Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
2005). The resulting Final Report from that summit was a document describing top ad-
vocacy priorities, including “Family: Marriage and Divorce,” “Violence Against Wo-
men(NationalandInternational),”“EmpowermentofWomenthroughEducation,”“Do-
mestic Violence,” and other issues (Karamah 2004b). Nearly all of these Karamah pri-
orities require afocusonprivate space, anarea that CAIR hasallowed toremain largely
invisible in its advocacy work.
These documents, among others published by Karamah, support an image of the or-
ganization as focused specifically on gendered issues, particularly violence against and
oppression of women. Karamah, like CAIR, has produced a great number of reports de-
bunking the myth that Muslim women are always and everywhere uniquely oppressed
by Islamic culture, but Karamah goes further to advocate on issues that CAIR only in-
frequently addresses. In this way, the gendered division in the staff of these two organ-
izations can be seen to follow in some of the advocacy work done by these two Muslim
American organizations.
Conclusion
Overall, the preliminary data presented in the limited space available above provides
a general picture of the ways gender operates in Muslim American advocacy organiz-
ations fighting against racialized Islamophobia in the United States. This chapter has
offeredaninitialefforttobringtogetherdataongenderdynamicswithinawiderangeof
groupsseekingtoconfrontIslamophobiaintheUnitedStates.Ifindthatadvocacywork
that privileges public over private places is inadequate to the task of changing the ways
that Islamophobia and gender privilege operate. At the outset of this chapter, I argued
that privilege significantly affects how organizations like CAIR and Karamah advoc-
ate around gendered Islamophobic stereotypes. The contribution of Patricia Hill Collins
(2000) and others toward understanding privilege as a multifaceted and contextual pro-
cess allows for a conception of privilege that incorporates issues of gender.
While I must emphasize that my empirical data cannot directly speak to this, there
remains the possibility that the stereotype of a uniquely oppressive singular “Islamic
culture” might have led CAIR to avoid sustained advocacy campaigns speaking to
gendered issues like domestic violence. CAIR's leadership might see a sustained cam-
paignonthisissueasfeedingthestereotypethatMuslimAmericanshaveauniqueprob-
lem with these issues. If this is indeed the case, then CAIR effectively would not have
the privilege to take exception to these gendered issues. Karamah, on this view, would
have the privilege to build sustained campaigns around domestic violence, sexual har-
assment, and other gendered issues. The nuanced approach taken by Karamah, which
defines itself as a women's organization, allows it to make private space a site of advo-
cacy, thereby sidestepping concerns of reifying stereotypes about Islam. The privilege
