Washington DC’s Muslim Public Service Network (MPSN), a summer public service fellowship program, and DC Green Muslims, a community Islamic environmental group are two examples of activism in co-gender Muslim environments. We speak to two young activists to find out how this type of activism works within an Islamic framework and why it can be one way to promote healthy gender interactions while working for the common good.
Sarrah AbuLughod and Ryan Strom are alumni of Muslim Public Service Network (MPSN), a summer fellowship program bringing together exceptional young Muslim men and women to participate in civic engagement and public service. They are also active members of DC Green Muslims, a community environmental group working to better understand the relationship between Islam and protecting the Earth. I spoke to them recently on what drew them to public service, what motivates them to action and their experience working in co-gender Muslim environments.
What motivates you to engage in public service?
Sarrah: As a young person, community and service were synonymous in my household. My parents made the importance of helping one another very clear and taught my siblings and me through their actions as well as their words. When I was younger, I remember making a promise to myself that whatever work I did, I would do it first and foremost for the sake of God, and then secondly for the sake of bettering people’s lives. That promise remains one of the reasons I continue with the work I do.
Ryan: To put it simply, I like seeing results. This comes in many forms. Results can be action-oriented initiatives or raising awareness, both important. Providing the public access to information is a form of raising awareness. I remember attending a public hearing for a proposed environmental law. The meeting was intended to solicit feedback from the public but quickly broke down into a shouting match between two separate interests groups. The law was eventually passed and neither group was happy, both saying the state government wasn’t ‘listening’ to the public. In this process, so much was lost because of misinformation and misunderstanding. It is my goal to somehow act as a liaison between different interest groups to see effective and fair results.
Tell us a little bit about the organizations you are a part of: MPSN and DC Green Muslims.
Sarrah: MPSN was started 15 years ago as a program to help inspire, educate, and train American Muslim men and women in public service and civic engagement in order to better contribute to our community and our country. The fellows spend a summer living in close, but separate, quarters, intern at their respective organizations, cook meals together, engage in service projects on the weekends and participate in seminars on topics such as domestic violence in the Muslim community, African American Islamic history, and Islamic Law.
Ryan: DC-Green Muslims (DCGM) is a grass-roots group that seeks to involve like-minded environmentally conscious people in action-based efforts in the DC area. DCGM hopes to create a space for Muslims to participate in environmentally sustainable acts while connecting it back to faith. We recently participated in Huffington Post’s No Impact Week for getting our community involved by creating an addendum to the No Impact Project’s guide. This addendum provided scriptural references from the Quran to show the direct connection between Islam and environmentalism.
What kind of role do these groups and others like it play in the Muslim American narrative?
Sarrah: I find that MPSN in particular plays an important role in the Muslim American narrative. Programs that gather young Muslims from around the country and place them together for an extended period of time in order for them to get to know one another, their differences, their similarities, is so important to the furthering of our intellectual growth as a community. Never, before attending this program, did I feel I had a platform to voice my opinions so clearly. I felt for the first time ever, that I could ask those hard questions and think critically about my faith and my faith community. So many young Muslims in my generation were left with a mediocre Sunday school version of Islam and no real tools as they entered college world and beyond. MPSN not only built up my Islamic understanding, my vocabulary, my confidence in my ability to let my voice be heard, it also created a lasting network of bonds that even almost two years later, have yet to slacken.
Ryan: While having deep roots in American History, the Muslim community is still young when it comes to political and social engagement. MPSN and DC Green Muslims are both organizations, which are pushing the Muslim community into an area it has traditionally not been. MPSN encourages young Muslim to take interest in the public sector, through nonprofit and government work. It helps train and educates young leaders to become better public citizens. DC Green Muslims is working to expose the Muslim community to a relatively unexplored part of the Islamic faith and working to spread knowledge of environmentalism, community building, and a connection with the earth. These groups are demanding a presence in the American fabric and shaping the larger American Muslim narrative.
Muslim gender relations can be confusing, especially when working closely with the opposite gender on issues you both care about. How do you manage?
Sarrah: Organizations such as these enable young Muslims to work together on projects that they are passionate about, regardless of gender. The way many Muslim communities handle gender relations has in part, created a dilemma in how relationships seem to be panning out in our communities. I don’t know exact statistics, but in many circles I’ve been a part of, there seems to be an imbalance of Muslim woman, who would like to get married, unable to find partners.
I remember a conversation I had once with a young Muslim man, he told me very bluntly that he didn’t know how to interact with Muslim women. He didn’t know how they should be treated, what was proper, what was right, what was wrong. On the other hand, he did know how to interact with women of other faiths and faith practices because he’d always interacted with them socially in the venue of school, extracurricular activities, and in the work place. He went on to say that he didn’t understand why people expected him to be attracted to or marry a Muslim woman, when he wasn’t even able to have a cordial conversation in the mosque or at Sunday school, both essentially “safe” environments.
I am not saying I’m an advocate of a free-for-all revolution of Islamic gender etiquette, I am just asking our community leaders, our parents, and ourselves to have a more realistic understanding of the positions they are putting our youth in. I believe programs like MPSN have created a careful environment where young adults, and they are adults, can come together to work with one another and get to know one another as equals, as partners, as co-workers, and as friends. These programs don’t advocate and are not at all involved in setting up relationships beyond a class bond, but what they intrinsically do, is create an environment where the taboo is taken out of the equation and young Muslim men and women can work together to understand the reality of what it is to be Muslim men and Muslim women. And honestly, it takes a lot of maturity on the part of everyone involved to keep the interactions healthy and Islamic.
Ryan: It’s about keeping your priorities in order and understanding the purpose of why you are doing the work you are doing. Muslims have varying opinions, comfort levels and personal beliefs when interacting with the opposite gender but if the larger goal becomes the focus, so much confusion about gender lines can become blurred.
Islam advocates for men and women to approach each other with respect. Often times, Muslims will segregate themselves based on gender, and while this is not harmful in and of itself, the problem arises when Muslims who are used to segregation find themselves in the real world and have to interact with the opposite gender. It may be awkward and create a barrier for efficient and effective work.
Being a part of organizations like DC Green Muslims or MPSN provide an opportunity to overcome the difficulties of normal healthy gender interaction by focusing on an honorable end goal that’s bigger than the gender divide.
Can you describe the gender divide and how it often pervades community involvement?
Sarrah: The negative effects of gender divide in a physical space can be seen in virtually every Muslim community I’ve ever been a part of. Ask any woman about the prayer area in her local mosque and the universality of the reaction is astonishing. The stories of literal closets, or musty basements, or just nonexistent space, are shocking. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve risked “insulting” the men of a community by walking through the front door, or praying in the back because there wasn’t ample space, or even any space at all.
Moving beyond physical space, to the gender divide in community involvement, I venture to say that in many, if not most communities, you’ll find the interactions in the mosque, in Sunday schools, in youth programs to be almost fully gender segregated. In my own experience, this was often the case. To clarify, this fact, in itself is not where I find the problem lies. As I’ve stated previously, the problem begins when we fail to teach our youth how to interact with one another. As we move from our home communities where we’ve fully segregated our Muslim interactions, to the college MSA scene, where we often find ourselves working side by side, planning, organizing, and leading, we face a whole new level of dynamics. A level of dynamics, that too often, we haven’t prepared ourselves for.
A third, and perhaps more inherent example of where the gender divide lies within our communities, is within the educational information that has been made available to us. This is a problem that is seen in lecture halls, in classrooms, and in Friday khutbahs. A Muslim woman’s experience even reading her own holy book, the Quran, can be tumultuous and round-about depending on the accuracy and sensitivity of the translator, as she is forced to switch pronouns around to make it more applicable to her.
Each of these issues is not the fault of one person, one gender, or one community. And gender division need not necessarily be viewed as negative, it’s just that all too often, they are. These are issues that need to be solved as communities, but initiated by individuals.
How were gender lines blurred in pursuit of larger goals?
Sarrah: I feel blessed in how I was raised, and the opportunities I’ve been given in that, these lines have always seemed a bit blurred. I’ve always had the opportunity to do the work I needed to do, no matter who I was working with or who I was serving. The gender lines and gender differences were only apparent when they were pointed out to me, or when I was questioned about my actions. I remember one such experience, where I was kindly pulled aside and warned that I shouldn’t get my hopes up in winning an election because of the fact that I was a girl. I remember not understanding how that could possibly have anything to do with anything, and brushing it off and moving on to win.
In my opinion, our Muslim communities need to realize the importance of working together to meet mutual goals. But not just that, we also need to realize the importance of respecting each other, not despite, but because of our differences in gender. We need to adjust our focus on the end goal, on the projects we are passionate about and adjust our lens to fade out the spotlight that has been focused on gender for far too long.
Ryan: In my experience, the gender lines were blurred when people were focusing on the larger goals. In some situations gender or sexual tension can pervade interactions but it doesn’t have to rear its head into every situation. The approach matters most. If people come into a situation with a clear goal in mind or purpose, this greatly diminishes the likelihood of gender tensions. For example, spending a summer with my MPSN cohort, gender tension was almost non-existent because the class had a purpose, an objective and everyone knew how to conduct themselves in a respectful and productive manner.
Any parting thoughts?
Sarrah: As with any community, we need to be forward thinking. Organizations like the ones Ryan and I described epitomize that concept by focusing on the growth of the Muslim American identity. This identity is in constant flux, and is tirelessly challenged as we’ve seen and felt by the recent events at Fort Hood and the constant barrage of news from overseas. Our community needs to realize how important it is to foster environments where our youth can learn to strengthen their own, as well as help in building the communal identity. Supporting programs such as the ones described is one of the most important moves we can make.
Sarah Jawaid is an urban planner and environmentalist residing in Washington, DC. She works as a researcher for Urban Land Institute, analyzing national transportation, water, and infrastructure policy. She is an alumnus of the Muslim Public Service Network and helps to organize events with DC Green Muslims, a group of eco-conscious Muslims working to understand the connections between the environment, faith and holistic living.
