A sisterhood group in Manhattan is setting an example for Muslim women, who are joining hands to dispel misconceptions about their faith.
“Women are pretty liberated within the Manhattan community,” Marie Trussel, not her real name, a K-State student thinking about converting from Christianity to Islam, told the Kansas City Collegian on Tuesday, November 29.
At the Islamic Center of Manhattan, the local mosque, women formed a sisterhood group to connect Muslim women in the city.
Members managed to set an example to non-Muslims who face them with curious questions about what they used to think as a suppressive faith.
“Most of all they get questions, which, all of them that I’ve met are more than happy to answer,” Trussel said.
“They don’t want to have negative stereotypes.”
As Trussel started to engage with Manhattan Muslim women, many facts were coming to her that replaced earlier misconceptions.
Media portrays Muslim women as oppressed, yet Muslim women say otherwise.
“Islam gives women much rights,” said Atia Ataie, a Muslim woman from Afghanistan who has lived in Manhattan for three years.
“Men are responsible for all family, for wife, for kids. A woman does not have to go help and work. If she likes, she can. She is free, whatever she do.”
Contrary to popular belief, Muslim women can go anywhere they like, except places that pose a potential danger, Ataie said.
Choosing not to work, Ataie’s husband provides food, clothing and takes care of her and her children when they are sick.
“It is very difficult for men in Islam to do all these things,” she said.
New York is home to some 800,000 Muslims, about 10 percent of the city’s population.
There are about 100 mosques throughout New York’s five boroughs.
The United States is home to an estimated Muslim minority of six to eight million.
Not Oppressed
Within the Manhattan community, the hijab is an identifier of a Muslim woman.
“You kind of have this little air around you when you dress conservatively and wear a hijab,” Trussel said.
“People stare but ultimately if you turn around and smile at them, they realize there is a human beneath that hijab.”
Headscarf is an obligatory code of dress in Islam.
Thinking about converting to Islam, Trussel started dressing more conservatively.
Abdulrahman Kamal, president of the executive committee of the ICM, said both his wife and daughter don the Islamic veil.
“My wife, for example, is wearing a scarf. She is studying at campus,” Kamal said.
“My daughter wears a scarf, but she does not cover her face … but both of them are fine here.”
As Muslims trod their lives in New York, stereotyping remained a major problem towards Muslims’ integrity inside the society.
“With horrific things a population is stereotyped for, for example, the Germans with the Holocaust, that was a national identity that was created for them; but when you expand it to a religious identity, that covers so much,” Trussel said.
“To stereotype a religion is even more ambiguous.”
Source: OnIslam & News Agencies
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