by Deanna Othman
Sometimes it makes you want to explode. It’s a feeling you really can’t do anything about. You just want to scream. And you hope everyone hears you. But no one does. They just look at you. Some are perplexed. Others are just sneering.
It’s a problem. Split-identity syndrome. You know who you are, you know who you want to be, but people expect you to be something else.
Though I view myself as a competent, upstanding American citizen, I often notice that not everyone on the outside sees me as such. Many Muslim women are treated as if it is an indisputable fact that they should have an accent because they wear hijab. To the outsider, identifying someone as Muslim is an automatic indicator of their foreignness, since many mistake Islam as inherently dichotomous with Americanness. When I begin to speak, whether to the cashier at the grocery store or an attendant at a fitting room in the mall, I can easily detect how shocked they are when I speak clearly and coherently.
I recently visited the city hall near my home, and had to undergo the customary screening before entering the building. I followed directions and passed through the metal detector with no problem, and began to gather my belongings back into my pockets from the tray they’d been placed in by the security officer. Unexpectedly, the security officer shouted at me to take my hands out of my pockets and get myself behind the line so I could be screened again. I heard her as she muttered angrily under her breath, “These people; they can’t even listen.”
This is the moment where I want to scream. Who are “these people” she is referring to? Am I “these people”? Why aren’t I part of the collective “us”? Why do I have to be placed in a separate category? I didn’t even do anything wrong.
In another situation, I was at a service counter and was asking the man behind it whether a particular document would qualify for an application I was filling out. He replied to me with a deriding look, paying particular attention to my headscarf, “Ma’am, can you read? Here it says ‘excluded.’ Do you know what ‘excluded’ means?”
I sure do. I know all too well. I wanted to rant to this man how I do know how to read. How I was born and raised in the good old U.S.A. How I have never seen any country other than America. How I often feel like a foreigner in my own home.
Growing up, I always felt I was a normal kid. I did all of the things kids do—played with my friends, rode my bike, watched cartoons. But one thing I did was different from most kids. I grew up in Bridgeview, Ill., a mini-Muslim society.
Since I was part of this Muslim mini-society, I scarcely had to leave the confines of my own little safe haven. Then something changed—I left home for college in 1998. Suddenly, I was much more aware of my identity as a Muslim. The scarf I wore on my head now stood out. My classmates didn’t wear it. Many of them even looked at it with an aversion I didn’t understand. Yet many were also accepting and accommodating of it and were curious of what it represents. I began to feel comfortable, as people often judged me by what I was able to achieve academically. My intelligence mattered more than my appearance.
Then something else happened. I graduated college. As an adult, I was forced to leave the second safe haven I had established myself in. High school and college are worlds of their own—insulated and controlled, each with a culture specific to the school. Now I had no such comfort zone. I was forced to fend for myself in the greater society—a place where people wouldn’t know or judge me by my grades or accomplishments, but by their initial impression of me. Unfortunately this impression has often been based upon the headscarf that I wear. The split-identity resurfaces.
Minority groups in America have always been plagued by split-identity syndrome. In the early 20th century the Germans and Irish struggled to achieve equal treatment among other Americans. They endured discrimination early on, but eventually achieved integration into the collective American conscience. There are endless examples like these historically. Most recently forced to grapple with this disease, Muslims must grapple with it and overcome, but only with the help of their fellow Americans.
People must understand that an American is not someone you can define or quantify. Americans come in different physical, mental and spiritual forms. Their origins and beliefs are as diverse as their hair and skin colors. I have the freedom to strengthen my identity as a Muslim because I am an American. I am privileged to learn about and practice my faith better in this country than any other. But why should developing my identity as a Muslim place my identity as an American in jeopardy in the eyes of others?
When the identities of the American and the Muslim are welded together in the American psyche, Muslims like me will be cured of their split-identity syndrome. Who knows? Maybe sporting a headscarf will seem as American as wearing blue jeans.