Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2017, Political Science

This paper examines the strategies by which the American Muslim community seeks to normalize its presence within mainstream American culture, and assesses how the social and moral customs of liberal society are internalized and operationalized by American Muslims as orthopraxy, or correct practice and conduct. Recent trends by American Muslims toward “inclusivity,” particularly as it requires the prioritization of non-religious, social and/or political understandings of the function and purpose of the hijab, will form the primary focus of this examination. What has become increasingly prevalent is the use of non-religious language pertaining to the hijab, particularly as a religious symbol functioning in and engaging with the public sphere. The central argument will demonstrate exactly how and why the hijab, a key religious symbol, and being a “hijabi,” (an identifier of women who wear the hijab) is being liberalized (and consequently secularized). This liberalization and secularization of the hijab result from the increasing appeal by American Muslim public figures to individualism, autonomy, and other liberal sensibilities over established theological edicts when making sense of why they cover and what it means to cover.

Committee: Renee Heberle Ph.D. (Advisor); Ovamir Anjum Ph.D. (Committee Member); Samuel Nelson Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Islamic Studies; Political Science; Religion; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, Comparative Studies

My project, Modernity, Multiculturalism, and Racialization in Transnational America: Autobiography and Fiction by Immigrant Muslim Women Before and After 9/11, interrogates the enduring notion of America as the promised land of freedom and social mobility in the narratives of Muslim immigrant women. Informed by the critical theories of minority discourse, U.S. borders studies, and postcolonial scholarship, I argue that autobiography and fiction by Muslim American women writers indicate an ideological flexibility, demonstrating a spectrum of discursive negotiations and stances that strategically claim secular, religious, modern, feminist, capitalist, transnational, and multiracial identities that altogether challenge the hegemonic and binary configurations of the figure of “the Muslim” and reformulate the terms of citizenship and belonging in the U.S. I read these strategies in three different writings: Selma Ekrem's autobiography Unveiled: The Autobiography of a Turkish Girl (1930), Mohja Kahf's novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (2006), and Leila Halaby's novel Once in A Promised Land (2007). Collectively, these texts articulate and address anxieties about the presumed “incommensurability” of Muslim/Middle Eastern identity with the imaginary ideal of normative Anglo-American modern society, and they offer a unique ethnic, religious, and cross-racial perspective that challenges dominant U.S. conceptions of the minority difference and exclusion. My project contributes to the theorizing of transnational minority literature in a context that goes beyond the simplistic framework of minor to major anti-hegemonic discourse. While I discuss these texts as counternarratives to hegemonic articulations of citizenship and exclusionary discourses of American identity, I also focus on minor-to-minor sensibilities, paying attention to the ways in which literature offers a space for articulations of cross-ethnic alliances, solidarities, and tensions amongst immigrants and other (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nina Berman (Committee Co-Chair); Pranav Jani (Committee Co-Chair); Theresa Delgadillo (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Comparative Literature; Ethnic Studies; Gender; Islamic Studies; Literature; Middle Eastern Literature; Middle Eastern Studies; Near Eastern Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Music

The cultural Somali population has been growing within the American education system (Hassan & Smith, 2017), yet this population has largely been absent in secondary music programs. The purpose of this case study was to explore the perceptions of Somali-American community leaders and families about school music participation. The study focused on a school district in a suburban community in Ohio. The central question was: How do members of the Somali community perceive school music? Sub questions included: What types of music experiences do Somali families have? How do Somali families participate in music outside of school? What are Somali-American community members' perception of public school music? The seven participants were between 20-50 years of age and were either refugees or children of refugees from Somalia. They completed verbal interviews or a written questionnaire and were available for questions following the transcription of interviews. Data was analyzed through lenses of acculturation theories including assimilation (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001), group acculturation pathways (Sam & Berry, 2010), and religious impact on individual and group acculturation (Warner, 2007). The themes emerging from data included coexistence of culture and religion, generational divides, musical repertoire, responsibility, and belonging/identity. Participants expressed that although Somali culture supports music, the religious interpretations that some Somali families follow deters them from participating in certain music activities. For example, they viewed the typical repertoire of school music as not adhering to Somali family religious and cultural values and thus, considered participation in school music as being not always acceptable. Participants also referred to differences in age/generation as a factor that influences music participation As age increases, religious conservatism that perceives music participation as unacceptable increases. However, they also believe (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Eugenia Costa-Giomi (Advisor); Robert Ward (Committee Member); David Hedgecoth (Committee Member) Subjects: Music Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, History

In the second half of the twentieth century, millions of Muslims left their countries of origins across Asia and Africa and permanently settled in Europe, Australia, and the Americas. In the United States, a large percentage of the Muslim migrants were in white-collar professions and used the time and resources that status afforded them to build thousands of institutions and organizations that facilitated the continued practice of their religion. This dissertation traces the process by which immigrants from at least eighty countries and hundreds more sects, cultural practices, and degrees of adherence coalesced into a distinct variety of “American” Islam. This structure was built from competing impulses regarding earlier Muslim presence: There was American lineage and legitimacy offered through the threads of antebellum enslaved Muslims, heterodox black American Muslim movements, and earlier Muslim immigrant groups. Yet the community that was wellestablished by the turn of the 21st century grew in part because of a desire to identify itself as a distinct and authentic practice of Islam, setting itself opposite the earlier and heterodox movements. Using organizational records, immigration and census data, oral histories, and intracommunity publications, this work traces the organic development of what is now a robust, modern, and singular practice of an ancient religion. American Islam has distinct, identifying hallmarks shared across the country and also reflects the hundreds of diversities in practice and identity. Threading this across Islamic history, the growth of American Islam is a cogent example of the strong correlation between the success of a Muslim civilization and its local culture and independence.

Committee: Peter Mansoor (Advisor); David Steigerwald (Advisor); Paula Baker (Committee Member); Judy Wu (Committee Member); Deborah Dash Moore (Committee Member); Patrice Hamel (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Ethnic Studies; History; Islamic Studies; Religion; Spirituality

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Comparative Studies

The concept of agency in Muslim women's lives is often approached in binary terms. On one side is the global liberatory paradigm that equates agency with resistance to restrictions and views it as incompatible with Islam. On the opposite side is the Islamic feminist argument that locates agency in women's deliberate acts of ethical self-formation and working within religious structures. Both these approaches come with certain limitations. First, they overlook the large group of "ordinary Muslim" women whose agency is not shaped either in opposition or conscious submission to religion. Second, they measure women's relation to larger structures by relying on a limited understanding of agency as autonomous will enacted through individual actions. To surpass these limitations, I apply a folkloristic approach to the study of Muslim women's social life. I present three ethnographic cases from my 2017-18 fieldwork with Iranian-American Muslim women in Southern California: a popular domestic Shia ritual, several Quran discussion sessions, and a women's charity club engaged in cultural programs. Using these cases and engaging the scholarship in anthropology of Islam, feminist folklore, and vernacular religion, my dissertation explores 1) how agency is formed, dispersed, and negotiated through social actions, shared performances, and sociability practices in everyday lives of Muslim women--rather than tied to individual acts of piety or resistance, and 2) how Muslim women's agency is formed in relation to external and internal sources of power that transcend the presumed force of religion and tradition in their lives. In other words, I argue for rethinking the very terms of the debate with regard to agency, Muslimness, and the assumption of women's unanimity. For example, I show that women who participate in Quranic sessions frequently argue--with different degrees of authority--over the true meaning and application of Quran in their lives as Muslim women in the US. Women (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Dorothy Noyes (Advisor); Morgan Liu (Committee Member); Katherine Borland (Committee Member) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology; Folklore; Gender; Middle Eastern Studies; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Religion; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2017, Media and Communication

As the fastest growing population in the world and in the U.S., Muslims increasingly draw the attention of many researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines. Biased perceptions of Islam and Muslims that are based on “oriental” views have been fueled by different wars and conflicts involving Islamic countries or nations in different parts of the world. Driven by biased ideologies, perceptions and attitudes, along with political and socioeconomic forces of a capitalist system in the U.S., mass media, and other anti-Islam institutions played a significant role in spreading and perpetuating Islamophobia. This dissertation addresses Islamophobia by reviewing its origins, definitions, and consequences, and investigates its dynamics through the theoretical frameworks of capitalism, hegemony, and agenda setting. By selecting certain topics to dominate daily news stories and talking points, major media outlets can significantly impact the public discourse and perceptions and prioritize these issues on people's minds. In response to the negative media coverage, many Islamic organizations were established to counter such misperceptions and empower the Muslim communities in the U.S. through various methods including the use of social media. This dissertation examines major Islamic organizations' used of social media to communicate their messages, respond to Islamophobic portrayals and actions, support Muslim communities, set the agenda, and connect with local communities and social institutions. A total of 420 social media posts over the course of three months by five major U.S.-based Islamic organizations were gathered and analyzed using quantitative content analysis method. The organizations' Facebook-page-likes networks and Twitter-mentions networks were drawn, analyzed, and graphed to supplement the findings of the main method. The results show that the Islamic organizations adopted different and complementary approaches to promote their values, support th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Gi Woong Yun Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Lisa Hanasono Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Madeline Duntley Ph.D. (Committee Member); Clayton Rosati Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Communication; Mass Communications; Mass Media; Middle Eastern Literature; Multicultural Education; Religion; Religious Congregations

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, 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 sec (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Shannon Winnubst (Advisor); Amna Akbar (Committee Member); Lynn Itagaki (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Comparative Literature; Ethnic Studies; Gender Studies; Islamic Studies; Modern Literature; Religion; Womens Studies

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2012, Cross-Cultural, International Education

Much of the research on Islam and democracy has focused on the macro-level, and fails to detail a qualitative account of the experience of Muslim citizens of democracies (Cesari, 2004; Said, 1978; Said, 1981; Al-Azmeh, 1993; Esposito, 1995; Khan, 2006; Huntington, 1996; Adib-Moghaddem, 2008; Barber, 1996; Fukuyama, 1992). The neglect of the Muslim individual experience in the dominant discourse on Islam and democracy has stifled the voices of members of this marginalized population, thereby limiting their self-representation. This is especially true for Muslim Americans, who, in the aftermath of 9/11 and current surge of revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, are either demonized or forgotten altogether, despite the significance of their every day navigation of both Islamic and democratic values and unique efforts toward identity construction. The purpose of this study was to address these gaps in the literature and, through the use of a phenomenological framework and Shi-xu¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿s (2005) cultural approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, complicate the dominant discourse on Islam and democracy by providing insight into the lived experience of seven Muslim American university students as well as supplemental perspectives from their university professors and local Imams. The findings of this study encapsulate the lived experience of the seven Muslim American student participants. These participants, along with professors and local Imams, constructed an alternative discourse that positioned the Islamic and democratic values of equality, respect, freedom, and education as compatible, with the exception of some complications such as Eurocentrism and a heavy reliance on unbridled capitalism. The study concludes with suggestions for all participants to better their understanding and/or enactment of Islamic and democratic values, including attaining education, engaging in civic participation, and developing empathy.

Committee: Bruce Collet PhD (Advisor); Margaret Booth PhD (Committee Member); Stefan Fritsch PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Studies; Banking; Behavioral Sciences; Cognitive Psychology; Community College Education; Community Colleges; Continuing Education; Cultural Anthropology; Curriculum Development; Economic History; Economic Theory; Economics; Educat; Education

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2011, American Culture Studies/Ethnic Studies

This thesis explores the trajectories of conversion to Islam among White Americans after 9/11 in Northwest Ohio by analyzing the social and cultural forces that influenced these individuals' conversion experiences, relationships with pre-9/11 converts, and interactions with the rest of American society. This research project addresses two significant themes that are related to the increasing conversion to Islam in Northwest Ohio after the tragic attacks of September 11th. First, I argue that the increase of Anglo- Americans' conversion to Islam was a reflection of their dissatisfaction with some of the social, cultural, and religious practices in present America. In the narratives of my informants, I identify a number of motivational factors such as social protest and marriage, especially for women, as major reasons for the conversions of Americans to Islam. Second, I discuss the ways in which American converts to Islam act as critics of immigrant Muslims, especially non- practicing Muslims. I examine how their disappointment with transnational Muslims motivates them to establish a distinct American Muslims' religious identity that speaks to their cultural and social needs. Overall, the result of my research indicates that post-9/11 Ohioan Muslim converts are happy and satisfied with their new faith despite all the challenges they face in America. Apparently, Islam provided them with theological satisfaction as well as spiritual fulfillment that give them peace of mind and a sense of tranquility.

Committee: Dr. Lillian Ashcraft-Eason PhD (Advisor); Dr. Babacar M'Baye PhD (Committee Member); Dr. Radhika Gajjala PhD (Other) Subjects: American Studies; Ethnic Studies; Religion

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2006, American Culture Studies/Ethnic Studies

This study compares the Nation of Islam with the religion of Islam to understand the extent of its religious kinship to Islam. As with other religions, there are various understandings of Islam and no single agreement on what constitutes a Muslim. With regard to that matter, the Nation of Islam's (NOI) teachings and beliefs are regarded as unconventional if viewed from the conventions of Islam. Being unconventional in terms of doctrines and having a focus on racial struggle rather than on religious nurturing position the Nation of Islam more as a social movement than as a religious organization. Further, this raises a question, to some parties, of whether NOI members are Muslims in the sense of mainstream Islam's standard. It is the issue of conventional versus unconventional that is at the core of this study. The methodologies used are observation, interview, and literary research. Prior to writing the thesis, research on the Nation of Islam in Toledo was conducted. The researcher observed the Nation of Islam in Toledo and Savannah, Georgia, and interviewed some people from the Nation of Islam in Toledo and Detroit as well as a historian of religion from Bowling Green State University. The research questions are around the teachings and beliefs of the Nation of Islam in the past and today, the development of the Nation of Islam, and how its members see themselves and their organization both in relation to race relations in the United States and to Islam as a religion of Muslims worldwide. The result of the research indicates that the Nation of Islam has gradually taught the teachings of Islam as embraced by the Muslim world while continuing to hold to the teachings of Elijah Muhammad in contradiction with the accepted conventions of Islam. It is hoped that the research will have important implications for the American public's view of the Nation of Islam and of Islam, to the Nation of Islam itself, and to other Muslims who do not belong to it in their understanding (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lillian Ashcraft-Eason (Advisor) Subjects: American Studies