Muslim white, Christian whitest
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When I moved to Montreal, I grew close to a friend of a friend named David. David is a white Lebanese, previously Christian now converted Muslim man. He is 6’, quite large, has short curly red hair, and a long curly red beard. I’ve only ever known David as Muslim, and when I met him, his religion didn’t come as a shock to me, due to his physical appearance, easily associable to the stereotype of a Muslim man. When I asked him how is life had changed since he converted to Islam, he told me the most notable change was how he was perceived by those who knew him before and after, especially how his physical traits were perceived. When he was Christian, what people saw most was that he was a white Arab. Granted he was only 16, so his beard wasn’t what it is now, but it was clearly there, and his hair was close to the exact same. As a Muslim, he now feels that the attention around his physical appearance has shifted from the color of his skin and towards the physical traits, more closely associated to Islam.
Through the reading and further reflection, I see how this is the clearest example of how religion are interpreted as a package. This is not something that is limited to whiteness: it would be hard for my mind to associate a black man to Buddhism or Japanese man to Hinduism, but with the whiteness aspect comes a social implication, especially in the case of westward migration. The struggle for integration into Western society isn’t limited to people of color. When white Muslims, Jews, and others enter the Western world, they are confronted to the Christian perception rather than any ethnic or racial perception, which still yields similar results in terms of discriminations. Like David, they feel a differenciation from the white majority, despite being a part of it. In a way, there is a white, whiter and whitest.