Afriend of mine was flipping through my new issue of Muslim
Girl a few nights ago. She came upon a photo shoot, titled ‘Winterise Your
Hijab’, which showcases a model wearing different winter knit fabrics as
headscarves.
She scoffed at the model: "She doesn’t even look Muslim!"
"Why not?" I asked. "Because she’s white?"
Akh, here we go again.
Now, the conflation of Islam with Middle Eastern people isn’t
new. To begin with, all Middle Easterners are not Muslim and all Muslims are not
Middle Eastern. In fact, Arabs make up only 18 per cent of the world’s Muslim
population, according to Reza Aslan, author of No god but God. But due to
terrorism perpetrated by a few Middle Eastern people, and those oh-so-lovely
film clips of angry, bearded brown men burning the US flag, the Middle East and
Islam are often mixed up.
Looking within our own community, many Muslims themselves (those
of both Middle Eastern origin and non-Middle Easterners) see Arab culture as a
proxy for Islamic authenticity. This may stem from the fact that the holy Koran
was revealed to the prophet – who was an Arab – in Arabic. Naturally, there is
value in learning classical Arabic and reading the holy Koran in its original
form. Knowing classical Arabic can also aid in reading the Hadith (a collection
of the prophet’s sayings, teachings and traditions) and reading about Islamic
law and history.
Baladas Ghoshal of openDemocracy.net defines this phenomenon as
"[a] process of homogenisation and regimentation – the ‘Arabisation’ of Islam –
puts greater emphasis on rituals and codes of conduct than on substance…" But
although getting caught up in rules and regulations can often make one miss the
bigger picture, it’s important to note that this Arabisation is more of a
cultural issue than a religious one.
Since the original Muslims were mostly Arab, everything
associated with them – their culture, names and family structures – has been
associated with Islam. But this presents a problem since the vast majority of
Muslims in our current world are not Arab. Passing off Arab culture as Islam in
this regard is inaccurate, exclusionary and disrespectful to other Muslims’
cultures.
Converts to Islam illustrate the issue even further. If a Latina
converts to Islam, for example, she may decide (or those at the local mosque may
urge her) to take a "Muslim" name like Fatima or Khadija (which are also Arab
names). But why can’t Lucinda be a Muslim name? What makes a name "Muslim"?
I know of many non-Arab converts who have taken Arab names upon
their conversion. But why? What’s wrong with the names their parents gave them?
There isn’t anything in the holy Koran that mandates Muslims to have Arab names.
Changing your name from Carmelita to Khadija isn’t going to get you into
paradise any quicker. Changing one’s name doesn’t change one’s ethnicity or
personality. But having an Arab name makes one seem more "Muslim" because of the
way Arab culture is seen as synonymous with Islam.
Another excellent example is clothing, which mostly affects
Muslim women. The niqab (face veil) was rarely seen outside of the Arabian Gulf
until recently. Most Muslims see the niqab as a by-product of Arab culture. It
is only recently that the niqab has been interpreted as religiously authentic
instead of a cultural expression. A minority of women in Canada, the US and
Europe now wear the niqab because they believe it is religiously mandated.
But sometimes brothers get in on the cultural dress-up too. For
example, Morgan Spurlock’s TV show, 30 Days, featured a white West
Virginian man living as a Muslim for 30 days. They showed him often in a kufi
(cap) and shalwar kameez. As with the niqab, this isn’t "Muslim" clothing, it’s
a South Asian cultural dress. But since Pakistan is sometimes erroneously
considered part of the Middle East, it’s considered authentically Muslim. This
seems especially silly considering the fact that the majority of the Muslim men
in the TV special were wearing "western-style" clothes: jeans and T-shirts or
button-up shirts.
What is troublesome about all this is that most Muslims who are
non-Arabs complain that they’re not seen as Muslims because they’re not Arab (or
ethnically Middle Eastern, in some cases). But when non-Arab Muslims take Arab
names or wear Arab clothes under the guise of "Islamic authenticity", we’re all
reinforcing the idea that we’re not really Muslims unless we have some link to
Arab culture.
The internal projection of Arab culture upon Islam has spread
outside the Muslim community as well. If you’ve ever watched a TV special on
Islam, there’s always oud (an instrument similar to the lute or mandolin) or ney
(similar to a flute) music playing, to make it sound "mystical" and Arab and
thus authentic. And there’s always a gratuitous shot of the desert in there,
just to make sure we think that Islam derives from the tribal culture of the
Arabian peninsula’s deserts instead of from Allah.
The real danger is that Islam is getting buried under all this
cultural expression. It is possible to be Muslim without being Middle Eastern,
without having a name like Mohammed and without wearing dishdashas (the long
robe worn by most men in the Arabian Gulf states) or niqabs. We should
reconsider why ‘Arabness’ is, all of a sudden, next to godliness.