Blogger Amani Al-Khatahtbeh created muslimgirl.com as a place for young Muslim women to explore social issues, relationships, education and other topics through the lens of their experiences.
On Think, Krys Boyd talked with Al-Khatahbeh about how her life and goals have been shaped by American and Jordanian culture, post-9/11 bigotry and the discovery of feminism within her own faith. She writes about these experiences in her memoir “Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age Story.”
The KERA Interview
http://traffic.libsyn.com/kerathink/KERA_Think_10-19-16_HR_1.mp3
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh on:
… how Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton talk about Muslims:
“To me both of them show that regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum in American politics the way that we treat the Muslim American community stays the same. They are viewed as almost collaborative with these things that are taking place on a global scale with terrorism. The fact that we Muslims must know something. They have information that we need access to. Again it just implicates our community as whole on the basis of our religion, and ties terrorism with our religion rather than anything else.”
… how American Muslims want to be viewed:
“For us as Muslim Americans we first and foremost want to be viewed as citizens rather than as just these players in the war on terror or as these mouth pieces. And I think that’s really what the issue is. I think that’s an attitude that we’ve had to push back against for the greater part of the past decade ever since 9/11 happened.”
… how she tries to change the narrative about Muslims:
“The priority is to challenge this perception of Islam, of the religion and this tie to terrorism. ... The way that the word terrorism is being misused to only label acts of violence that are perpetuated by brown people or people from the religious faith, and yet at the same time mass shootings on our soil have taken 100 times more lives over the past decade than 9/11.”
… the threat Muslims face:
“The way that we talk about Muslims in the context of immigration and refugees and the war on terror, we neglect to discuss the violence that we have to endure as a result of these wild misrepresentations of us. While people are just so dead set on perpetuating this rhetoric about who Muslims are, and what their relationship is with terrorism, they don’t see the direct relationship that has with the violence we have to endure in our day-to-day lives.”