In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

6 ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Contact Zones Negotiating the Hyphen between Self and Others Rashid describes a much repeated scene: Rashid: I’ve been stopped by the police once, and that was really quite unnerving because he asked me what religion I was. I was not happy with [that]. Interviewer: Wow. Rashid: I felt kind of angry. On my American side I felt kind of betrayed a little bit in that. Interviewer: Well, what did you say? Rashid: I told them I was Muslim, and basically the police officer was concerned because someone called the police because I was praying near a train station. Sabreeha (Pakistani, age twenty-two) told us a different sort of contact story: I was taking a terrorism class and there was this girl who sat next to me. She was really trying to be friendly with me, and she was Israeli and the 156 ❙ Contact Zones teacher was talking about terrorism and she looks at me and says, “They don’t know terrorism like us,” I’m like, “Excuse me?” like “What do you mean?” She says, “You know, I’m Israeli and you’re Muslim, you know, you understand.” I say, “I’m American, I don’t know what you are talking about. I know just as much about terrorism as they do.” I haven’t experienced any more than the kids in the class, the American kids. [I explained ] I’m not Palestinian. She’s like “Yeah, but you’re Muslim.” I was like “What??” I was just really surprised. I mean September 11 was the first time I have actually firsthand experienced terrorism. How would I be more in tune with terrorism? I was really upset at the fact that just because I wear a ħijāb and I would sit next to her in the classroom that I would have more insight into terrorism than anyone else in the class would. Sabreeha continues by telling a story of being protected by an unsuspected ally: Back home, we are the only Muslim family within our community, so right after 9/11 I was the only Muslim in my high school, the whole district . I was walking around, the security guard pulled me to the side and said, “If anything happens, let me know first, I will take care of it, even if the students are joking or anything, just let me know.” As he was telling me this, these two kids were walking by—I think they were freshman— and they said, “Hey, let’s go to 7-11 and blow up those Palestinians.” The security guards grabbed them and said, “First of all, they are from Pakistan , get it straight!” and the guy was like this Caucasian white guy and was like, “Second of all, what did you say?” And they were just joking, they weren’t serious at all, but the school took it very seriously . . . I mean my local community was very open, and they wanted to make sure that people understood the difference. Me and my sister, they knew us very well, we had a good image so they just wanted to make sure that people understood the difference so they opened the doors for us actually. I feel that because it was small, it was that way, but if it had not been, it would have been a lot different. Rashed and Sabreeha told very different stories of contact with nonMuslims and their reactions. We have collected many of these stories, Contact Zones ❙ 157 along with responses as varied as these. In this chapter we move from an analysis of the intrasubjective work of hyphenated selves to a look at the intersubjective work of social relations at the hyphen. In order to understand how young Muslims in the United States encounter “others” and how they respond, across context and relationship, we created focus groups in which self, other, and the “spaces between” could be observed. Challenging the traditional psychological partition of interior and exterior, self and social, we tried to connect our understanding of hyphenated selves as a psychological rendering of self-in-relation to an analysis of how Muslim American young adults experience and engage in contact zones in relation to others. If people feel conflicted about their identities, how do they negotiate the space between self and other in a social setting? If people are trying to integrate their many selves, how do they negotiate “others” when the interaction feels threatening or aversive? Methodologically, we shift from looking at...

Share