Silent Revolution of a Muslim Arab American Scholar-Activist

Nimat Hafez Barazangi

Silent Revolution of a Muslim Arab American Scholar-Activist

In Muslim Women Activists in North America: Speaking for Ourselves. Edited by Katherine Bullock (Austin, TX: Texas University Press, 2005: 1-17)

Abstract

After 35 years of living in the Unites States, every time I meet a new person, I am asked: Where are you from? My own personal, political and scholarly journey along with that of some of my cohorts engaged in search for answers to this and relevant questions have shaped my silent revolution. It is a revolution against the way Muslim-Arab girls have been raised unprepared to experience their identity autonomously; it is a revolution against the social systems that abuse and stereotype Muslim Arab women--be it the Muslim, the Arab or the American systems--chiefly because of their dress code. The goal of this revolution is to ignite the flames for social change, re-interpreting the Qur`an in order to retrieve its dynamics that originally intended to establish gender justice. Though the three and one half decades of my life in the US-- first as a foreign student, then as a permanent resident and a citizen--are marked by milestones distinctive dates and events, in my search for answers to different questions, I prefer to go back and forth between them.

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Copyright Statement

This is a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in the edited book Muslim Women Activists in North America, following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available through the University of Texas Press. http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/excerpts/exbulmus.html

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