How do markers of Islam such as the hijab, headgear, beards, etc., play into racialisation for white people who wear them—or don’t they?
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According to Atiya Husain’s study on the positioning of black and white Muslims in America, there is a disconnect between the bodily implications and assumptions associated with the white muslim’s appearance and notions of Muslimness that exist in America’s conscience. For black and white people, presenting as Muslims carries different significance than it would for south asians or arabs. This is in part because the “implicit racial meaning in Muslimness is non-whiteness/non-blackness, and the implicit religious meaning in American whiteness and blackness is non-Muslim” (Husain, 598). In an interview with the author, a white hijabi Muslim woman recalls how an American woman once “[thought] I’m from some foreign place where people don’t wash their hands properly.” (596) The subject reveals that she had not faced such assumptions prior to her wearing a hijab as this garment came “with an assumption of foreignness that does not match her racial identity.” (596) This suggests that Whiteness and Muslimness are mutually exclusive and cannot be reconciled within the American framework. Markers of Islam play into the racialisation of white people in the moments when they are perceived as Muslim. For this reason, white Muslims often choose to navigate this construct by “playing up their Muslimness, which means distancing themselves from their Whiteness” (599).
At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, a white Muslim man was asked about the role of white converts in fighting racism while at a conference held in a Ferguson mosque. In his response, he discussed the discrimination he also faced as a Muslim and attempted to “downplay his whiteness since he does not see himself “that way”.” (600) Similarly, second generation Iranian Americans view themselves differently from the narrative fed to them and internalized by their parents. Not only does “Aryan” carry racist and violent connotations, but the separation between their lived experiences of marginalization and their supposed “identity” as the “original” whites further fuels Iranian American youth’s rejection of their imposed whiteness (Maghbouleh, 57).