past, especially as Black and Brown people, that have gotten us killed massively. So we have to think of ways to protest that will be effective and long-lasting.
Fousia: The upcoming election is vital to all Americans and, frankly, to people around the globe. Our health care, housing, civil rights, science, and women's rights are at stake with four more years of Donald Trump. As a Black Muslim woman, I would hope that everyone with the privilege to “not to be interested in politics” actually takes the time to research their Senate representatives and the platforms of both presidential candidates, then go out and vote.
What message do you want to send fellow Black Muslim women? What message do you want to send to the Muslim community about Black Muslim issues?
Amina: To my fellow Black Muslim women – your experiences may be quite dissimilar from mine. But your exclusion is the world’s deprivation.
Fousia: To my fellow Black Muslim women, you are enough, and you are loved. To our community at large, I would say, please stop burying your head in the sand; black issues are Muslim issues. We have to get progress further than thinking we don't have a racism problem because Bilal (RA) gave the Adhan – educate yourself on the civil rights movement and institutional racism. Most of all, I would say Salam and smile to every Muslim you come across, not just those that look like you.
Azizah: Our fight is everyone’s fight. Most of the civil liberties all Americans enjoy came about from Black protest, unrest, and tragically violence against Black bodies. But more than anything, we need to build that empathy and understanding. Sometimes we’re uncomfortable when Black issues are brought up because that’s just how we’re taught. And that’s unfortunate and that’s what made it so hard for us to really unite together as a community and building more meaningful relationships. With the recent importance of Black issues in masjids, we also have to ask, “Why weren’t they important before?” Create that sense of importance because it is important, not because it’s trending.
