Faith, Tradition, and Islam Theme Analysis

Islam plays widely different roles in the lives of the seven people Bayoumi interviews, but all of them (including Sami, who is Christian) nevertheless grapple with their relationship to it. They struggle to bridge their personal knowledge of Islam with the negative representations of it that dominate American discourse, and one of Bayoumi’s central motives is to dispel the assumptions that make up these negative representations: that Muslims are usually devout, conservative, and fundamentalist; that Muslims who are pious are also somehow violent or anti-American; and that Islam is a “traditional” religion incompatible with “modern” Western societies. His portrayal of a variety of ways to be Muslim and a variety of people who do not fall into stereotypes is an important step towards this end, but his subjects also undertake their own efforts to portray Islam in the positive light in which they experience it.

Contrary to stereotypes, Bayoumi’s subjects and their families relate to Islam in a wide variety of ways, often independently of their relationships to their national and ethnic identities. Religion is one—but not the only, or even often the main—source of community among Arabs and Muslims, and Muslim moral values are no different from the ones instilled by most other major religions in the United States. Some of Bayoumi’s subjects, like Yasmin and Rami, see religion as central to their lives; they feel it provides them with essential moral guidance and could not imagine giving it up. Islam is central to their beliefs in equality, peace, and the value of community; in particular, faith was Rami’s only source of solace after his father first got sent to jail, and it allowed him to meet friends who shared his perspective and build a community of support. He also breaks conventional assumptions about the conflict between tradition and modernity, choosing traditional ways in spite of his much less religious parents. On the flipside, Akram almost never attends mosque, but still feels intensely connected to his Palestinian heritage. And while Rasha’s family is not devout, her mother emphasizes many of the same moral values that Rami (and, of course, religions everywhere) believe in: “honesty, compassion, and the protection of her honor.” Lina alternates between disavowing and embracing her family’s religious traditions, going from teenage rebellion to suddenly donning “the entire regalia of a religious woman” in Iraq, then back again. She still marries a fellow Iraqi, in accord with (but not because of) her family’s wishes. Finally, Sami is not a Muslim at all—he is an Arab Christian, but he grows close to a number of Muslim locals, who help him understand his Arab heritage.

Despite their varied and sometimes ambivalent relationships to Islam, the young people Bayoumi interviews also recognize the need to combat negative stereotypes about it. One of Omar’s central motivations for starting a career in the media is his desire to combat bias, and especially the default pro-government bias of American media that, for instance, led his mentor John Alpert to be fired from NBC for reporting the destruction caused by American bombs during the First Gulf War. Another of his mentors, the imam who leads his discussion group, emphasizes that Muslims have a “public relations problem” in the United States, which further inspires Omar to fight negative media representations of Islam that conflate all Muslims with a handful of radical groups. Yasmin’s portrait opens with a story about her watching a white couple harass a hijabi woman on a bus, yelling that she might be a terrorist and have a bomb under her blanket (it is actually a baby). Yasmin is furious to witness this stereotype in action and sees her own fight against her school, like her decision to wear the hijab, as a way to improve Muslim representation and teach people to “have confidence in me because of what was in my heart and not prejudice against my outer appearance.” For Rami, da‘wa work and wearing traditional Muslim garb are as much a means to represent Islam in public and perhaps open conversations with non-Muslims as they are an expression of his own personal faith.

Ultimately, Bayoumi’s subjects are all too aware that they are caught in a double bind: they are forced to apologize for believing in a religion that preaches the values of moral thinking, community, and nonviolence. It is, then, unsurprising that they make light of this situation by turning to humor. One comedian Rami’s friend Mohammad brings to a school Muslim Students Association jokes, “I consider myself a very patriotic American Muslim, which means I would die for this country by blowing myself up.” And Akram tries to show that his family is no different from other Americans (and make sure they do not get swindled) by posting a sign in their window: “IN ALLAH WE TRUST. EVERYONE ELSE MUST PAY—NO CREDIT.”