{"id":12169,"date":"2017-04-05T16:10:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T23:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?page_id=12169"},"modified":"2017-04-24T19:41:17","modified_gmt":"2017-04-25T02:41:17","slug":"between-storytelling-and-surveillance-the-precarious-public-of-american-muslim-youth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/between-storytelling-and-surveillance-the-precarious-public-of-american-muslim-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"Between Storytelling and Surveillance: The Precarious Public of American Muslim Youth"},"content":{"rendered":"

This chapter\u00a0is posted as part of an annotathon in partnership with Marginal Syllabus<\/a>, using the Hypothes.is annotation tool. Storytelling and Surveillance: The Precarious Public of American Muslim Youth<\/a>\u00a0is Chapter 4 of <\/em>By Any Media Necessary\u00a0published by New York University Press, May 2016. Used with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Storytelling and Surveillance: The Precarious Public of American Muslim Youth
\n<\/em>By Sangita Shresthova<\/em><\/h3>\n\n

The NSA apparently is spying on people by monitoring what apps they\u2019re using. Damn son, for all the buildings I\u2019ve blown up in Angry Birds, I wonder if I\u2019ll get interrogated for being a ringleader of Al-Qaeda. \u2014 Aman Ali, January 27, 2014<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In a Facebook status update, Aman Ali, an American Muslim comedian and storyteller, connected the popular mobile game Angry Birds to thoughts about surveillance and terrorism. At first glance humorous, Ali\u2019s post also succinctly captures a key paradox that surfaced throughout our research on American Muslim youth and participatory politics: young American Muslims\u2019 desire to express and connect through creating and sharing stories coexists with a climate increasingly defined by privacy and surveillance concerns. In his post, Ali reveals that like many of his 5,000 largely American Muslim Facebook friends, he is caught in a bind: he constantly juggles his desire to connect with others through social media with the awareness that his posts may be viewed (and possibly misunderstood) by audiences far beyond his intended networks. Acknowledging this reality may, in fact, be a key step toward overcoming its potential to silence voice and expression. Within three days, Ali\u2019s Angry Birds Facebook post received 557 likes, while many people left comments on it that poked fun at the underlying situation. One commenter suggested that Ali use a BlackBerry as there are no apps available for the phone, hence (supposedly) safeguarding it from NSA snooping. Another commenter warned that Ali\u2019s Facebook post now had so many keywords that it would certainly get flagged for official scrutiny. We might think of this Facebook exchange as a form of informal, collaborative storytelling, shedding light on the situations confronting American Muslims, while producing content that could be circulated across a supportive, yet fragile, network. Together, these humorous comments told a story of storytelling and surveillance.<\/p>\n

Drawing on the work of storytellers, civic organizations, and comedians like Aman Ali, this chapter focuses on expressive initiatives by civically engaged American Muslim youth as moderate Muslim voices have struggled to be heard within an increasingly polarized discussion that has characterized American culture in the wake of 9\/11. In particular, we highlight media making and storytelling as crucial dimensions of efforts by American Muslim youth to express, poke fun at, network, and mobilize around identity politics. We also point to ongoing in-person and online surveillance as a real obstacle for some young American Muslims, particularly those involved in contentious social justice campaigns. Such surveillance threatens an emergent American Muslim public, which often relies on dark humor as a coping mechanism. Exploring both the possibilities and vulnerabilities of participatory politics in the American Muslim youth context, we argue that these American Muslim youth networks are perhaps best seen as striking a precarious balance between vibrancy and fragility, empowerment and risk, and voice and silence, which as our introductory discussion of \u201cprecarious publics\u201d in Chapter 1<\/a> suggested, relates to the gap between voice and influence.<\/p>\n

To be clear, the expressive efforts, projects, and practices we describe here do not map directly onto easily identifiable political objectives. In fact, many of the American Muslim youth efforts we encountered were not conceived as explicitly (or even implicitly) political. Nonetheless, they often assume political meanings as they circulate and reach broader audiences. As filmmaker Bassam Tariq has sadly noted, \u201cthings tend to get political\u201d when \u201cMuslims come into the conversation in America.\u201d Whether they see themselves as political or not, young American Muslims are often asked to \u201crepresent,\u201d speak on behalf of, and even defend Islam as a religious practice whose tenets are compatible with the values and ideologies of the United States. Laila Shaikley (2014), one of the creators of the short online video \u201cMipsterz\u2014Somewhere in America,\u201d felt this situation left many American Muslims \u201cwounded, marginalized, reactive, and defensive,\u201d circumstances she attributes to the fact that they are \u201cunderrepresented and misrepresented in the media.\u201d As Shaikley suggests, American Muslim youth operate in an extremely politicized post-9\/11 climate where much of what they do as American Muslims could potentially be interpreted as having political meaning. In this context, activities (like telling personal stories and faith-based, identity-related expression) that would not necessarily be read as political among other communities do extremely important work in the American Muslim case as they coexist with more established advocacy efforts. Also, cultural efforts that aim to foster more grassroots expression become politically charged, which is why our study of American Muslim communities highlights activities that, at first glance, reside predominantly in cultural realms.<\/p>\n

This chapter draws on Sangita Shresthova\u2019s two-year research of civically active youth, groups, and networks connected to the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and Muslim Youth Group (MYG) of the Islamic Center of Southern California (ICSC). Founded in 1986, the Muslim Public Affairs Council is an advocacy organization that, according to its website, strives for the \u201cintegration of Islam into American pluralism, and for a positive, constructive relationship between American Muslims and their representatives.\u201d While its agenda often aligns closely with other American Muslim advocacy organizations, MPAC is distinct in its ongoing focus on public opinion and media. Yaida, a young American Muslim woman we interviewed, saw MPAC as \u201ca really press-oriented organization\u201d that \u201creacts quite quickly to what\u2019s going on through social media.\u201d MPAC\u2019s most prominent youth programs are the annual Young Leaders Summits, which bring together young American Muslims who are, or want to be, involved in journalism, entertainment, and civic engagement. While each summit is thematically specific, they all focus on strengthening participants\u2019 abilities to communicate and network effectively. Participants also explore the similarities and differences in their experiences as American Muslims. In doing this, they often connect through a shared knowledge of popular culture as they discuss TV shows, popular religious sites (like suhaibwebb.com<\/a>), and content created and shared through social networking sites by other American Muslims, including hip hop artist Omar Offendum\u2019s latest music video, different ways to tie the hijab featured on hijab-modest-fashion YouTube channels like YaztheSpaz, and the latest comedy video posted on GoatFace Comedy (a youth-run online comedy channel). After the summits end, participants stay in touch through an MPAC-supported Facebook group, webinars, email list, and annual in-person reunions.<\/p>\n

An informal space for high-school-aged youth to gather, the mixed-gender Muslim Youth Group resides within the Islamic Center of Southern California in Los Angeles. Founded in the 1970s, ICSC explicitly strives to engage diverse Muslim communities and according to its website promotes a \u201csocially responsible Muslim-American identity.\u201d During Shresthova\u2019s research, MYG ran weekly meetings that provided high-school youth with social opportunities alongside their spiritual education. The MYG Facebook page, explained Hasina, a 17-year-old youth leader,<\/p>\n

is like the heart of [our] youth group I think. What is the heart of every teenager\u2019s life? Our youth group does cater to teenagers. So we have a Facebook page.\u2026 Some of them [the youth] do not come to youth group anymore, but there are some that can still be in touch with this youth group or there are just kids who have necessarily lived farther away, but they can still know what is going on in the community.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

In 2012, MYG discussions often involved media, as the youth discussed news, watched online videos, debated anti-Muslim perspectives, and accessed religious websites during the session.<\/p>\n

Both MPAC and MYG were founded through the ICSC, and MPAC staff are closely involved with the programs run by the youth group, whose members in turn help out with MPAC events. Both organizations attribute their ideological underpinnings to Dr. Meher Hathout, a recently deceased physician of Egyptian descent and one of the Islamic Center\u2019s founders. Like Dr. Hathout, MPAC and MYG strongly assert that American Muslims need to accept being American as much as they claim their religious beliefs. In Dr. Hathout\u2019s words, \u201cHome is not where my grandparents are buried; it is where my grandchildren will live.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the course of Shresthova\u2019s research, she interviewed 30 young people involved with MYG and MPAC activities who came from a range of ethnic backgrounds, including Arab American, South Asian American (Pakistani and Indian), and African American. She attended MYG\u2019s weekly meetings for six months, participated in three MPAC Young Leader Summits in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., during the summer of 2012, and conducted 15 expert interviews with American Muslim youth community leaders. Shresthova also connected to American Muslim youth networks online to explore how new media complements, and expands upon, face-to-face encounters.<\/p>\n

Post-9\/11 American Muslim Youth and Precarious Publics<\/h4>\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t realize it was so big,\u201d Walidah, a young American Muslim woman from the Midwest, almost whispered as she circled the noisy construction site at Ground Zero. Walidah had come to Manhattan to participate in MPAC\u2019s June 2012 Young Leaders Media Summit. She took several pictures with her cell phone, her expression distraught and pensive. Standing in the atrium of a building newly constructed next to Ground Zero, she discussed how 9\/11 had changed American Muslims\u2019 lives, what it meant to her in 2001, and what it means more than ten years later. Like Walidah, several MPAC summit participants had not visited Ground Zero before. Their vivid memories of 9\/11 were shaped by mediated images and their parents\u2019, friends\u2019, and teachers\u2019 frightened reactions. Despite clear differences in their individual recollections, the youth all agreed that 9\/11 had a lasting impact on their lives. For the older youth (in their mid- to late twenties), the aftermath of 9\/11 brought the realization that American Muslims were going to need to organize around their faith-based identity in ways that moved beyond the ethnic and sectarian divisions that had dominated Muslim civic communities until then. Other, mostly younger, participants saw 9\/11 as the moment when they realized that no matter whether they embraced it or not, they would have to engage with being American and Muslim as an incredibly politicized identity. They also spoke about \u201cfear\u201d as a key dimension of their post-9\/11 experience.<\/p>\n

Many of the American Muslim youth we interviewed shared experiences of anti-Muslim prejudice growing up in America, which confirmed the findings of other studies of this population. A survey of American Muslim youth conducted by Selcuk R. Sirin and Michelle Fine (2009) found that \u201c88 percent of the participants reported having been subjected to at least one act of discrimination because they were Muslim\u201d (87). Reflecting on these realities, Sadia, a young Pakistani American, sighed and observed, \u201cIt\u2019s been 11 years since 9\/11.\u201d Sometimes she felt like \u201c[w]e really moved past that and we made a lot of progress.\u201d Other times, she was not so sure. She recounted an incident that happened to her in New York City:<\/p>\n

I was in New York with two other girls. We were walking and there was kind of a crowd and they wanted people to move or whatever and someone called out to us, \u201cYou terrorists!\u201d because one of the girls was wearing a headscarf. And I was just like, \u201cWow. Really? You would stoop that low?\u201d I come from a conservative Texas town so if something like that happens there or in another conservative town, I wouldn\u2019t have been as surprised. But seeing as it was New York, I was like, \u201cReally?\u201d Apparently, there are still real problems there and they are really hard to overcome. It\u2019s very frustrating when like something like 9\/11 happens and there\u2019s a few radicals who say, \u201cYeah, we\u2019re Muslims that\u2019s why we are doing this,\u201d and everyone believe them. Whereas, the guy who flew the plane into a building in Austin because he was mad at the IRS and no one\u2019s like, \u201cWow, Christians are horrible because of that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

According to a 2011 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 55 percent of the American Muslim respondents to a 2011 said they felt that living as an American Muslim had become \u201cmore difficult\u201d since 9\/11. Twenty-five percent reported that their local mosque had been the \u201ctarget of controversy or outright hostility.\u201d Despite the high level of animosity toward American Muslims suggested by these data, the same study found \u201cno indication of increased alienation or anger\u201d among American Muslims toward the United States.<\/p>\n

Many analysts attribute the degree of hostility indicated by these surveys to sustained anti-Muslim campaigns by groups affiliated with people such as prominent anti-Islamization campaigner Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, who argues on her Atlas Shrugs website that \u201c[t]he U. S. Constitution is under attack from Fundamentalist Islam and Shariah, Islamic Religious Law. Fundamentalist Islam wants Shariah to replace the U. S. Constitution and fundamentally transform America.\u201d The potential dangers of such extravagant rhetoric and the cultural climate it supports were underscored on December 27, 2012, when Sunando Sen, a man of Indian origin, died after being pushed under a New York City subway train. After she was charged with the crime, Erika Menendez, who is reported to have suffered from mental illness, was quoted as stating , \u201cI pushed a Muslim onto the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims[. E]ver since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I\u2019ve been beating them up\u201d (Santora 2012). News of the murder spread through American Muslim youth networks and followed on the heels of the debate surrounding a series of \u201cStop Jihad\u201d ads in subways and on buses paid for by Geller\u2019s American Freedom Defense Initiative. Sen\u2019s death was often linked in online discussions to other hate crimes like the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin and the defacement of nine mosques across the United States that occurred during Ramadan in 2012. The youth shared such news stories, warning their peers to \u201cbe careful\u201d and \u201cbe safe.\u201d Aliyah, a young activist, observed:<\/p>\n

A lot of Muslims, in general, live in a state of fear….Then other people are like, \u201cWhat are you afraid of?\u201d It just leads to more uncomfortableness and people not being able to relate to each other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Rubiyah, another young woman we interviewed, concurred with Aliyah. She shared that she lived in \u201cfear\u201d because of the open expressions of hostility she and others had experienced (two men had recently pointed their fingers at her husband, pretending to shoot him, as he walked out of a Sam\u2019s Club). News stories of hate crimes in Arizona, where Rubiyah lives, weighed heavily on her every day. Reflecting on this climate of fear, Muin, a high school sophomore, pondered the term \u201cterrorist\u201d during his interview. He paused for a few minutes as he considered where the term originated and how it came to be so linked with American Muslims before concluding it was because of 9\/11.<\/p>\n

As Sunaina Marr Maira (2003) observes, \u201c9\/11 led many youth from Muslim American families to engage with their Muslim identities with a new intensity, with varying trajectories emerging.\u201d In one of these trajectories, documented in Nazli Kibria\u2019s (2007) study of Bangladeshi youth and Nadine Naber\u2019s (2005) research on young Arab Americans, youth are now shifting toward privileging a hyphenated Muslim identity over their ethnic background, leading to what Maira describes as a \u201cself-conscious production of and engagement with \u2018Muslim\u2019 identity.\u201d In their analysis, Ewing and Hoyler (2008) find that the foundations of this practice have<\/p>\n

been developing for decades.\u2026 , many young Muslims link the emergence of their own intentional identity as a Muslim to the aftermath of 9\/11 and the war on terror. (82)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

In another study, Selcuk R. Sirin and Michelle Fine (2009) argue that American Muslims experience \u201chyphenated\u201d identities that are \u201cat once individual and collective, conscious and unconscious, filled with pride and shame, politically shared, and wildly personal\u201d (194\u2013195). The youth we interviewed identified strongly as both American and Muslim, referring to themselves as \u201cAmerican Muslim,\u201d making a strong claim for a distinctly American practice of Islam.<\/p>\n

As she reflected on the past 11 years during our 2012 interview, Aliyah, who was a high school sophomore in 2001, suggested that the security measures, public perceptions, and reactionary attitudes toward Islam actually \u201cgalvanized a really large part of the [American] Muslim population; the Muslim youth who were in college then provided mentoring to the people that were in high school.\u201d She continued:<\/p>\n

So, you\u2019re kind of still seeing that generation and the generations following it pursuing the code of activism and civic engagement….There were definitely people that were active before that but as a whole, the community was very insular….[After 9\/11,] I feel like that\u2019s when our community realized like, \u201cHold on. We need to get active. We need to do things because if not, we\u2019re screwed.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Maira (2003) proposes that such civic engagement may take several forms, including \u201cgreater involvement in electoral politics,\u201d \u201cprogressive activism and grassroots politics,\u201d and \u201coutreach to non-Muslim communities.\u201d We find that American Muslims take \u201caction\u201d through an even broader range of activities, many of them situated on the cultural end of the spectrum of participatory politics. Young American Muslims use social media to establish and maintain networks. They turn to their networks to share stories they create and appropriate. At times, they also mobilize these networks to achieve civic goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrecarious publics\u201d may be the right theoretical frame in which to understand this emergent American Muslim movement. We defined a precarious public as \u201cone where there is a considerable gap between voice and influence.\u201d In such circumstances, youth have to weigh the perceived benefits of participation against the obstacles and possible risks. Our notion of precariousness<\/em> owes much to Mary Gray\u2019s (2009) research on queer and LGBT youth in rural America. Gray harnesses Jurgen Habermas\u2019s seminal theorization of the \u201cbourgeois public sphere\u201d as an autonomous space where public opinion can be formed. She also incorporates feminist scholarly critiques of a universalized public sphere. In particular, Gray builds on Nancy Fraser and Michael Warner, who pointedly demonstrated that Habermas\u2019s conceptualization overlooked the existence of multiple (counter)publics that have been and will continue to be sites of contention that blur boundaries between what is private and what is public. Extending those critiques, she proposes the notion of \u201cboundary publics,\u201d which she defines as \u201citerative, ephemeral experiences of belonging that circulate across the outskirts and through the center(s) of a more recognized and validated public sphere\u201d (92\u201393). Through her ethnography of the Highlight Pride Alliance (another HPA), Gray argues \u201cboundary publics\u201d reveal \u201ca complex web of relations that is always playing out the politics and negotiations of identity\u201d (93). As such, they are \u201cat once within and just beyond the reach of conservative elites attempts to\u201d claim control.
\nBoundary publics, according to Gray, manifest both in everyday face-to-face and online spaces. She recounts the HPA youth \u201cperforming drag\u201d in the Springhaven, Kentucky, Walmart, the only business that stays \u201copen 24 hours within an 80-mile radius,\u201d as a \u201crite of passage for those entering the local gay scene\u201d (97). At the same time, she describes an incident at the Walmart where the youth were slandered by a hostile and verbally aggressive peer to the point that they had to leave the store. The rural youth described in Gray\u2019s study encountered analogous \u201copportunities and challenges\u201d online. She finds the internet gave them access to experiences unavailable \u201cin their daily life,\u201d but it also brought \u201crisk of exposure\u201d (127\u2013130). As a consequence, they found themselves putting up or removing online content depending on the emotional and political climate in their geographically local communities.<\/p>\n

Gray\u2019s \u201cboundary publics\u201d are crucial to our analysis of American Muslim networks as precarious publics; her analysis helps us to identify similarities between the conditions faced by American Muslim youth and rural LGBT youth, despite crucial differences in the lived experiences of these communities and networks. For the rural queer youth in Gray\u2019s study, \u201cauthorized access to public space is fragile\u201d (94\u201395). The same can be said for American Muslim youth, who struggle to find spaces to connect with other like-minded youth. Whether they are face-to-face or online, these spaces are crucially important to both communities. For the LGBT youth, shutting down such gathering places threatens their emergent community\u2019s existence. American Muslim youth negotiate very similar circumstances. On one hand, American Muslim youth recognize the potential of new media to connect to others. They value the open conversations they conduct through these networks. They nourish these connections by creating and circulating media\u2014literally working through \u201cany media\u201d available. At the same time, they weigh these opportunities against the possibility that online expression may attract unwelcome scrutiny, placing them at risk. During the course of our research, the pendulum on these considerations shifted several times in response to current events. For example, we witnessed how the youth decreased their activities when the Associated Press released a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning report revealing that the New York Police Department authorized and executed widespread surveillance of American Muslim communities and organizations (including campus-based Muslim student associations) in the tri-state area. We saw the pendulum swing the other way when storytelling projects (like 30 Mosques) by young American Muslims inspired the youth in our study to also find ways to communicate about their experiences.<\/p>\n

Such shifts indicate these post-9\/11 networks are indeed \u201cprecarious,\u201d as young people weigh concerns around what information, perspectives, and experiences they can (and should) share with others. Some things that might be expressed in an enclosed space become more risky when subject to context collapse. Understanding how young people resolve such issues is key to understanding which youth can deploy the public communication channels that Kahne et al. (2014) see as integral to participatory politics. In Democracy Remixed<\/em>, which focuses on the political lives of \u201cyoung black people,\u201d Cathy Cohen (2010) highlights both \u201cstructure and agency\u201d as crucial dimensions that determine the choices and circumstances of young people\u2019s (political) lives (11). As she reflects on the surveys and interviews she conducted with black youth, Cohen observes that \u201cthe importance of structure in shaping their lives was undeniable, but they never let me discount the control they had over their own lives, however limited\u201d (13).<\/p>\n

Similarly, the young American Muslims we interviewed shared their determination to navigate expression in a climate where the odds are often stacked against them. The media these youth created, the networks they fostered, and concerns they articulated have much to teach us about both the opportunities and challenges of participatory politics for an emergent, marginalized American Muslim youth community. For example, American Muslim youth efforts highlight that the ability to contribute to and shape narrative is crucial to the construction of shared identities. These activities also show that access to social networking platforms and media sharing practices is helping to shift control over the construction and circulation of political identities from the few to the many. Much as Cathy Cohen sees black youth \u201cholding a precarious position within our nation\u201d (13), we find that American Muslim youth engagement with participatory politics is fragile, yet significant. The discussion of young American Muslims in this chapter also connects to the obstacles and challenges faced by undocumented youth involved in the DREAM movement discussed in Chapter 5<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Circulation: The Life Force of American Muslim Youth Networks<\/h4>\n\n

The young people involved with MPAC and MYG tended to see them as exceptional organizations: both meet American Muslim youth where they are at, rather than asking them to conform to agendas and priorities created for them by community elders. As one respondent bluntly put it, MPAC doesn\u2019t \u201cshove religion down your throat.\u201d Through their activities, MPAC and MYG also connect youth to a vibrant and dispersed network that shares updates and creative media and stages important and substantive debates about what it means to be Muslim and American.<\/p>\n

To be clear, in addition to a large number of Islamic centers around the country, there are also several well established organizations that advocate for American Muslim issues, including the Muslim American Society (MAS), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Muslim Student Association (MSA) National. Most of these organizations operate on a national level with dispersed regional and local branches. With the exception of MSA National, which is completely youth oriented, these organizations often focus on youth through programs that are fairly conventionally structured, with the central bodies assuming most of the responsibility for organizing and guiding events and activities. Reflecting on this situation, Reyah, a youth activist, saw a disconnect between what young American Muslims want and the programs these organizations offer. She wished that the leaders of these national groups would more often \u201csit down and have conversations with young people and ask them what it is that interests them\u201d rather than assume that they know what they need. She wanted more programs that are created by young people, not just for them. She explained that Imams and heads of organizations say, \u201cWe need to get our youth to vote, to become informed voters and do all these things,\u201d even as \u201cno youth\u201d have a seat \u201cat the table\u201d where this discussion is taking place.<\/p>\n

Ahmed Eid\u2019s forthcoming Unmosqued<\/em> documentary explores the generational conflict inside American Muslim religious institutions, where older (usually first-generation) immigrants insist on holding on to traditions and values from their past rather than allowing younger people to explore what their faith means to them. In December 2013, another filmmaker, Ali Baluch, described to Huffington Post<\/em> how even prayer can become a site of conflict between younger and older worshippers in American mosques:<\/p>\n

You want to worship and be in a great environment, you\u2019re constantly bothered by this religious police who are saying you\u2019re not praying the right way. Instead of guiding you the right way, they\u2019re just scaring you away. (Hafiz 2013)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Unmosqued<\/em> grapples with the reality that many young American Muslim youth seem to be drifting away from brick-and-mortar Islamic centers. Imam Shamsi Ali asks: \u201cWhere is the young generation?\u201d He then answers his own question: \u201cThey are moving away, and they are not coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n