| Part one | Part two | Part three |
| Part four | Part five | Part six |
| Part seven | Part eight | Part nine |
I started the Fashionable Muslim Women of Eid al Fitr project to answer my curiosity about US media’s treatment of Muslim Americans. So far, in previous episodes, I’ve been explaining my journey of putting together a photo project to show Muslims’ pride and beauty.
Part 10.
I knew I didn’t have any specific agenda for the Fashionable Muslim Women of Eid al Fitr project. All I wanted to do was to show, via pictures, that Muslims wear beautiful clothes, that they are kind and smiling people, they can speak English, and they are loving and beautiful people. I wanted to show that Muslims are not frightening people.
To be honest, I, myself, didn’t even know that Muslims could be so beautiful and diverse. Buying the media’s narrative, I was also blinded by my prejudices. Now that I look back, I think the project was a way for me to address my curiosity rather than to claim anything specific or have an agenda. I think the project was for me to deal with my blindness.
There were two reasons for my blindness. First, I was an immigrant, and like many immigrants in this country, I was trying to survive. I was busy learning English. I was finishing my master’s degree in journalism, which was an exasperating challenge because of the level of the English language I was encountering; raising my infant daughter. I was working at Wisconsin Public Radio as an intern producer, and supporting my husband who was finishing his fellowship program in psychiatry. We didn’t go out that much, except for that Saturday morning when I was shaken awake in August of 2013 during the Eid al Fitr ceremony.
The second reason for my blindness relates to the antagonism between Iranians and Islam. Almost every Iranian I know in the US is secular. As far as I know, most Iranians hate to be called Muslims. My conversations with Iranian friends about Homeland Security’s classification of Iranians went in vain. “Iranians are categorized as Muslims under US Citizenship or Immigration Services, or USCIS. Ignoring the fact that this nation sees Iranians as Muslims wouldn’t help,” I argued.
I think my Iranian friends woke up when former President Trump issued the Muslim ban to bar people from Iran, and six other nations from entering the country. Although the bill was challenged, the effect of the bill was eye-opening among Iranian-Americans.
Working as a journalist in the US media, I kept questioning the angles we choose to write about “other” people. Why are Muslims always the villains in news stories? Why don’t we read any uplifting and positive stories about women in Muslim nations? Why does the media look down on us and want to make us believe that Muslims are terrorists? Why do my pitches about successful Muslims go in the trash? Why do we insist on staying on the negative narratives toward Muslims?
Questions like these embolden me to take action.
I knew I didn’t know what I was doing. However, the sheer fact of doing something that could answer some of my questions was reason enough for action on my part.
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