Politics of belonging and dissent of Muslim Americans within two protest movements, the Women’s March and Black Lives Matter

Abstract

In this paper I examine the multitude of positionalities of Muslim Americans who were engaged in the largest protest movements in the United States since the civil rights movement. Both the Women’s March on Washington in 2017, documented as the largest single-day protest in U.S. history, and Black Lives Matter protest, invigorated by the police killing of George Floyd in May of 2020, demonstrate an intersectional feminist commitment and platform against white supremacy and misogyny. Both movements address gender, social and racial injustices with focus on targeted minorities, including Black Americans, Muslims, and the LGBTQ+ communities. I’m interested in Muslims’ self-representations and accounts of the movements with respect to Muslim American identity in relation to politics of inclusion and belonging as well as politics of dissent. Drawing on news media, social media, statements by Muslim organizations, as well as individual accounts by authors, journalists, politicians, community activists, and artists, I look at the relationship between Muslim American women, intersectional women’s right and racial justice activism, and the articulation of politics of belonging and dissent in the face of anti-Muslim racism. The self-representations compose specific discourses which shed light on Muslim minority politics in relation to national racist rhetoric and attacks on multiple minorities, including Muslims as a racialized group. These narratives express and perform both “good” and “bad” Muslim citizenship (cf. Maira 2009) with the latter engaging in dissent and radical critique of the neoliberal democratic state and its racist domestic politics as well as imperial foreign politics.