Ilyasah Shabazz, right, and Malaak Shabazz, daughters of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X, are shown on Wednesday, April 6, 2011 in New York. The Shabazz sisters are unhappy about a new biography, ‘A Life of Reinvention: Malcolm X,’ which alleges that their parents’ marriage was strained and that their mother, Betty Shabazz, was unfaithful.
(AP Photo/Peter Morgan)
i think even the muslim community, in and outside of the u.s., mistakenly associates the niqab with a lot of the ideas about islam and spirituality that we consider to be antiquated and cultural, rather than religious. i know a lot of muslims who consider the niqab extremist and threatening - “this is why They are scared of us,” etc.
i can’t speak for the specific theological antecedents but i have mad respect for these women— it takes guts to wear the hijab but to cover your face in a society that conflates who you are with how you look— that takes an amount of courage and strength i know not of. of course, the way one dresses isn’t related to one’s spirituality or indicative of the strength of their relationship to god but to willingly (and on your own accord) don the niqab must take a deeper, purer love for god that i could only hope to experience, one day.
(via altmuslimah)
The controversial Dalia Mogahed
American Muslim from Egypt, scholar and scientist
Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies
Advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama on the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships
Co-authored the book Who speaks for Islam? What a billion Muslims really think
I love this woman, and this piece is extremely powerful.
Performance artist, writer and global agitator, Anida Yoeu Ali is a first generation Muslim Khmer woman born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago. Anida is an interdisciplinary artist working in video, installation, sound, and performance. Utilizing memories and materials, her works investigate the artistic, spiritual and political junctures of a hybrid transnational identity.
Source: www.atomicshogun.com
Excuse me, Amerika - by Anida Yoeu Ali
“excuse me, Amerika I’m confused?
you tell me to lighten up
but what you really mean is whiten up
you wish to wash me out,
melt me in your cauldron
excuse me, if I tip your melting pot
spill the shades onto your streets
I DON’T WANT TO LOSE MY COLOR.”
“9 digits to divvy up my new found freedom
a hyphenated identity, misconstructed name
a divided soul— asian american
a hybrid woman
SLASHED, DASHED, CAPPED, AND LOWER CASED IN LABELS
contaminated by diction—
pricked by vultures of bastard tongues
you mispronounce my pain,
the sting heard on roll call days
daily friction—names slip off teachers’ tongues
sounding like slaughtered soldiers
caught in battalion battlefields
excuse me, for getting so angry but
YOU CAN’T EVEN SAY MY FUCKING NAME!”
(Source: thoumbreath)
(209 plays)
American comic book writer and author of The Butterfly Mosque.
She also writes the occasional article in the paper.
Badass.
