Ayesha

“a prejudice against someone based on race, when those prejudices are reinforced by systems of power.”
― Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race

“Because our racist society is quick to view minorities as monoliths, and because our sexist society is quick to reduce women to the attire they wear, Muslim women who wear headscarves have undoubtedly become the involuntary representatives of an entire religion. Following the irrational logic according to which Muslims are judged (i.e., if one Muslim commits terrorism, then all Muslims are terrorists), every action that a visibly identifiable Muslim woman takes in public is immediately attributed to our religion as a whole. In this way, we exist in the public sphere in a perpetual state of constant awareness and consciousness of the outward eye. Our actions are constantly manipulated, negotiated, and limited to serve that purpose—another manifestation of the oppression we suffer from Western society. We are on the front lines of Islamophobia. Physical assault, hate crimes, and harassment against us are not only attacks upon us as individuals, but attacks on Islam itself. Like lightning rods, we attract and bear the brunt of the hateful attitudes, rhetoric, and media frenzies prompted by Islamophobia.”
― Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age

“Adulthood, for all its opportunities, meant the simultaneous accumulation of loss.”
― Marian Keyes, Grown Ups

“I feel that the horrible scapegoating we’ve had to endure has forced us into a corner of defensiveness, dissipating our energy in this endless game of pushing back against the misconceptions that ultimately victimize us. Imperialism behaves in this way not only out of sheer contempt for peoples different than its own, but also in a deliberate effort to prevent these groups from building themselves up. It makes me sad to think about all the resources the Muslim American community has been forced to waste for the past decade on campaigns, events, and media efforts to prove that we, too, are American; that we, too, are human, begging and pleading the public to not believe the racist rhetoric being spewed about us.”
― Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age