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608 l ISLAM Muslim Women and the American Public Square Today in the American context a great range of female Muslim voices is being heard. It is not only academics who are contributing to the discourse, although they can increasingly be found in major American campuses teaching history, sociology, anthropology, religious studies, international relations, literary criticism, and women’s studies as well as scientific disciplines. There are increasing numbers of women activists, journalists , officers of local and national organizations, health professionals, and many others who are eager to have a part in explaining and interpreting the role of women in Islam and in the West. Since the 1970s, and very much continuing today, Muslim women in America have found it necessary to assume active leadership roles in the United States and to become political activists as well as scholars. One of the pioneer activists for Arab American rights and a leader in the struggle against prejudice and distortion of Arab and Muslim women, for example, was the late Hala Salam Maksoud. Maksoud was one of the highestpro file Muslim women activists, one of the founders of the American Association of University Graduates and of the American Council for Jerusalem and a powerful and charismatic president of the American-Arab AntiDiscrimination Committee. The contributions of such women, combining their experiences of achievement both in their home cultures and in American academia, have made them significant agents in helping shape the discourses of generations of Muslims both in the United states and overseas. A younger generation of American-born Muslim women, of both immigrant backgrounds and converts, is coming into its own. They are more actively engaged in the public square and in holding America accountable to its constitutional guarantees and promise of freedom of religion and choice. Some are working on the staff of congressmen providing input on Islamic causes. Others have organized charity and human rights groups seeking to ameliorate the condition of less fortunate people both in the United States and overseas. Still others are working to correct the information on Islam and Muslim women in school textbooks, in the media, and in the movie industry. An African American woman has been elected judge in Maryland. California activist Laila alMarayati has served with distinction on the Committee on Religious Freedom to which she was appointed by President Bill Clinton. While such women are disturbed by the continuing diatribe against Islam and Muslim women such as that used to justify the war against the Taliban, they are certain of their identity as American and Muslim and working to change America from within, to create a more just society. The discourse about women that now takes place on a number of different levels in America is thus deeply influenced and shaped by what Muslims bring with them, by the circumstances that affect them when they arrive, by their continuing contact with the countries and cultures from which they came, and by the dominant Western paradigm of diatribe and denigration of their roles. Women now living in America from a great range of backgrounds, including African Americans who must respond to both American and foreign cultural expectations and pressures, are in the process of trying to respond to dominant stereotypes of women, both Western and Islamic. Their writings and their public presentations as well as their modes of participation in American culture are all reflective of a response to an image of the Muslim women, whether that image is one propagated by the Western media or fostered by the traditional conservative interpreters of Islam. Women in the American context of course do not always agree, and the differences and distinctions in their understandings reflect the ways in which their respective formative in- fluences determine how they see the world and themselves in it. SOURCES: Mahnaz Afkhami, Women in Exile (1994). Haleh. Afshar, Women and Empowerment: Illustrations from the Third World (1998). Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (1992). Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito, eds., Daughters of Abraham: Feminist Thought in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (2002). Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and John L. Esposito, eds., Islam, Gender and Social Change (1998). Shahlaa Haeri, Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Shi‘i Islam (1989). Riffat Hassan et al., eds., Women’s and Men’s Liberation: Testimonies of Spirit (1991). Azizah Al-Hibri, Women and Islam (1902). Shahnaz Khan, Muslim Women Crafting North American Identity (2000). Afaf Lutfi a-Sayyid Marsot...

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