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Empty Diversity in Muslim America: Religion, Race, and the Politics of U.S. Inclusion

Husain, Taneem
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1433503511

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
This dissertation examines how contemporary popular texts produced by Muslim Americans present the binary between good and bad Muslim. By representing the lives of “ordinary Muslims,” these texts reveal the complexities at work in the contemporary negotiation of diversity and inclusion. I argue that while Muslim Americans’ ethnicities vary widely, this is of little consequence in U.S. culture and politics, which highlight Muslim religious affiliation over any other identity category. By unraveling this as a complex process of racialization, I argue that these Muslim American representations construct gender and sexuality to uphold constricted understandings of ethnic minority American identity, or what I term “empty diversity.” Utilizing the lessons of comparative race theory and queer of color critique, I examine a wide range of cultural texts in my work, including fiction, autobiography, websites, and film. First, reading Umm Juwayriyah’s Urban Islamic Fiction novel The Size of a Mustard Seed and Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi’s autobiographical collection Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women, I argue that Muslim Americans seek to prove themselves tolerable by reconfiguring the lines of the dominant paradigm of race in the United States: the black/white binary. The problem of depicting the Muslim American plight along racial lines is that many Muslims do not have a definable race: their most significant characteristic, religious identification, transcends the color of their skin. I argue that by emphasizing the benign nature of race in the Muslim American community, while also depicting gender roles and sexuality in ways that complement normative American ideals, these texts trivialize the divide between Muslim Americans and the broader U.S. body politic. Muslim Americans thereby exemplify “empty diversity,” or difference made benign through racialized religious identity, constructed as such through gender and sexuality. In the second section of my dissertation, I turn to representations that do not work toward inclusion. Examining the celebrity gossip website Celeb Jihad, independent film Profane, and Michael Muhammad Knight’s novel The Taqwacores, I explore how these depictions of Muslim Americans question this empty diversity, which requires whitewashing difference for inclusion. I argue that these texts do this in two primary ways: 1) they engage, rather than ignore, the terrorist trope; and 2) they structure gender and sexuality in ways that question both U.S. heteronormative ideals and stereotypes of the exotic or oppressed Muslim. By doing so, these texts refuse to conform to the politics of respectability required of Muslim Americans. I argue that these representations allow for a countercultural understanding of identity, where minority subjects can deconstruct mainstream identity politics by steadfastly holding onto identity labels. By examining these two groups of texts, my dissertation illustrates how Muslim American racialized religious identity is beginning to shift ideas about race not only in mainstream America, but also in antiracist, queer understandings of identity.
Shannon Winnubst (Advisor)
Amna Akbar (Committee Member)
Lynn Itagaki (Committee Member)
159 p.
American Literature; American Studies; Comparative Literature; Ethnic Studies; Gender Studies; Islamic Studies; Modern Literature; Religion; Womens Studies
Islam in the United States; racialization; assimilation; Muslim American literature; Muslim women

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Husain, T. (2015). Empty Diversity in Muslim America: Religion, Race, and the Politics of U.S. Inclusion [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1433503511

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Husain, Taneem. Empty Diversity in Muslim America: Religion, Race, and the Politics of U.S. Inclusion . 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1433503511.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Husain, Taneem. "Empty Diversity in Muslim America: Religion, Race, and the Politics of U.S. Inclusion ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1433503511

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1433503511
188
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.