American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender within the Ummah

6. Negotiating Sisterhood, Gender, and Generation: Friendship between Second-Generation South Asian American and African American Muslim Women

206 6 Negotiating Sisterhood, Gender, and Generation Friendship between Second-Generation South Asian American and African American Muslim Women Young Muslims, particularly before going to college, usually follow their parents’ patterns of ethnic mosque attendance, if they attend at all. While I was growing up Muslim in Atlanta in the 1980s, before the proliferation of mosques, Al-Farooq was my only exposure to immigrant mosque communities, and only during Ramadan and ‘eid prayers. This was the same for my mother. It was not until I went to college, and a predominantly white one, that I developed friendships with the children of Muslim immigrants. If I had stayed in Atlanta and attended my second choice of schools, Spelman College, a historically black college for women, I would not have formed these cross-ethnic relationships. But while I was at Duke University, I formed friendships with other ethnic Muslims in ways that my mother probably never will. Even so, at predominantly white university and college campuses in Atlanta, like Georgia State, Emory, and Agnes Scott, young Muslims also are crossing ethnic lines like those I discovered and negotiated at Duke. As we saw in the Chicago ummah, college campuses are major sites for interaction among different ethnic Muslims. Although the ideal of Islamic sisterhood creates a space for Muslim women college students to cross ethnic boundaries, it means navigating their parents’ expectations and cultural gender norms. On campus, Muslim women are exposed to a range of possibilities for interethnic friendship and marriage. Consequently , a second-generation South Asian Muslim college student is more likely to create friendships with African American Muslim women than Negotiating Sisterhood, Gender, and Generation 207 her first-generation immigrant mother would have been. Exposed to more possibilities, young Muslims rethink and challenge many of their parents’ expectations at the same time that they fulfill them. As Muslim women form interethnic friendships, they also encounter different gender norms. As we have seen, African American and South Asian Muslims often have different ideas about appropriate gender roles. As a result, forging sisterhood across ethnic lines means navigating gender practices. Some of these norms are based on interpretations of Islam, some are based on culture, and some are based on a combination of both. Cultures’ different gender ideals sometimes test cross-ethnic friendships or relationships, and at other times, they function as the space for interethnic exchange. I spoke with women in two interethnic friendships on college campuses in Atlanta. The kinds of attitudes and negotiations that we find in their narratives are certainly not the same for all such friendships but nonetheless resonate with many second-generation Muslims. Often we find the women featured here asserting perceptions about their own ethnic communities and others. Even though these are personal perceptions, they take on real meanings that shape how women construct and cross boundaries. Farah at Al-Farooq Masjid is a Pakistani American. She appeared a bit apprehensive about talking with me at the mosque but agreed to a phone interview. Although she talked only vaguely about her relations with African American women, she did mention a close African American friend, Hanan, who was at school with her at Emory University. When I contacted Hanan, she was open and eager to talk. Hanan converted to Islam after learning about the faith in high school from her African American Muslim boyfriend. Once Hanan began college, she broke up with him but continued to practice and learn about her new religion with other Muslim women on campus. Most of what I say here about the friendship between Hanan and Farah comes from my interview with Hanan. The other friendship entailed Tahira, an African American woman whom I met at a lecture sponsored by the Muslim Students Association, or MSA, at Georgia State University (GSU). I briefly interviewed her there and learned that she had converted to Islam at the age of eight at the same time that her mom converted. Months later at a local Islamic conference, I started a conversation with Humaira, a Pakistani American who helped organize the conference as part of her volunteer work in GSU’s Muslim Students Association. I discovered that her best friend was Tahira and that they used to attend GSU together. A week later, I called Tahira and interviewed 208 Negotiating Sisterhood, Gender, and Generation her, too. At the time of my research, Tahira was in graduate school, and Humaira was still an...