American Female Converts To Islam Facing Growing Scrutiny

When Karen Hunt Ahmed and her Muslim husband divorced four years ago, many friends asked her, "Now you can stop this Islam stuff, right?"

Some friends, she thought.

"Like it was a hobby I took up when I got married and now I'm supposed to drop it," said Hunt Ahmed, president of the Chicago Islamic Microfinance Project, which she founded with two colleagues in 2009.

Hunt Ahmed, 45, is part of a growing sorority of female American converts to Islam, especially those who are or were married to Muslim men, who must deal with the perception that they converted to Islam because of domineering boyfriends or husbands.

The stereotype was revived in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, when news emerged that the wife of bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Katherine Russell, converted to Islam after meeting Tsarnaev in 2009 or 2010 when she was about 21.

Tsarnaev, 26, was shot and killed during a standoff with Boston police while his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, was taken into custody and now faces a raft of terrorism charges.

"It's not just Fox. A lot of the media have portrayed her as someone who was brainwashed and who didn't know what she was doing," said Edlyn Sammanasu, who was born to Catholic parents and started studying Islam when she met her Muslim husband in college, and converted when she was 21.

"When I saw the coverage, I thought this was ridiculous," said Sammanasu, now 32, a technical writer in Fremont, Calif.

Seema Imam, an education professor at National Louis University in Lisle, Ill., has seen the same thing. She grew up as an observant Methodist but converted to Islam 40 years ago at age 17.

"Whenever someone talks about Muslim converts being involved in something negative, it's done in a way in which people say, 'Be careful, look what happens when you become Muslim,'" she said.

Converts to Islam are as diverse as the rest of America, racially and ethnically, as well as in their interpretations of the faith. Some female converts wear a headscarf, some don't. What they share is the perception from others that they are incapable of making their own choice in a decision that involved substantial spiritual wrestling.

It's as insulting as it is inaccurate, they say.

"These reports are misogynous in nature, reducing women to creatures who cannot think for themselves," said Malika MacDonald Rushdan, who converted in 1995 after divorcing her Christian husband. She made her "shahada," or declaration of faith, at the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, which the Tsarnaev brothers occasionally attended.

"My faith, by definition, is for the Creator, not for my husband," wrote Ohio attorney Sarah Anjum, who converted almost 10 years ago, while she was in college studying Islamic political movements and Arabic, and four years before she met her husband.

While some American Muslim women converted while single, those who started reading about Islam after meeting future husbands are incredulous over the idea that they converted to please them.

When Kelly Wentworth, 35, told her Yemeni boyfriend that she was interested in learning about Islam, he pointed her to a Muslim professor who taught at Tennessee Tech, where the two were students at the time. When she later told him she wanted to convert, he didn't celebrate.

"He was worried people would think that I converted because of him, or that I was being forced to convert," said Wentworth, a software engineer in Atlanta and board member of Muslims for Progressive Values, a national advocacy group. "The stereotype is out there. That's something I fight with now."

Wentworth became so worried about how friends and family would judge her after the Katherine Russell stories that she couldn't sleep for several nights.

A 2011 study from the Pew Research Center found that about 20 percent of an estimated 1.8 million Muslims in America are converts, while a 2007 Pew study found that 49 percent of converts converted by the age of 21. The 2007 study also found that 58 percent of converts converted for religious reasons, and 18 percent for family and marriage reasons.

Female Muslim converts acknowledge that they have heard about Muslim women trapped in abusive relationships, but say that such relationships affect women of other faiths as well.

"That has nothing to do with religion," Wentworth said. "That's a problem with personality."

Katherine Wilson, a convert and Rhode Island resident who works with female victims of violence and sexual assault, said the media, by focusing on Russell's faith, missed a chance to speak about domestic violence. She believes Muslim women converts are perceived negatively because some people see their choice of faith as a knock against their own decisions.

"I believe this is partially due to white privilege in that there is not an understanding why an 'all-American girl' would give up her privilege-assumed, carefree lifestyle," said Wilson. "I think it bothers people that an 'all American woman' would walk away from what they think is a great life, which is a stereotype within itself."

While such stereotypes still annoy these women, many say they have grown tired of having to explain their decisions to convert. Which doesn't mean they aren't trying to change minds.

"There will always be those who judge based upon ignorance. They are of no concern to me," said MacDonald Rushdan. "I will keep on doing what I've always done. I will not apologize for being a God-fearing woman whose faith provides her with inner peace and contentment." Source

Between Militarism & Extremism: The Excluded Middle

Get well soon Malala!

Everyone please pray for Malala, she is a true heroine of our times.

 "If you educate a man, you educate one person. If you educate a woman, you educate and liberate a whole nation." Malcolm X. 

Sabbiyah Pervez is a voice from Bradford on the shooting of a brave young woman.

Education is a privilege that we take for granted here in the UK. We take for granted that it is compulsory and we take for granted that up until the age of 18 it is free. We take for granted the fact that we do not have to fight for our education, we do not have to struggle for it and most importantly we do not have to risk our lives for it. But there are many for whom such struggles are a constant reality. Many like Malala Yousafzai, who have that privilege stolen from them and for whom education is deemed unnecessary.

The issue regarding women being educated is one that has been prevalent throughout the ages, stemming largely from the belief that by educating a woman you are doing more harm then good, a view that still exists in fragments today within our own society. Many women will tell you that men feel intimidated by their knowledge or expertise in a certain field, indicating that the archaic view of the man being the dominant leader and omniscient, is still apparent within us.

I recall my grandmother narrating to us, that her eldest brother pulled her out of school when she hit puberty; she stated that he was concerned that if she continued to be educated she would not marry the man who was betrothed to her. My grandfather is significantly older then my grandmother and was a divorcee. When asked how she felt about her brothers decision, my grandmother replied she was furious but later saw the wisdom of his decision; she would definitely have not married my grandfather if she had continued her education.

As a young third generation British Asian girl growing up in Bradford, I encountered this backward mentality directed to my parents from some within my own community. Many stated that I did not need to be educated. Instead I should be educated to the bare minimum and be married off at an early age in order to remove myself as a burden from my parents. Others argued that if I was educated "too much" I would become difficult to control and education would grant me "too much" freedom, it would be hard then for me to conform to the expectations many had set for me. Fortunately I can tell you they were right. My education educated and liberated me, it allowed me to critically analyse the problems that i saw around me and to openly question and challenge them. My questions brought discomfort and I was regularly cautioned by elder members of my community for asking "too many questions." Unfortunately, I know of many girls here in the UK, who are pulled out of school because education is seen as a threat to what their elders expect of them.

So in a sense I can understand why the Taliban banned the education of girls when they took over the Swat Valley. They, like my great uncle and many others in Pakistan, felt threatened by the effect of educating a girl. You see Malcolm X pretty much has summed it up for us. When you educate a woman, you don't just educate her, you liberate her. You allow her to travel on a path of self-discovery and you enable her to question her position in society. You empower her by giving her knowledge of what she can become. And this is dangerous. It is dangerous to the Taliban because it means that they will not be able to impose their patriarchal laws upon liberated women, it means that if they do they will be presented with a challenge and a force greater then them. And their rule will be effectively be diminished. It was a threat and a risk they couldn't take.

So for those asking what Malala Yousafzai has done to the Taliban, this is exactly what she has done. At the tender age of 11, Malala started writing in order to articulate her hopes and fears under a false name. When her cover was blown and she was threatened by the Taliban and its sympathizers, she did not cease her writing. In contrast she went public, so that by the age of 14 she was a name and a force to be reckoned with. You see by educating Malala, her parents had given her her greatest gift. They had enabled her to understand her potential and to recognise that her writing was a tool, it was the sword of opposition to the men who had taken away her privilege of studying. It was her opportunity to stick her middle finger up in defiance and to seek vengeance and boy, did she strike fear in their hearts! Malala Yousafzai was a threat because her defiance was an inspiration to others, others who lacked her bravery and her strength of character and determination. It was an act of defiance that could ignite a movement of opposition, an opposition the Taliban desperately wanted to quash, threaten and intimidate.

Their motive behind shooting Malala is a simple one: shoot the leader and you scare the followers. To them it is a message of force, but in reality it is an act of cowardice. It is an act which demonstrates how pig-headed the Taliban really are. It demonstrates their weakness and fragility. So weak that a young girl armed with her writing can be seen as a great threat, a threat so damaging to them that even after shooting her they state that if she does not die they will strike once more. It is this latter thought that makes them real fools. By believing that they have eliminated a threat by shooting Malala, or even, God forbid ,by killing her, they are seriously deluded. This act will inspire many more like Malala, frustrated with the oppression of women that they encounter daily, frustrated with their lack of human rights and frustrated by their governments inability to protect them.

They will rise out of their slumber with a sense of empowerment and purpose to set a precedent for future generations, and I pray to God that when they do, Malala is there to lead them once again.