Motto
I play it cool
And dig all jive.
That’s reason
I stay alive.
My motto,
As I live and learn
Is:
Dig and Be Dug
In Return.
Langston Hughes. 1959: 234.
Introduction
There are prominent stories in the media, as well as countless personal stories in the greater Muslim community, of white people whose response to Islamophobia, for varying reasons, has been not to reject Islam but to embrace it. The contradictory nature of this response reinforces the complexity of knowledge production and the critical subject in the post 9-11 world. The rejection of the media narratives both undermines the perceived power of Islamophobia, as well as highlighting the tendency of Islamophobic representations of Islam and Muslims to drive people towards Islam rather than away from it. Using a case series, this article seeks to explore the connection between Islamophobia as a media and societal narrative and the conversion stories of white converts post 9-11. The hypothesis of the article is that the violence of Islamophobic rhetoric is a form of knowledge production that regularly produces the opposite effect that it intends in white people due to its tendency towards misinformation and misrepresentation of Islam and Muslims. As part of the discussion of the case series, the article seeks to illuminate connections between anti-racism and the stories of white converts to further clarify the nature of their path of conversion to Islam and the impact of Islamophobia on white converts self-understanding. The article will also explore the consequence of anti-racist white converts producing pro-Islamic narratives following their rejection of Islamophobic tropes, memes, and disinformation as a form of knowledge production functioning as resistance.
Statement of Positionality
This article is an investigation of the connections between Islamophobia and the stories of how three white women converted to Islam post 9-11 and the importance that anti-racism played in their experiences of conversion, as well as in being Muslim following their conversion. I decided to write this article out of a variety of contexts for me as a woman, among them being white, a convert to Islam post 9-11, and a committed anti-racist. For myself, the process of conversion to Islam, as well as my experience of being Muslim, have had distinct connections to my experience of myself as an anti-racist. For example, while I was involved in Islam prior to the 9-11 attacks, and told people I was a Sufi, I did not become serious about my practices as a Muslim until I had experienced several jarring experiences, most notably the attacks themselves, then the investigation of my teacher by the FBI, and the inundation of Islamophobic media narratives, both involved in the invasion of Afghanistan and more specifically in the invasion of Iraq.
I live in the San Francisco East Bay, home of the Islamophobia Studies Center, which plays a prominent role in opposing Islamophobia nationally and globally. When the ISC put out a call for papers on knowledge-production, I questioned what I personally had to say, and what came to my mind is the story of my conversion as a narrative of resistance to Islamophobia. My personal story is embedded in the huge and unsuccessful national protests surrounding the imminent invasion of Iraq which are one of the most visible resistances to Islamophobia in history. I wanted to find out if other white converts post 9-11 had similar stories, and how anti-racism (if we conceive of Islamophobia as simply racism, which is increasingly accepted) played a role in their stories both before and after their conversion.
I myself am not a part of academia, not for lack of multiple applications to positions as a lecturer or professor. I have been working on how to do research and experiencing the sting of the monopoly of research by the university system. In this sense, I continue to be committed to my own freedom to produce knowledge outside of the academic monopoly and this is part of that work.
Literature Review
Before presenting the case studies, it is important to review the literature on a few pertinent topics. These include the idea of knowledge production, particularly related to Critical Race Theory, intersectionality, and research, concepts of whiteness, anti-racism, and what is termed in the anti-racist literature the “wages of whiteness,” as well as a short comment on why an antiracist frame is appropriate for studies on Islamophobia.
Knowledge Production
The question of the nature of knowledge has long occupied philosophers, but it is possible to mark the beginning of the modern linking of power and knowledge to Foucault although Foucault himself questioned that conclusion (Foucault 1980, 115). The words “knowledge-production” specifically have a Marxist origin and are connected to the critique of Marx and Weber’s work to change the control of the means of production and alienated labor in their work towards revolutionary socialism. To be more general than the historical roots of the modern discourse in critical theory and aim for the actual content of the question, Foucault outlined many of the defining features of the modern debate in The Order of Things. Many contemporaries of Foucault around the world asked many of the same questions that he did about the relationship between power and knowledge in similar ways, although arguably not as extensively and systematically as Foucault. Examples include Alatas’s work The Captive Mind, or Babha’s The Location of Culture in Asia, or Escobar’s Encountering Development in Latin America, as well as many other thinkers who tried to deconstruct the impact of the connected systems of power and knowledge and their consequences in the world (Weiler 2006). Foucault (1980) stated:
Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true. (131)
The exploration of truth, and thus knowledge and knowledge production as a system of power, as far as the pivotal thinkers of the 1960s to the present, represents a political force that has challenged many of the fundamental oppressions of human society as the foundations of Truth have been investigated, critiqued and deconstructed. The connections between capitalism and capital more generally and the economic orderings of labor and production, between the truths of gender norms and sexuality and systemic heterosexism, between understandings of race as a category and racism, as well as other systems of knowledge such as science, philosophy, religion, have all been questioned, and this arguably has been one of the most powerful and transformational processes of the modern world. Foucault aptly stated, “The political question, to sum up, is not error, illusion, alienated consciousness or ideology; it is truth itself” (Foucault 1980, 133),
Decoloniality is defined in part by its emphasis on the positionality of knowledge and its socially constructed character (Cupples and Grosfoguel 2019; Walsh and Mignolo 2018). In particular, anti-racism as a movement has centered the question of knowledge-production. Two of the main theoretical frameworks of anti-racism, intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991) and Critical Race Theory (Delgado and Stefancic 2017), both emphasize the importance of knowledge production both to maintain and resist racism as a social, political, and economic system.
Collins (2019) analysis of resistant knowledge projects provides several important insights, including the intersectionality of critical theory itself, and how this relates to both research and epistemic power. One relevant critique to this work is her claim that “One dimension of white racism is the belief that all antiracist analysis should be targeted to white people” (Collins 2019, 98). However, in response to this enthymeme, this is written about whiteness. Collins emphasizes the importance of self-reflexive practices within oppressed and marginalized communities as the proper location of antiracist critical theory. It is important to note that this article is written by a white woman, researching white experience, as part of critical whiteness studies, and therefore is consistent with her call for self-reflexive practices and is not intended to continue to tradition of writing on blackness, race, or racism from the outside to appeal to the mercy of white folks to wake up. Rather, this is an attempt to continue to theorize alternative white frames of reference that challenge the normative standards of white complicity, by centering and empowering white anti-racism and the reflexive and dialogical work that white people are doing and continue to need to do, to practice responsible allyship with oppressed communities.
Collins commentary and analysis of the importance of resistant knowledge projects, then, is entirely consistent with this work specifically, as well as critical whiteness studies. It is important to also comment on the epistemic power of whiteness. While we can acknowledge this reality, and attempt to remain conscious of it, it is vital to be aware of the limitations of critical theory that starts from privilege. And while this can be acknowledged it cannot be avoided, although this research is being done to some degree outside of the academy as the participants and primary investigator do not have a university or academic affiliation.
Thus, to the extent that it is impossible to remove most work at this level from the mathesis of the simple order of accepted a priori knowledge that is the basis of the Western epistemic, this article, along with many others, must unfortunately remain a posteriori knowledge at its best (Foucault 1994). The analysis of the fundamental categories such as whiteness, race, and how they are embedded in our world remains outside the scope of this article.
Whiteness, Anti-Racism, and the Wages of Whiteness
With all this said about resistant knowledge projects and the role whiteness plays in this work, more needs to be explored. Significant work has been done in the anti-racist literature on what has been called “the wages of whiteness” (Roediger 2007; Thandeka 2005, 77). This concept is drawn from the seminal work by W.E.B. Du Bois (1935), Black Reconstruction in America. Du Bois states:
It must be remembered that the white group of laborers, while they received a low wage, were compensated in part by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public deference and titles of courtesy because they were white. They were admitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public parks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the courts, dependent upon their votes, treated them with such leniency as to encourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their personal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the best in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from twice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers specialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored the Negro except in crime and ridicule. (700-701)
The idea that working class whites participated in racism to advance in their labor and social relations is well documented (Roediger 2007; Thandeka 2005). The “white racial frame” positions white people as superior and reinforces white supremacy through the circulation of cultural information that are circulated explicitly and implicitly throughout white society (DiAngelo 2018).
What has been less well-documented, perhaps due to its recent emergence as a cultural phenomenon, is the increasingly widespread cultural, social, and political pay-off that white people obtain through anti-racism. The idea of leveraging white privilege to resist racism has continued to gain ground and there is an emerging ethos among white people that this is the morally as well as socially acceptable response to whiteness. This is in large part due to the visibility and power of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to dismantle racism. Additionally, it is a result of the coming of age of the Civil Rights Movement, with the increased integration of the workforce, politics, educational institutions, sports, and every conceivable area of human endeavor, leading to negative consequences both personally and professionally for racism that simply did not exist even a decade ago.
Islamophobia as Racism
A final note in the literature review, which should be included. Zine (2006) defines Islamophobia as the fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims that is translated into individual, ideological, and systemic forms of oppression (Zine 2006, 9). Islamophobia has caused an increase in attacks on Muslims both in the US and globally in recent years, starting with the September 11th attacks and recently increasing again during the Trump presidency (Moffic et al. 2019). Islamophobia has been understood increasingly as racism in the literature on the topic (Mohr 2021). This article explores whiteness in relation to Islamophobia with the understanding that it is appropriate to analyze Islamophobia with an antiracist frame for this reason.
Case Studies of Three White Converts to Islam Post 9-11
Methodology
The idea of using case studies as a form of research that is outside of academia is an evolving theory and praxis. Essentially, if the ongoing critiques of knowledge production are to be taken seriously as foundational to concrete social change, then it follows that research as a primary means of generating new knowledge should take the relationships between power and knowledge seriously. Obviously, this has been happening consistently over the last 60 years if not farther into history, in a variety of ways, for example Foucault’s investigation into the problem itself and phenomenology generally. The phenomenological approach can be understood as a way to investigate reality that suspends larger matrices of truth and power by attempting to critically investigate the concrete phenomenon of societies with the impact of ideology minimized and itself part of the content of the research questions. Another method of investigation which has continued to gain ground is participatory action research (PAR) which takes seriously the importance of social change as a first intention of the research, imbedding it into the process itself (Borda 1979; Borda and Rahman 1991; Rahman 1985). It has been apparent to sociologists, educators, philosophers and researchers in every possible discipline that “a direct link exists between various ways of ‘building’ the notion of social movements and various research methods” (Touraine 1985, 92).
In particular, PAR has a distinctive theory of how research is connected to knowledge-production in the interest of social change, although it is a diffuse theory and still evolving (Rahman 1985). PAR takes the viewpoint that “domination of the masses by the elites is rooted not only in the polarization of control over the means of production but also over the means of knowledge production” (Rahman 1985, 119). This is consistent with the theories of the connection between knowledge and power discussed above in a variety of contexts.
The case studies for this article were based on a series of interviews with white women who converted to Islam after the 9-11 attacks. The women were recruited by emails to the extended network of the researcher, two of the women were known to me personally and one is a stranger who I have never met in person. All interviews were conducted over Zoom and recorded then transcribed from the recording and analyzed for major themes. All participants signed both an informed consent as well as a study consent acknowledging potential risks and benefits, including the risk of their stories being identified due to the personal nature of the interviews. They all had two weeks after the writing was completed to review it prior to initial submission to peer review. The ethics of the use of case studies had been previously explored through reviews of the literature, journal requirements for ethics, and consultation with a colleague on the faculty at Yale University. The interview questions were structured around the DSM V—Cultural Formulation Interview—Key Informant Version (Lewis-Fernandez et al. 2015) which is designed to bring to light issues of culture in one-to-one interviews of people with lived experience in a variety of contexts.
The use of these case studies is arguably not PAR in that it has a limited function to transform the lives of the women interviewed, although the interviews were conducted with varying degrees of attention to their role as reflective tools for the interviewees. However, the theory of using case studies relies on several premises of PAR such as the importance of non-academic persons contributing to academic knowledge by centering their voices and experiences.
The approach to the case studies was based on the “researcher-as-bricoleur” methodology which assumes the validity of an approach to data that allows for a montage of methods (Denzin and Lincoln 2005). The influence of PAR has already been discussed and formed the theoretical justification for the work to include these women’s voices in the literature as a process of community empowerment. An ethnographic approach was part of the montage, in that the case studies were analyzed as part of a culture-sharing group (i.e. white Muslim women converts post 9-11) that emphasized their shared patterns through the use of themes derived from interviews (Creswell 2013; Hammersley and Atkinson 1990). It drew from grounded theory, in that the data analysis used open coding, was based on interviews, and the theory of white conversion post 9-11 was developed and grounded in the reports of the participants over the course of the time when interviews were conducted (Charmaz 2006; Creswell 2013). The approach was true to a montage of research approaches as well, in that the subjectivity of the researcher was included in the case studies, although the personal experience of the researcher was not shared during the interviews. Ultimately, though, the basic structure of the research was that of a case series, where the basic data was derived from the interviews with the women and data for this article is taken from description of the themes from the cases as well as cross-case themes (Creswell 2013).
Results
Asma
Asma is a white convert who converted as a result of circumstances in her family. She converted in 2013, is 76, a widow, and has three children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Her daughter is Muslim, and so she felt at one point that converting would bring her closer to her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren. However, she was clear that her motives for being Muslim were pure and that she is a Muslim for religious reasons, “I am not choosing the culture so much. I am not going to choose to be Muslim so I can wear hijab, to drink a lot of tea, and eat biryani. I chose it for the religious components. It is a pure choice.” Thus, her story did not support the hypotheses that Islamophobia had an effect on people’s conversion.
However, her responses to the interview supported the idea that there is a counter-narrative that she feels she is contributing to by being a white convert. For one, she is clear that “the right-wing media doesn’t help—like Tucker Carlson and those guys. They just feed it. They just feed Islamophobia.” And additionally, she was clear that she thinks that there is a prevailing image in the media that Muslims are “the other,” dark-skinned, accented, and foreign. She describes being Muslim as an opportunity because:
… the visibility is increased. It creates opportunities in a good way. It creates curiosity. Maybe people want to get to know you—why the heck did you do this? The opportunity is to dispel the stereotype. It is an opportunity to interact with others, you know non-Muslim others, to get to realize that you are pretty peaceful, and pretty kind, and generous.
She said she feels she is “an advertisement” that undermines the stereotypes about Muslims as the Other, and that the presence of white people in the Muslim community makes people curious about what Islam really is and is an opportunity for people to understand the community better. She stated:
Just the fact that I am in the community is a sign of support. You know what I am saying, I think to people looking at us, it kind of dispels the stereotype—you Muslims are terrorists and they are misogynistic. They get their victory through violence and as a peaceful person it gets rid of the fear and the stereotypical perception of what a Muslim is. As a white Muslim I sort of create curiosity among some people.
She also talked about her profile picture on social media and said to people who are asking, “As a white Muslim why did you do this? Are you crazy?” Her profile picture sends a message that again changes stereotypical perceptions of Muslims. She stated:
I don’t know if you ever noticed my profile picture. It is a white person with very blue eyes. What I wanted to portray with that–not all Muslims are black skinned, in a niqab or wearing a burka. You can be colorful. You can be pretty. I have had that since the very beginning.
In a variety of ways, Asma stated that while for her being Muslim is purely for religious reasons, her presence in the community is “definitely” a support. She said it helps break down stereotypes and makes non-Muslims ask questions that open doors for new understandings of Muslims and Islam. She reported that greeting people on the street, changing stereotypes, and generally just being a kind and polite person makes her feel happiness, self-esteem, and a sense of pride in herself. She responded to some of the questions during Ramadan and at one point she stated:
If I say salaam aleikum they (many Muslim women) barely respond because I’m not like them but I was walking to Whole Foods, which is my whole life right now, and I saw a man and I said salaam aleikum and he said to me asalaam aleikum and I felt a sense of pride when I said it and he perks up and he says “Alhamdulillah” and I said, yeah. It makes me happy that I’m an old, white, grey-hair, blue-eyes person and it makes me happy and proud and it makes me feel self-esteem that I make somewhat of a good impression.
Asma generally expressed how much she loves being Muslim, that she feels special and loved when people invite her over, that she loves the religion, and that being a part of the community is an ongoing source of joy and happiness generally, in addition to specific aspects that the interview covered such as changing stereotypes or confronting racism.
Hanifa
Hanifa is a white convert from South Africa of Portuguese Catholic ancestry who converted in 2021. She is 23 years old, Islamically married, and has no children. She converted as a result of deciding to explore religious faiths to find her path. When she stumbled across a video on Islam, she became interested in the religion, and as she studied more and more, she decided to convert. Similarly, to Asma, she reported that her reasons for converting were purely based on the religion itself, so again, one of the initial hypotheses of the research was disproved. There was no intention to resist the cultural narrative associated with Islamophobia, or to create a counter narrative.
She reported that prior to becoming Muslim she was “nervous of Muslim men because of what I saw on the media. Hijab and niqab were a very scary thing. I was completely uneducated about Islam and nervous and cautious around Muslims in general.” She talked about how she had been seeking ultimate truth and as she researched more about Islam all her questions were answered. When she went to a local mosque to investigate further, “it was on female empowerment, men looking after their wives. It broke all the stereotypes.” As a result, she converted and began to practice the religion. She did point out that the contrast between what she believed from the media and what she discovered about the religion made her very curious. Thus, there was some validity to the hypothesis that Islamophobia had a reverse effect, in that she was struck by the contrast, and this drove her faster into the religion once she learned about the truth. When asked, “When you found out Islam was so different from the stereotypes, you found out that Islam was totally not what you expected, did that make you more interested in Islam?” She responded, “Definitely.” She went on to say:
Once I had a little bit of knowledge, I was like actually this isn’t what people were saying and I pretty much obsessed about breaking down the misunderstandings and misconceptions. I love doing that to this day. I don’t get angry when people get ignorant. I don’t get offended. “What about the Taliban?” friends and family asked me and their opinion was problematic. I was uneducated and it definitely made me research more and understand more. Yeah, I realized how wrong everyone was. It was the opposite of what they intended. Like the intention of Islamophobia is to scare people away, but if they have just a tidbit of, hey, this isn’t what people say. What else is wrong? It has the opposite effect. So, Islamophobia only works, in my opinion, if people are kept away from Islam, but the moment something of their mind is broken, it opens up that opportunity of what else is wrong.
She went on to state that her love for the religion made her proactively explore the areas of misinformation that stood out to her. She reported:
I fell in love with the religion and when you fall in love with it you want to know it, right? Like with my parents, if I love you I am not going to just say I love you, I’m going to show I love you and find out what interests you. That is how I started seeking more knowledge. It started touching my heart. I want to learn more because I want to get to know what this religion is. As this was happening, I was realizing the media was wrong. The actual content is what drove me to continue researching, not necessarily that everything is lies. As I started learning more I realized the extent of the lies, and then I started preparing answers for these common misconceptions. I wouldn’t say it drove my knowledge. It didn’t drive the knowledge, but it steered it. The drive was the desire to learn more and understand what I was believing in and was the pushing forth and the motor, and the steering wheel was the direction of knowledge I was going and learning at the time was influenced by what was around me. If everyone was telling Islam is terrible to women, I’m going to steer towards knowledge surrounding women. The more I learned, the more I was affected by what was wrong. I went forward in that direction.
Additionally, Hanifa believed that her presence as a white convert breaks stereotypes, consistent with Asma’s responses. When asked “Do you see being a white woman as a support for the community?” she stated, “Yeah I see it as a massive perspective shift. Yeah, I think Alhamdulillah, I break a lot of stereotypes about white people and Christianity and about different faiths and cultures.” Hanifa was clearer than Asma that she is intentionally working to educate people about Islam now that she has become Muslim. Her response to the benefit that white conversion has to the Muslim community was similar to Asma’s view on breaking stereotypes. She described how as a white person she can change people’s view of the religion because she doesn’t fit the typical stereotype about Muslims. She stated:
I think people in the Muslim community benefit most from white conversion because of the shock factor. If a black person converts, no one will really think or know because there are quite a few African countries that have people. It’s not as noticeable. I think that is what is scary and uncommon about it and that is what is scary to the West is that white conversion is noticeable … If a Hindu becomes Muslim its just like another Indian Muslim. If a black person becomes Muslim you expect that they are probably from an African country. If a white person becomes Muslim it is noticeable. It doesn’t fit the picture and because it doesn’t fit the picture people ask questions and are scared because of Islamophobia. The moment people ask questions, that is the moment misconceptions can actually be corrected and that is dangerous because now ignorant people are finding knowledge. So I think the biggest benefit of people being white people and the biggest responsibility I have specifically is that people are interested. When I am wearing hijab specifically and when my husband is wearing his full thobe people notice us where if we don’t look like Muslims then they’re not going to know…The moment you stand out and people stare … people are watching and if you break that mold of being aggressive and violent, and that comes with more responsibility as well.
She commented that this is a responsibility and that she and her husband who is also white need to be more careful in public because of it.
You can’t act out at a waiter at a restaurant. You know, my husband can’t jokingly hit me over the shoulder. I don’t know, do something that might look or be perceived as aggressive because “Ah, you see he’s Muslim.” So, I find that it works both ways, more responsibility in acting right because if you act wrong the religion is going to be bashed, but if you act properly you are breaking that mold and people notice you because they are watching. So I think that is where the biggest benefit comes to the community.
When asked, “Do you think you have taken it on to educate people because of your Islam?” She replied, “100 percent. Besides just being ayahs in the Quran, it’s the duty of Muslims to give dawah in the best way that they can.” She expressed a clear intention consistent with the idea that white converts are creating a counter-narrative to Islamophobia. She stated:
In terms of my personal relationship in dealing with Islamophobia, I see myself actively acquiring more knowledge to combat it. Like I said, I do feel I have that responsibility. There’s going to be a lot of good in terms of me educating people. I am going to embrace Islamophobia as a challenge. I’m not going to look at it as something that is terrible and want it to shut up because it is not going to shut up, or I am going to just skip past it and shove people down with it. That is not going to help the situation. I am going to look progressive and uninterested which feeds the fear. So, my own journey moving forward is gaining more knowledge. Just dealing with the facts that people raise with the issues surrounding. Like I said, terrorism, oppression, all the major issues and also gain, more importantly, more knowledge from the Quran to live my life in a certain way and be able to deal with anything that comes my way because I don’t want to brush it off and like put it under the carpet, pretend it is not there. It is there. It is a reality that we all face. Like in certain countries Muslims aren’t loved in terms of attacks on hijabis and hate on Muslims. I am going to embrace it instead of pretending it’s not there, it is there and it is a reality and the only way it’s going to change is if people acknowledge it and change it.
She reported that her emotional response to breaking stereotypes was fully positive and that her feelings about it included pride, contentment, peace, happiness, fulfillment, and a sense of self-love. She even shared in her second interview that she has begun to work on a book to break misconceptions and change stereotypes as dawah. Overall, Hanifa’s responses to the interview questions supported the idea that white converts are actively working to create a counter-narrative following their conversion, although the idea that it drives conversion was not fully endorsed by her.
Aqila
Aqila is a white convert from the San Francisco Bay Area who converted in 2007. She is 69 years old, unmarried, and has one adult child. She reported that before converting she had a bad opinion of the Muslim community and thought that Muslims were a “threat” to society. She described the fact that she converted due to a series of events that started with seeing someone in niqab. She stated:
It was a series of events. I actually met some Muslims who were nice, which was kind of a strange experience for me. And then one day when I went to Costco to buy some stuff and when I was parking my car I saw a full burka woman walking into Costco wearing black from head to toe. All you could see were her eyes and I was like immediately, “Oh my God, she is here to blow up Costco. I’m not going in there.” So, I sat in the parking lot for like 20 minutes waiting for Costco to blow up and it didn’t happen and after about 20 minutes I thought, ok, I am done with being ignorant about what this about. I’m going to get a Quran and I am going to read it cover to cover and I will find the page that says they should be blowing things up. I’m going to read every single page to do that and so I said to myself I have to become a more responsible citizen and I have to understand this and that’s going to be the only way I’m going to be able to understand it. So, I called the local mosque and one of the sisters came and met with me and gave me a Quran in English. I started reading it very determined to find out the answer to my question and I couldn’t find the answer. There was nothing in there like that and every page I read was, like wait a minute, I live like that. What do you mean, be good to your neighbors? Of course, I believe in that. Or what do you mean God gave you this, that’s an obligation you have? And like there were so many things in there that by the time I was done reading the Quran I was like, I said, “Oh My God, there is a whole group of people here who live like I do and I did not even know about it. I didn’t drink before I just did a lot of the things that Muslims do but I didn’t know that Muslims did them. So people used to say, “How come you don’t want to come and get drunk with us?” and stuff like that and I was like, I don’t know. It doesn’t make me feel good. But people thought I was weird, you know. I did not do the sort of normal things like that. So when I read it, and I’m like, wow, I discovered a whole group of people that believe what I believe. There’s just one God. That’s it. Well, that’s what I believe too.
Following these events, Aqila learned to pray and took shahada and became a Muslim. She reports that her actual decision to convert was not in any way impacted by Islamophobia, but was a pure decision based solely on the fact that Islam is the truth. She reported that there was no sense of resisting a narrative, or reacting to the stereotypes that influenced her conversion.
While Aqila said she does not see Islamophobia as racism, she does see Islamophobia as a real phenomenon in society. She commented on the trend in the media to always link Muslims religion to their crimes in a way that was different from other religions, and that this was a media ploy to create hatred and fear of Muslims. She did state that her presence in the community as a white person was a responsibility and that she believed it changed stereotypes, and that this was a beneficial role that white people can play in the community. She said, “because I am white some people will come up to me and will ask what country I’m from because they assume that I couldn’t possibly just be a born and raised White-American and then all of sudden be a Muslim. That doesn’t exist in their minds and when did I travel here? That is when my race comes into play.” Similarly, to Hanifa, she sees it as a responsibility to be a good example, and that this can change people’s perceptions of the religion for the better. She stated:
I hope, I think when people see me in public and they don’t know me, they might interact with me at a cash register or on a line somewhere, I think, hopefully, that it gives a little tiny speck that there are nice Muslims out there. Wearing the Muslim clothes puts a spotlight on me when I am out in public. It’s my responsibility to be aware of that and I am when I interact with people to be genuine and be myself and be authentic, to put people at ease that I am not there to be weird or do anything strange. So maybe in little tiny interactions here or there hopefully there is some positive impact.
She reported that her presence in the community changes stereotypes.
She stated that racism is getting worse, but that Islamophobia will potentially make people ask the kind of questions she asked and increase people’s interest in the religion.
I think that the future direction of the religion is to keep growing it is just going to keep multiplying more and more and I think because of that Islamophobia could go two ways. It could die down and become less of a front-page news thing. It could end up digging heels in and becoming a very loud and shrinking faction in the news. So, I really don’t know. I do feel quite certain that the religion is growing. So, the direction for the religion is to get larger and that of course includes conversions. How that goes around Islamophobia? I think it depends on how much Muslim can do in the course of time to calm Islamophobia, to get the message out there that there shouldn’t be any phobia. It’s a very balanced religion and we have a lot of issues of racism in our country and I think that it is probably going to get worse. It seems the more we have a mix of races the more intense the white faction is about getting their voice heard. It is a possibility that racism is, at least currently, racism is getting worse. There are people out there who believe that white people are superior for some reason and they are really getting a very loud platform right now. When it first started I thought this is ridiculous. It’s not going to go anywhere but that is not what is happening. It is going somewhere and it is getting louder. I don’t know where it will end up but I think having racism get louder in the face of the religion is what is really actually happening and maybe just having that become loud is enough for people to start looking at Islam and learning about it. I read it out of fear and then I saw what was real … Maybe it is not a bad thing for this voice of racism and Islamophobia to be as loud as it is because it points the finger at Muslims and people of intelligence or curiosity will look further into it and find what I found.
She also said, similar to Hanifa, the ongoing presence of white converts, as well as the intense negative portrayal of Islam is putting a spotlight on the religion that is making people learn more and, in the end, will have a positive effect on Islamophobia. She stated:
When I heard those horrible things, I was genuinely frightened and that’s what made me look and when people look there’s nothing. This is great. This is just a religion where people believe in God just like other religions. It is not different in that regard. It’s not brutal in expecting people to kill people or do anything like that. The louder that this voice gets, the more intense the spotlight is on Islam. When you put a spotlight on something you can see it, and when you see it, you learn more about it. At a certain point I think we will get to a tipping point where all this screaming and yelling and pointing fingers at Islam, all this, it won’t have the benefit, that it will stop creating that fear because enough people will have looked and enough people will have converted and enough people will genuinely understand. Its already taught in colleges and becoming more of a common knowledge. You can only cry wolf for so long before it doesn’t have any effect. The louder it gets, the more you shine light on it, the more it points the finger. People will understand it’s not something to point the finger at, that this is wrong, and learn and then the religion just grows. When people understand it they want to convert to it. Islam won’t be the other. It gets washed out. We’re not there yet but we are going in that direction.
Aqila’s responses indicated her impression that Islamophobia creates a spotlight on Islam that actually has the opposite effect intended, because it makes people curious and then they have a positive opinion of Islam. She reported that she thinks her presence as a white Muslim plants a seed and that in this regard, she experiences a sense of being useful, a sense of personal satisfaction, happiness, and self-esteem.
Themes
Core Reasons for Being Muslim not Impacted by Islamophobia
One of the core themes of the interviews was that all the women stated their reasons for being Muslims were purely religious. None of them reported converting or practicing Islam in any way to undermine Islamophobia. They unanimously described their conversion process, as well as their practice of the religion as not impacted by Islamophobia.
Muslims as Different than Depicted in the Media
With that said, they also unanimously described their presence in the Muslim community as something that helped the community be depicted in ways that were more peaceful and less violent. They all described the depiction of Muslims as terrorists and misogynists in the media in one form or another and stated that the fact that they were peaceful and empowered was a direct counter narrative that they were conscious of and happy to create.
White Converts Breaking Down Stereotypes
A specific fact of all the women’s experience of being Muslim and white was that they believed that the stereotype of dark-skinned, foreign, accented Muslims was broken down by their presence in the Muslim community. They all commented on their responsibility to conduct themselves in public with an awareness of the power they have as white people to change people’s perception of Muslims for the better, or for the worse. They described the importance of being peaceful, kind, and friendly, and how this would counteract stereotypes of violence and terrorism among Muslims.
Islamophobia Makes People Curious and that Makes them Find the Truth of Islam
The women all, in one way or another, described that the narrative that Islamophobia produces in society, particularly in the media, is in such contrast to their presence as peaceful, happy white Muslims that it makes people ask questions that lead them to a new, better, and more accurate understanding of Islam. They all talked about how they feel that being white and Muslim benefits the Muslim community by making people more curious. They all reported that they believe the curiosity people have about them as white converts has the potential to make people explore the religion, better understand it, and as a result have a more positive opinion of Islam and Muslims, and potentially even to convert to the religion.
Positive Wages for Counteracting Islamophobia
The women unanimously reported that they are getting a positive emotional response from their presence as a counter-stereotype. The process of breaking down stereotypes was something that they all described as a positive part of their conversion that they unanimously felt good about. From their sense of bringing a more positive perspective on the religion, they all reported self-esteem, positive emotional benefit, happiness, and a feeling that they are contributing positively to society.
Limitations
Clearly, the primary limit of the study is its anecdotal nature, as it is so limited in scope. Additionally, the clear and heavy bias of the researcher towards the subject no doubt influenced the outcomes of the interviews. Future research on the wages of white conversion, allyship, and resistance would be beneficial for better understanding both white Muslims’ process of conversion and their contribution to a counter narrative, but also provide interesting insights into white allyship in other contexts.
Discussion of White Conversion as Knowledge-Production
The interviews produced several interesting insights about the relationship of white conversion to knowledge production. Several of the themes that emerged from the interviews centered the importance of breaking down stereotypes about Muslims, including that Muslims are terrorists or misogynists. In fact, all three of the women interviewed reported that they viewed their presence in the community as white Muslims as having the effect of defusing stereotypes and creating a better impression of Islam and Muslims. This clearly can be framed as a form of knowledge production as part of the function of white conversion, although it was not a motivating factor in any of the women’s decisions to convert.
Another major theme of the interviews was the idea that Islamophobia is actually, as hypothesized, creating a “spotlight” on Islam that is having the opposite effect from what is intended. The women all believed that the excessively negative portrayal of Islam had the overarching effect of making people curious, and that this curiosity was driving a change in people’s perceptions of the religion. They all believed that their presence as white Muslims in the community made this process more pronounced and contributed to the construction of a counter-narrative to Islamophobia. This counter-narrative also is a form of knowledge production, which the women reported participating in with varying degrees of intentionality. One woman reported in her second interview that she has started working on a book to debunk misconceptions about Islam and Muslims as a result of her participation in the study.
Discussion of the Wages of Whiteness and White Conversion
Back to Du Bois’s argument that white people derive a wage from racism, it is clear from the interviews that all the women get a wage from their resistance to anti-Muslim racism. Their satisfaction, their sense of joy in participating in the Muslim community, and their sense of being a beneficial influence, among many other wages, provide a clear benefit to conversion and resistance to the Othering of Muslims. This wage of the counter-narrative they are producing was present in all of the interviews.
It raises interesting questions about the current anti-racist movement when we can reflect on the idea of the wages white people get from anti-racism. Clearly, there is a prevailing culture in many communities at this current time, that standing up for #BlackLivesMatter is a positive and responsible thing to do. Current trends in things like hiring practices, college admissions, funding for the arts, and other areas where there is increasing advocacy for the inclusion of BIPOC voices reflects this sense of positive wages for anti-racism. This trend does however prompt the question, will the current anti-racist movement among white people continue if the wages change, and there is less cultural pressure or benefit to anti-racism. Is the positive wage for standing up for racial justice enough to sustain the movement or motivate people if there is sufficient pushback from the alt-right in their vehement opposition to things like critical race theory or affirmative action. This question remains unresolved and will probably only be answered as events continue to unfold around the struggle for racial justice both in the US and internationally.
Conclusion
One of the main reasons I set out to do this research, as stated in my statement of positionality, was a genuine interest, and in all honesty, a sense of ongoing personal confusion, about the nature of my own conversion in relationship to the events of the War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq, and the ongoing Islamophobia in the media. The answers of the women I interviewed shed a great deal of light on my personal motives, which made me better understand several things about my own conversion. One was the lingering feeling, which after the research I feel much more clearly, that the main and basic reason that I am Muslim is purely religious. The events of the last 20 years for me have been quite confusing at times and have clouded my understanding to a large extent of my choices in the midst of my profound horror about the events of 9-11 and the invasion of Iraq. It is overwhelmingly true that Islamophobia, as all the women stated, did make me more curious about Islam, which led me to embrace it as the truth. However, I did not embrace it to fight Islamophobia per se, nor is that at the core of my practice of the religion.
The other primary take-away from the study, relative to my research questions, is that while fighting Islamophobia was not a central reason for conversion for any of the women, they all in one form or another felt that their presence in the Muslim community contributed to a counter narrative. For the women interviewed, this counter narrative provides resistance to stereotypes, biases, and prejudices against Islam and Muslims, and they all believed that this was beneficial to the Muslim community. While my own work to fight Islamophobia has been more academic and intellectual, I share a common sense of breaking down prejudices against Muslims, and that this is beneficial to the Muslim community. In so far as this counter-narrative is a form of knowledge production, it decenters Islamophobia and changes the position of Muslims in relation to the rest of the global community.