On Husain
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In Husain’s article, she argues that, in some cases, white Muslims lose their whiteness because they are Muslim, especially when it comes to women who wear hijabs, which is a “particularly efficient factor of racialization.” She recounts the story of Allison, a white Muslim who, shortly after she began wearing a headscarf, found that others assumed she was not from the U.S. — assumptions she had never faced before wearing a hijab. Allison states that if she were not wearing a hijab, nobody would assume she was Muslim; her racial identity does not match the foreignness associated with the hijab, suggesting an opposition between being white and being Muslim.
Furthermore, Husain compares the experience of being Black and wearing a hijab. She illustrates her point with Paula, another white Muslim who recounts how being white and wearing a hijab is seen as “weird” or even “dangerous.” Both Paula and Karimah, an African American Muslim, wear the hijab in the same way, as Khabeer calls it, the “hoodjab.” While Paula is sometimes assumed to have cancer because of her pale skin, Karimah is associated with the “baggage of being Black American” rather than “the baggage that comes with wearing a hijab pinned under her chin, which is associated with Middle Eastern Muslims.” Thus, the same style of hijab worn by a Black woman and a white woman signifies something other than being Muslim. “When whiteness and American Blackness are signaled, being Muslim is not the immediate assumption.”
Moreover, Husain asked Nadeer, an African American Muslim, which white Muslim people she could interview. Nadeer jokes, responding with, “What kind do you want? ... I know Black white people, desi (South Asian) white people, Arab white people,” implying that white Muslims take on the cultural identities of the particular Muslim community they join.