Category: projects

A diverse and brilliant group of Muslim women will be the conversation starters at this Long Table. Pls register and join us this Saturday 3-6pm!

Participants, in alphabetical order:

1- Mara Ahmed is an activist, artist and filmmaker who has lived and been educated in Belgium, Pakistan and the United States. Her first documentary, “The Muslims I Know” premiered 10 years ago and started a dialogue between American Muslims and people of other faiths. Her third documentary, “A Thin Wall,” a film about the partition of India in 1947, was released in 2015. She is now working on a film about racism in America, focusing on the voices of women of color. Her production company is Neelum Films.

2- Fadak Al-Salami was born in Iraq. Her family moved to the US in 2014, by way of Syria. Fadak is in 7th grade. She likes going to the mall with friends and plays soccer.

3- Fatimah Arshad is a junior majoring in Public Health at the University of Rochester. As a young Muslim woman living in today’s world, she wants to play her part in contributing to a society that accepts and encourages diversity. She also wishes to help dissipate stereotypes against Muslims and other minorities that are victims of racism.

4- Halima Aweis graduated from RIT in May this year. She majored in Biotechnology and Molecular Biosciences and plans on going to graduate school after a gap year. Her family is originally from Mogadishu, Somalia, but Halima was born in Missouri. She is interested in anti-Muslim racism because as a Black Muslim woman who wears the hijab, she contends with discrimination frequently, both inside and outside of the Muslim community.

5- Mahreen Mustafa George was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, to a traditional Muslim family. After immigrating to the US and raising her own children, she is keen to discuss the differences between the culture she grew up in, and the one she’s raising her own family in. Mahreen is actively involved in racial justice initiatives in the Rochester community, notably as a founding organizer of the Black Lives Matter at School initiative, as well as collaborative work with the Islamic Center of Rochester.

6- Obaida Omar is a manager at the Catholic Family Center’s Refugee, Immigration and Employment Services. She was born in Afghanistan. Her family fled to Pakistan in the 1980s, during the Soviet invasion, before resettling in the US. She has a Baccalaureate in Social Work from SUNY Brockport and her passion is to help other refugees.

7- Aisa Purak was born in the small village of Jastrebac in Bosnia and Herzegovina. She came to Rochester as a refugee. Her book, “Bosnian Immigrants: Opportunities and Challenges,” is a study of 100 Bosnian families who immigrated to Rochester and found a way to adapt to life in a new society. She leads the Bosnian female choir and holds Quran classes for women.

8- Muna Najib Taha is a Rochester humanities student, activist and researcher by way of Chicago and Palestine. As a Muslim woman, she is honored to teach and engage with others about Islam in a way that debunks Islamophobic and xenophobic narratives.

9- Ema Amatullah Shabazz is retired. Her interests include childhood development, drawing and painting. She is African American and a revert to Islam. She is interested in people’s reactions to her being Muslim.

I worked with Artists Coalition for Change Together (ACCT) last year when they introduced me to Mariko Yamada and we got to develop a short piece that combined film and dance for the Rochester Fringe Festival. That collaboration carried over into the film I’m working on right now and dance became an integral part of The Injured Body: A Film about Racism in America. I will always be grateful to ACCT for that connection.

Yesterday I presented a retrospective of my work, which included my films and artwork but also social justice issues I am invested in, at an ACCT meeting. I loved the lively feedback I got from the audience throughout the presentation. So satisfying. As usual I talked about Orientalism, colonialism and the power of the Orientalist lens, which is very European and very white.

One response to images of my collage work was that the colors were too much and in direct opposition to what a Western/European eye is used to. Earlier yesterday, I had spoken at Roc Women’s Fest about radical love, an antidote to the othering necessitated by capitalism. It struck me that color can be othered as well and it reminded me of this important research on how the beautiful Greek and Roman marble statues, considered foundational to European culture, used to be painted in bright, primary colors before being archived as monochromatic standards of classical beauty. A whitewashing of history if ever there was one.

It also made me think of how the impressionists loved color, how Picasso and Matisse never shied away from primary colors or intricate patterns, or how Rauschenberg’s work or abstract expressionism in general couldn’t possibly exist in a monochromatic space. Do the domes and minarets discernible in my artwork and deliberately reminiscent of South Asian architecture make it more alien or hard to take? Perhaps an odalisque, in the exact same colors, would have looked more comforting, more familiar? Could be interesting material for another piece of writing.

Why does pop culture continue to imagine that the statues of the classical world were all white? Can the digital addition of painted colors to the ancient statues depicted within film, video games and other media correct the false ideal of whiteness as beauty? More here.