Silent Revolution of a Muslim Arab American Scholar-Activist

Abstract

After 35 years of living in the Unites States, every time I meet a new person, I am asked: Where are you from? My own personal, political and scholarly journey along with that of some of my cohorts engaged in search for answers to this and relevant questions have shaped my silent revolution. It is a revolution against the way Muslim-Arab girls have been raised unprepared to experience their identity autonomously; it is a revolution against the social systems that abuse and stereotype Muslim Arab women--be it the Muslim, the Arab or the American systems--chiefly because of their dress code. The goal of this revolution is to ignite the flames for social change, re-interpreting the Qur'an in order to retrieve its dynamics that originally intended to establish gender justice. Though the three and one half decades of my life in the US-- first as a foreign student, then as a permanent resident and a citizen--are marked by milestones distinctive dates and events, in my search for answers to different questions, I prefer to go back and forth between them.