“A Brown Muslim,” Recent Reads, and Current Events

I became aware of the darkness of my skin under the big trees in front of my fifth grade classroom the day after the 9/11 attacks. Instead of going to play before school started that summer morning as usual, my best friend Caylin told me that her parents said she couldn’t be my friend anymore because my uncle in Pakistan could be a terrorist.  Stock-still, panic flooding my body, I stood there feeling naked and cold. I was so confused. How did she know my parents were from Pakistan? How did she know anything about my one uncle–whom I’d never met–who lived there? I specifically remember looking down at my bare arms, which appeared, to me, different and darker for the first time foiled against Caylin’s perfect whiteness.  

Many years later as a freshman in college, I found myself protesting over fee hikes at the University of California in November 2009.  The clubs in the Cross Cultural Center, along with the Muslim Student Union (MSU), staged an elaborate scheme to shut down the university with a walk out.  I had Chemistry during the protest, but was directed to stay in class to wait for the disruption and then walk out, hopefully setting an example for the rest of my 400 classmates. I heard some chanting getting louder outside and I started feeling a giddy excitement.  When two dozen protesters descended upon the hall, flooding in from the top and bottom doors in the huge auditorium, I happily sprung up from my seat and joined the chorus yelling “Walk out!”  

But after persisting for a few minutes, me standing in front of my seat with my fist pumping in the air, it was clear that no other freshman in my class would join us and I was terribly embarrassed. What was worse–my professor became angry and began shouting, demanding the disruption to stop. He pushed a couple protestors near him towards the doors. I began shaking from head to foot, sweat prickling all over my body. I was losing the courage to walk out of the class. An MSU board member, Sumayya, noticed my hesitation and she grabbed my backpack and took me by the arm to help me leave with the rest of the protesters. Sumayya rescued me from my humiliation and led me outside. My affinity for MSU grew tremendously with that single act of kindness and MSU became my family. In the crowd that marched around the campus, I saw such a motley collection of people–with many different colors of skin, very few of them white–united around the same cause. The euphoric energy lit a feeling of deep connectedness inside of me to every single protester. I finally saw with my own eyes hundreds of peers who cared about having to pay more tuition, just like me. I  witnessed them rise with a glorious sense of power to challenge their oppression. I realized then that my skin wasn’t just darker than white—it was actually brown.  It felt good to be brown, in addition to being Muslim, because many people from diverse backgrounds were also brown and we were standing together, fighting for the same cause.

“A Broown MUSLIM” BY MEENA MALIK