Somewhere in the middle
-
The article by (Husain, 2017) among other arguments gives an outlook of a possible factor as to why so many Muslims feel like they do not belong in western countries, despite being around people just like them. If race, and human diversity is only seen through the white/black binary, then those who are not that will in some way gear to one of these “race categories”, despite them not being part of it because it implies that it is the only way of being seen. Thus, in that way the people who fall in the middle of these characterizations get to change, shift, adapt into a way that they want, which actually privileges them more than black people/Muslims. In this way South Asians and Arabs can "become" white, through social interactions, assimilating with various cultural values including distancing themselves from specific cultures. Hating people that share the same cultures as us is real and it does happen, which has been a topic that showed up several times in this class.
In this article we also see, that being white also means not being Muslim in a way, because as soon as a white person wears a garment that is related to Islam, they suddenly become foreign in regards to their race. Something about them as a person fundamentally changes in the gaze of passing by strangers. I remember coming across a Muslim revert on Tiktok who is a Quebecois, and she herself claims herself to be one. Some of her videos or live streams included comments she was receiving, such as the classic "Go back to your country" and "Go practice Islam in your country" and she would laugh in her responses while letting them know where she is from, and how she willingly reverted, because many comments came from white Quebecers. Her skin color, her Quebec accent, her use of Quebec slang was no longer relevant because drum roll she wears a headscarf/hijab. The hijab in this case disrupted a conventional boundary of what "being white" ought to be, which led this person to enter a new racialized Muslim identity.
From another context, by (Gualtieri, 2019), we continue to learn that "becoming white" is not actually always about the skin color, but something that can be tied deeply to other identities like : Cultural, religious. Arab immigrants who have moved to the States either willingly or unwillingly managed to pass of as white people by immigration authorities, which was a sign of people conforming to American society even if they have no actual real connections to that culture as author wrote: Syrian whiteness were rooted more in ideology than logic" (p.31).
In this article we also see the opposite effect happening of how religions are viewed by people, as it mentioned that some Arab Christians emphasized their religious identity to receive American rights, as the Christian faith had a positive effect on people for those who associated the faith with American values. Whereas, in Husain's article, Islam is foreign and far away from Western/American values.