(Image from the Hulu series Ramy)

The following excerpt comes from Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media (Indiana University Press, 2024) by Rosemary Pennington. The book explores depictions of Muslims and of Islam in American popular culture.

The following excerpt comes from the book’s conclusion.

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Muslim communities in the United States often find themselves the subject of surveillance by both government and cultural forces. Imagined as criminal or terrorist threats, they have seen their mosques infiltrated by law enforcement, their names placed on no-fly lists, their right to build places of worship denied out of fear. They have to ask for their holidays to be recognized, for their children to not be fed pork at school, for their right to simply exist in America. The danger they sometimes face simply for being Muslim is real and oppressive. And, yet, so many individuals do not shy away from making their identities visible. For some, to be visible is a purposefully and overtly political act. For others, it is simply an attempt to live their lives as authentically as they can (though one might argue that, itself, is a political act).

Pierre Bourdieu noted that for members of minority groups debates about identity and belonging are often “struggles over the monopoly of the power to make people see and believe, to get them to know and recognize, to impose the legitimate definition of the divisions of the social world and, thereby, to make and unmake groups.” For American Muslims, the struggle for visibility is partly to ensure they are not erased from the American public sphere. It is a struggle to make an American identity that includes Muslim experiences. Edward Said wrote that “Self-definition is one of the activities practiced by all cultures: it has a rhetoric, a set of occasions and authorities … and a familiarity all its own.” American Muslims want to participate in the process of American self-definition as they seek recognition that Muslims belong to and in the United States. It is a struggle to force the United States to live up to its lofty rhetoric of being a land that welcomes everyone. If that’s truly to be the case, then everyone must be involved in the making of what it means to be American. This is one of the narrative threads in the second season of the Hulu show Ramy.

The sophomore season begins as the main character returns from a disastrous trip to visit family in Egypt, hoping to find some direction for his life. Upon his return, Ramy Youssef connects with a sheik, played by Mahershala Ali, in order to reconnect with Islam as he works to create a meaningful American Muslim life. The second season of the show also features storylines focused on Ramy’s sister and mother, giving viewers insight into the lives of Muslim women who do not apologize for their faith. In the case of Ramy’s mother, viewers even get to see a Muslim immigrant on her path to American citizenship. In the program Islam is a lived religion set against a New Jersey backdrop and Youssef, playing an avatar of himself, works to unmake an understanding of America that is hegemonically white and Christian and remake it to be more reflective of the country’s multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious reality. Youssef helps make visible an accessible American Muslim experience. However, even with the success of shows like Ramy and comic books like Ms. Marvel, the work toward inclusion is fraught and complicated.

For Michel Foucault, the danger in becoming visible lies in the possibility of being trapped by the expectations of the viewers. Even if you are seeking to be your most authentic self, there is a feeling of some pressure to not be so much yourself that you run afoul of those who would deem you “normal” or “safe.” Our performances of self in this environment are “individualized and constantly visible” and, for Muslims, can often reinforce what Nabil Echchaibi calls the “double burden of representation.” Muslims often find themselves in a position to defend their faith from accusations of it somehow being violent or promoting terrorism or oppressing others and in that defense, Echchaibi suggests, lies a trap. It puts Muslims in a position of suggesting that perhaps some interpretations of Islam are problematic as they seek to convince us that not all Muslims are violent. Muslims are pushed to publicly recognize the “humanity and inhumanity” of their communities while the non-Muslims they are speaking to rarely are. We often hear people proclaim that “not all Muslims are violent” or “not all Muslims hate the West,” but rarely do we hear echoed back “not all Americans believe Muslims are violent” or “not all Americans believe Muslims are dangerous.” Becoming visible, in this instance, reinforces the representational cage that traps Muslims and Islam in a stereotyped understanding of what the two are. It’s a trap that many American Muslim producers and creators are all too aware of as they work to create media that both reflects their experiences, but also is accessible to a broad American audience. That certainly seems to be true of comedian Hasan Minaj. During an interview promoting the third season of his show Patriot Act on Netflix, Minaj was asked how his background – he is the Muslim Indian American son of immigrants – has shaped his particular approach to comedy.

I’m an Indian American Muslim. I’m always reminded of that. And as a result, I’ve always had an insider-outsider relationship with America. I’m a citizen, and I grew up here and loved it as any American kid would. But at the same time, there have been moments when I’ve felt like, man… I’m an outsider regardless of what’s on my birth certificate. I don’t fit in at the party.

Seemingly part of Minaj’s mission is to make space for himself and others like him to exist in the American imagination. To force a recognition of the experiences of American Muslims as American. What would it be like for Muslims like Minaj to not be reminded of their outsider status? To not be seen as outsiders at all? At the close of a conference called Cyber Muslims, Nabil Echchaibi asked what would it mean for Muslims to not feel a “compulsion to represent,” to not have to be constantly concerned about how they are being understood.

It’s an idea that Kamala Khan wrestles with in the second issue of the Ms. Marvel relaunch, after she has spent some time embodying Carol Danvers’s version of Ms. Marvel. Reflecting on her experience, Kamala thinks to herself, “…being someone else isn’t liberating. It’s exhausting.” After spending seemingly years wanting to feel more “normal,” wanting to not have to worry about how her Muslim identity is being understood by non-Muslims, Kamala realizes that she should be enough; that her experience as an American Muslim is meaningful enough, heroic enough. In a just world, no one would be forced to fit into a mold in order to be understood and included; they would simply be accepted as they are. Muslims would be allowed, as Echchaibi suggested, to “just live.” It’s the hope of such a world Kamala begins to work toward in her role as Ms. Marvel. It’s the expectation of such a world that seems to drive the work of Muslim comedians, actors, and reality show contestants. But, for now, it is seemingly more a hope than a reality.

(Image source: Marvel comics)

The representations of Muslims explored in this book are not studies in fidelity or truth – they are not representations designed to suggest that one way of being Muslim is truer or more honest than another. They are representations designed to help the audience understand what it means to be Muslim in America; what it means to be an American Muslim. In the case of Marvel’s Kamala Khan, being an American Muslim means finding a way to reconcile the expectations of family, community, and self in a way that feels true to herself. In Ms. Marvel’s second series, Kamala struggles with the fact that she is now a known entity, people know she’s out there, fighting for the common good. “Now I’m some kind of symbol,” she says, “and I don’t have any say in what it means.” What Kamala is struggling with is the fact that, no matter what she does, she cannot control how people will respond to her; she has no control over what she means to other people. Kamala has been transformed in the minds of the public from superhero to the meaning of superhero. Eventually she reconciles herself to the fact that all she can do is to continue to do good as best she can, to live her life as authentically as she can, and to hope that it is enough.

The Muslim representations appearing in primetime TV dramas are often heroic in their own ways. Lost’s Sayyid constantly fights against the expectations of others that he will be violent, American Crime’s Aliyah fights against an unjust justice system that seems to presume her brother’s guilt, and The Night Of’s Naz fights against a system that would transform him into the violent caricature it expects him to be – a battle he seemingly loses in the end. All of these representations working to help audiences understand what it means that Muslims are continually associated with violence, that they are continually framed as enemy others. Comedians, of course, can poke fun as such stereotypes. They can throw them back at the audience, expose the racist foundations upon which they are built, and force the audience to laugh at the absurdities of such stereotypes and their own perpetuation of them. Together, the comedian and their audience can remake the boundaries marking us and other, even if for just a moment. All of this working to reshape the meaning of Muslim in the American imagination.

When it comes to representations of “real” Muslims, things get trickier. There is some expectation that not only is it a representation of the Muslim experience, not only is it meant to signify in some way what it means to be an American Muslim, but these representations are imagined to somehow be true to life or authentic. They are expected to be both tree and meaning. For contestants on American reality TV shows, if what they produce is not judged authentic – and by authentic, the judges mean tied in some way to the contestants’ ethnic or religious identity – then they are castigated for conforming in an attempt to get ahead. Of course, what this critique ignores are the histories that have forced members of marginalized or minority groups to attempt to assimilate, to attempt to erase those things that made them stand out, in order to survive in an American culture defined by a white, Protestant experience. One way to become nonthreatening, to be woven into the fabric of the culture, is to produce things that can be consumed or to become consumable yourself. When Fatima Ali was criticized for her food not being authentic, when Ayana Ife was celebrated for foregrounding modesty in her clothing designs, when magazines featured Muslim women in Dubai who watch Desperate Housewives and shop for designer goods, it was all designed to help sell these Muslim women to a broad American audience. To make them, their stories, and what they produce something that could be bought or sold. What does it mean to be real when that realness is predicated on whether an audience or a panel of judges buys into your performance of your identity?

Rosemary Pennington is Associate Professor of Journalism in Miami University’s Department of Media, Journalism & Film. She is the author of Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media.

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Interested in more on this topic? Check out episode 46 of the Revealer podcast: “Muslims in Pop Culture.”