Between a burkini featured in this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and the New Haven mosque set ablaze last month, Muslims in the United States occupy a particularly demanding moment in history. As we near the end of Ramadan, we live at the cusp of both unprecedented Muslim visibility and heightened anti-Muslim racism. If we are not careful, these new modes of representation may contribute to the rise of anti-Muslim racism, rather than combat it.
As a visibly Muslim woman born and raised in Oklahoma, I never saw anyone who looked like me shown in a positive light — if even at all — in the magazines I stashed under my bed or the television shows I consumed.