Western media has gradually generalized the Muslim community as strict religious followers located in a singular region of the Middle East, leading Westerners to falsely assume that followers of Islam belong to few nations. However, as a widely practiced religion Islam surpasses national borders and extends to South Asian countries such as Malaysia, Bangladesh, and southern Philippines, with Indonesia as the country with the highest population of Muslims in the world. For Muslim Americans, their religion intersect with their ethnic and racial identities and overall lifestyle, forming a new perspective into the experiences of American immigrants. Common tropes for racialized communities displace South Asian Muslims, as the racial grouping of Asian Americans as the model minority or honorary whites fails to reflect Asian Muslim experiences. In a country such as the US that distinguishes communities on a racial basis, Islam proves to be unique as a denomination that extends beyond race as more than a religion but also a way of life.
My experience at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, California was enriching as I attended a non-sectarian mosque that welcomed both Sunni and Shia Muslims alike. Upon entering a mosque, I immediately noticed a diverse population including African American, Middle Eastern, and Asian Muslims inside with their families. There were ornate designs along the perimeter of the walls and ceiling rather than statues or photos. In addition, I noticed that there were a substantial amount of copies of the Quran available near the entrance. According to customary practices, the environment stressed cleanliness by removing your shoes and washing yourself before prayer and peaceful interactions when speaking with one another. In a melting pot such as America, it is no wonder that Muslims of all ethnicities gather in a place of worship where racial perceptions hold no significance. Following my experience at King Fahad Mosque, I had the opportunity to have a brief interview with Livia Luan of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice Organization to understand more about the Asian Muslim community in America. Luan noted how, “many Americans are unaware of the sheer number of Filipinos, Malaysians, or Indians practice Islam. Most assume that Islam is specific to Iranians or Syrians, or vice versa that Buddhism is an ‘Asian only’ religion and that is in part because of what is shared on the news. You are bound to see Muslims being broadcasted as men from terrorist groups like the Taliban or ISIS or as people escaping terrorism. The media almost never shows Asian Muslims because they associate ‘Asia’ with massive conglomerates or straight A’s or the middle class and that image for the most part does not include religion, let alone Islam.” Luan proceeded to share a study from the Pew Research Center that shows approximately two-thirds of the Muslim population is in the Asia-Pacific, with Indonesia as its center point.
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The persistence of misconceptions and lack of proper recognition are paralleled, as Sunaina Maira discusses in her article about South Asian Sunni Muslim youth who have emigrated to America. Misconceptions of Asian Americans as primarily Buddhist or Atheist persist while general American societies fail to recognize the vast diversity within Islam that non-Asians and Asians alike are part of. Maira notes how, “It is ironic that Asian Americans are held up in the United States as ‘model minority’ citizens who embody traditional ‘family values,’ presumably promoting stable family units. Yet one could also view [South Asian] immigrants as the model citizens of global capitalism who do not fit into these descriptions” (Maira 11). Racial discourses in America misconstrue Asian identity and Muslim identity as mutually exclusive, generalizing Asian Americans as “honorary whites” who primarily practice American social culture. This narrative excludes South Asians from predominantly Muslim nations who are assumed to be Buddhist or Atheist due to their ethnicity when in fact a substantial amount of South Asians practice the same or similar diets, rituals, and customs as their Middle Eastern counterparts.
Maira continues her article with an interview with Zeenat, an Indian born Muslim high school student whose father wanted his wife, daughters, and sisters to be college educated and enjoy learning in an academic institution as he did. In addition, working a part-time job was normal aspect in her weekly routine as she was not forbidden from doing so and considered various options to pursue in the future, including becoming co-partners with her brother in starting a company in India to create employment opportunities there. In stark contrast Western narratives of South Asians and Muslims as a whole, her life was not planned strategically by the male head of her family, nor was she prevented from exploring a standard to higher education. Maira notes how, “this is an example of how ‘tradition’ in South Asian Muslim immigrant communities, which are perceived as conservative or unchanging, is actually flexible in arenas linked to work and citizenship, challenging Orientalist discourses about ‘immigrant traditions’ or ‘Muslim cultures’” (Maira 12). Racial and gendered discourses of Islam conflate Western notions of primarily Middle Eastern people as Muslim and subservient women restricted to household duties, both of which proven false. Not only are there more than one ethnic group of Muslims, but they are capable of integrating into American society as private citizens and not as polar opposites to equal gender roles.
For Asian Americans, their social mobility to live in predominantly white neighborhoods and general socioeconomic success has led to the presumption that they are disassociating themselves from other ethnic minorities and therefore disassociated from the Muslim American community. In Saher Selod’s article, Selod discusses the conflicting dynamic between Muslims and fellow Americans continue to experience discrimination in the form of social exclusion such as, “being denied their status as Americans, hate crimes, and racial profiling there have been some cases where South Asian Indians identified with other communities of color because of their racialized experiences, specifically Blacks and Latinx, over whites, while in other instances, South Asian Indians perpetuated anti-blackness in order to access whiteness” (Selod 4). This misconception that Asians prefer whiteness ignores the substantial South Asian Muslim population that are denied social aspects of acceptance as citizens but rather as foreigners who have overextended their visit. Racializing Muslims overlooks the fact that in a society heavily invested in combating and preventing terror post 9/11, religious identity itself poses as a catalyst that incites fear and rejection from other citizens. Selod indicates how, “Arabs who are Muslim are being ejected from the racial classification of white because their religious identity marks them as the other, and South Asian Muslims are simultaneously losing their footing as honorary whites” (Selod 8). South Asians are simplified amongst other Asian from an ethnic standpoint as examples of middle class Americans yet generalized amongst other Muslims from a religious standpoint as threats to national values with terrorist agendas, further marginalizing South Asians in America as not belonging to a respectable identity that represents the community appropriately.
The perception of Asian Americans as model minorities incites social exclusion of South Asian Muslim because they are not treated or viewed as authentic Americans or other Asian Americans for the simple fact of their religious practices. The very privileges that catapult Asian Americans into socioeconomic mobility also restrict and ignore their Muslim counterparts. The racialization of Muslim identities is therefore institutionalized and maintained by private citizens through a social culture that ignores entire sects of followers of Islam due to their physical appearance not matching what they associate Islam with. War on terror sentiment further encourages the portrayal of what Muslims look like, with media coverage of solely belligerent Middle Eastern men in desert regions. This hardlined singular depiction of one of the world’s most practiced religions is racializing act that discounts Muslims of other ethnicities while simultaneously denying them of the same treatment given to their non-practicing ethnic counterparts. Just as in the early twentieth century when South Asians fought for US naturalization, they were denied of it because their religious identity and values situated them as incapable of sharing the same American values.
Western perceptions of race and ethnicity are limiting when an intersectional approach is applied to understand the complexities of how race and religion are structured in society and how they counter expectations when crossed with each other. Religious signifiers such as traditional Muslim clothing coupled with the one wearing it being non-Middle Eastern incite confusion amongst Americans as well as fear. The misconceived expectations of Muslim as threatening, violent, oppressed, and misogynists clash with the generalization of Asians as Buddhist or non-religious model minorities, therefore creating the assumption that the two could never coincide. Because these religious signifiers are racialized, Muslim communities are not recognized for their vast diversity in both America and internationally. Widespread education on the global scale Islam has prominent roots in would revise these expectations, informing Westerners of the history and culture that communities and nations around the world celebrate. Contrary to popular belief, “Asian” and “Muslim” are not juxtaposed for their misrepresented traits but rather consolidate in multiple nations, many of which being Asian.
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