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Taj Taher
HONORS 394 B
10 February 2016
Research Presentation Proposal
Over the course of this class, we have learned that the influence of Orientalism along
with the sociopolitical interests of the United States and its media have resulted in a conflation of
the identifiers Islam and Arab. The two terms have become incorrectly interchangeable, as
there are many Arabs who are not Muslim and there are many Muslims who are not Arab. It is
this latter point I wish to investigate further in my research presentation, for while the invisibility
Arab Americans suffer is paradoxical in the sense that so much attention is drawn to them in the
media yet who they actually are is marginalized, it seems like the vast majority of Muslims the
non-Arabs become invisible in the straightforward sense that they are overshadowed by the
Arab issue.
Along these lines, I would like to broadly investigate how non-Arab Muslims form an
identity that mediates their faith, their cultural heritage, and the US culture within the context of
anti-Arab and anti-Islam sentiment. All these considerations culminate in my essential question:
if Islam has become a point of racialization for Arab Americans, then to what extent if any
have non-Arab Americans who identify as Muslims been racialized as Arab? How does a
Western audience reconcile their conception of a typical Muslim when they come across a
phenotypically distinct Asian woman wearing a hijab for example?
I plan to investigate these questions primarily through a survey of existing literature (the
bibliography contains a list of sources which I found in a cursory perusal of the UW database; I
probably will not end up using most of them and will probably have to find more). There are a
number of articles and books that broadly depict the non-Arab Muslim population in the United
States, many of which include interviews of individuals within several sub-categories of
American Muslim. On that note, it may be fruitful for myself to conduct some interviews within

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the various student culture and nationality groups on campus which have a significant Muslim
presence (the Malaysian or Indonesian Students Associations for example). In addition, the
Muslim Students Association is having a Faith Talks event on February 19th which would be
the ideal venue to talk to some Muslim Americans and gather a greater insight into how a
collective Muslim identity is shaped in conjunction with a distinct national identity when all
these diverse cultures are brought under one banner (that is, the MSA). I expect the most
meaningful conclusions of this investigation will be drawn from personal testimony.
While it is probably fair to say that Arab Americans have shouldered most of the hostility
resulting from the demonization of Islam in the West, I hope that this research might shed some
light on the experience of those Muslims cast in the shadow of that distinctly Arab-centered
antagonism. Looking beyond merely the conditions of their existence and perception of them in
this country, the research may serve to characterize their own sentiment regarding
marginalization or invisibility. If being ignored and letting Arabs bear the burden of
Islamophobia means quietly continuing to live on in America without trouble, are non-Arab
Muslims at peace with these conditions? It will also be interesting to see either through this
research or in subsequent investigations whether their truly is an all-encompassing American
Muslim consciousness and identity. As these diverse individuals gather and intermingle, with
the distinctions between them becoming blurred, to consider there may be an emerging
population that shares more than the same faith and the same home is a fascinating prospect.
Planned Sources for Consultation
Al-Johar, Denise. Muslim Marriages in America: Reflecting New Identities. The Muslim
World 95.4 (2005): 557-74. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.
An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed. What Is an American Muslim? : Embracing Faith and Citizenship.
Oxford University Press. 2013. PDF.
Fatima, Saba. Who Counts as a Muslim? Identity, Multiplicity and Politics. Journal of Muslim
Minority Affairs 31.3 (2011): 339-53. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.
Franceschelli, Michela. Being modern and modest: South Asian young British Muslims

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negotiating multiple influences on their identity. Ethnicities 15.5 (2015): 696-714. Web.
5 Feb. 2016.
Grewal, Zareena A. Marriage in colour: race, religion and spouse selection in four American
mosques. Ethnic and Racial Studies 32.2 (2009): 323-45. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.
Gney, lk. We see our people suffering: the war, the mass media and the reproduction of
Muslim identity among youth. Media, War & Conflict 3.2 (2010): 168-81. Web. 5 Feb.
2016. 2007. 425-31. Print.
Khan, Fariha. "The Dars: South Asian Muslim American Women Negotiate Identity." Journal of
American Folklore 128.510 (2015): 395-411. Project MUSE. Web. 5 Feb. 2016.
Lukens-Bull, Ronald. Kenneth M. George, Picturing Islam: arts and ethics in a Muslim
lifeworld. Contemporary Islam 5.2 (2011): 203-4. Print.
Park, Lisa. Racial Profiling in the War on Terror: Cultural Citizenship and South Asian
Muslim Youth in the United States. Contemporary Asian America : a multidisciplinary
reader. Ed. Min Zhou, James V. Gatewood. New York: New York University Press,
Rahman, Shafiqur. Transnational media reception, Islamophobia, and the identity constructions
of a non-Arab Muslim diasporic community: The experiences of Bangladeshis in the
United States since 9/11. Dissertation Abstracts International, A: The Humanities and
Social Sciences 69.1 (2008). Print.
Waugh, Earle H., Baha Abu-Laban, Regula Qureshi. The Muslim Community in North America.
Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. 1983. Print.