Photo by David Campbell/Flickr (Creative Commons)
How do American Muslim women navigate love, culture and identity? KPCC’s Yasmin Nouh gives us a glimpse in this Q&A with the co-editor of a new anthology of Muslim women’s personal stories.
“Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women,” is an anthology of 25 love stories told by American Muslim women from different backgrounds – black, white, Arab, converts, lesbians, Sunni, Shia, South Asian. Editors Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi say they compiled them to dispel stereotypes that Muslim women are generally repressed, forced into arranged marriages, or live loveless lives dictated by men.
Each tale is more than a simple love story, with complex underlying themes that these women face as they navigate hybrid identities while searching for a sense of belonging as Muslims – and as the children of immigrants, in many cases – in the United States.
In one of the stories, for example, contributor Tanzila Ahmed follows a Muslim punk-rock band on their cross-country tour. A self-proclaimed Desi (meaning of Pakistani or Indian descent) punk rocker, she ends up having an affair with one of the band’s members. An excerpt:
I had fallen in love in the best way – with a boy, with like-minded people, and, maybe most important, with being honestly and truly myself. I had found a family that was cut from the same contradictory cloth and going through the same blasphemous struggles as I was. I had found myself, and I had let myself go. I had punk-rocked, prayed, loved, moshed, laughed, skated, cuddled, rocked, touched, kissed, and cried.
It wasn’t just a story about my falling in love with a guy, or following a band, or going on an adventure. It was about love, punk, and punk-drunk love. People who got me, really got me, and all that I came with.
Co-editor Nura Maznavi, herself the daughter of immigrants from Sri Lanka, discusses how the book got its start, what she learned along the way, and what the reaction to it has been so far.
M-A: What inspired the idea of “Love InshAllah”?
Maznavi: My co-editor Ayesha and I have been friends for many years. About five years ago, over coffee in San Francisco, we were chatting about how so much has been written about Muslim women, but very little of it has been written by Muslim women. Nowhere in the discourse did we see reflected the funny, independent and hilarious Muslim women we know. We wanted to change that. We decided to ask women to write about the search for love, because love is a universal emotion that resonates with everyone.
