Muslim Women Are Everything Quotes

“Feminist blogs and social media sites declared Mehreen “a destroyer of trolls,” “a legend,” and “an icon.” For this attitude, as well as for her tenacity, hopefulness, and hard work, Mehreen was awarded the feminist Edna Ryan Grand Stirrer award in 2017, particularly for her role in the decriminalization of abortion. She was named one of the one hundred most influential engineers in Australia, and for women in Pakistan, Australia, and around the world, she has won over hearts for being unapologetically, loudly, beautifully a “brown, Muslim, migrant, feminist woman.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“Muslim Women Play Bingo IF YOU’RE A MUSLIM woman playing this special version of bingo, you’ve probably heard it all before. The Why can’t you drink wine? It must be so hard to be you to the Oh. My. God. So-and-so said you drink wine. You will burn in hell, sister. But I’ll pray for you. If you’re not a Muslim woman, welcome to our world. From the Islamophobic to the absurd—and often an asinine mixture of the two—Muslim women endure ignorant comments the world over. Sometimes they come from our own, sometimes they come from non-Muslims who harbor misconceptions about what it means to be a Muslim woman and assume we are oppressed and overheated beneath our chadors and hijabs, or else wildly rebellious and confusing (to them) when we twerk in booty shorts on the dance floor.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“MUSLIM WOMEN are commanding audiences, cracking jokes, and forging careers as stand-up comics and entertainers. From viral videos to one-woman shows, we deploy humor to enlighten and illuminate, but more importantly, we use humor to experience joy. We laugh till we cry, till we pee, till we forget. We belly laugh to give ourselves the strength to smash the patriarchy, find a date, do the laundry, write a book, get out of bed. In a world that tries to laugh at us, Muslim women have turned the tables and weaponized an art form: Humor is our not-so-secret weapon, joy is our punchline.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“another Muslim woman took office alongside her. Rashida Tlaib, representative for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, was the other first Muslim woman in Congress. Rashida boasted yet another first: She was first in her family to graduate from high school. The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, a single mother of two boys, and the oldest of fourteen children, Rashida had blasted through other people’s expectations of what it meant to be a Palestinian American woman. And at every step, she was taking all of her heritage with her, proudly representing Michigan and Palestine. At her congressional swearing-in ceremony, Rashida wore a floor-length, long-sleeved black and red thobe, the quintessentially Palestinian dress, which is typically hand-embroidered by women from Palestinian villages. The stitching and styles vary across Palestine, but thobes with lavish designs are worn to mark special occasions, such as puberty, motherhood, and now entry of a Palestinian American woman into the United States Congress. Rashida posted a close-up of her thobe on Instagram.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“Just days before the election, Donald Trump had visited Minnesota and told a local crowd: “Here in Minnesota, you’ve seen firsthand the problems caused with faulty refugee vetting, with large numbers of Somali refugees coming into your state without your knowledge, without your support or approval, and with some of them joining ISIS and spreading their extremist views. You’ve suffered enough in Minnesota.” Ilhan had won in the face of that hate speech. And it was only the beginning of her political rise.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“Utanga refugee camp was their home for four years. When Ilhan turned twelve, a Lutheran church sponsored her family to go to the United States. Ilhan arrived in Arlington, Virginia, in possession of two English phrases: “Hello” and “Shut up.” Her classmates yanked at her hijab, stuck chewing gum to it, and bombarded her with questions like, “Do you have hair? Do you have a pet monkey? Does it feel good to wear shoes for the first time?” Every day, the girl who had survived armed militias and a refugee camp was reminded that she was different. “This is the first time I realized the stigma that I carried as an immigrant and a refugee, and a Muslim person who was visibly Muslim, with a headscarf,” she told The New Yorker. “And that my blackness was a source of tension.” But as the kids bullied her, Ilhan remembered her grandfather telling her as a child: “Everything is temporary.” His words gave her courage.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“I’m a Muslim migrant woman, I’m heading to the Senate on Monday, and there’s nothing Senator Fraser Anning can do about that.” Once inside the Senate, Mehreen did not mince her words. She said some of Australia’s politicians were “creating and fanning racial divisions.” Her position in politics has led to accusations that Mehreen is not “Australian enough” to serve the country. Mehreen’s response? “But how can I be Australian enough? Do I need to point to my love of cricket? My career in the public service? My husband’s role as major in the army reserves?” People of color in white-dominant societies are often forced to walk the lines of “enough.” Not quite brown enough, never quite assimilated enough, to the point that we feel, well, like we can never be enough. Mehreen refuses to play that game. “Instead of being accepted because this is our home, we are asked to apologize for every action of someone who looks like us. We are subject to rules that white people never will be . . . for some, we will never be Australian enough.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“Running countries and running households, Muslim women are stepping up and taking control as architects of our lives and leaders of our communities. The women in this chapter are making waves as some of the first Muslim women politicians and heads of state in their countries. Having lived through bad governance and incompetent leadership—all the way from community boards to federal governments—Muslim women are through with having rules dictated to us. Brazen, imperfect, and energized, Muslim women are taking charge.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“Muslim women drive to make progress. For the right to move freely, to dream big, to live where we want to live and love whom we choose to love. Muslim women drive to be more than a religion, more than a gender, more than the “first Muslim” anything.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“Fawzia decided life should imitate art, and in writing both her characters and then her own life story, she rejected stereotypes in place of fully human, fully fleshed-out women who lived at the intersections of race, gender, immigration, and sexuality.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“Fawzia soon realized that real power lay in writing her own lines, not letting white men dictate her dialogue and movements.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“Books are a weapon. A peaceful weapon perhaps, but they are a weapon.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure

“Mariama described her novel as “a cry from the heart of all women everywhere. It is first a cry from the heart of Senegalese women, because it talks from the heart of Senegalese women, women constrained by religion and other social constraints that wear them down. But it is also a cry that can symbolize the cry of women everywhere.”
― Seema Yasmin, Muslim Women Are Everything: Stereotype-Shattering Stories of Courage, Inspiration, and Adventure