Chapter II / Methodology
Scope and Methods of Collection
With this thesis, I do not claim to make generalized conclusions about Muslim American women, or even the more focused category of the Muslim American Women of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Instead, this project is aimed to provide a thick description of a particular practice, the practice of living the feminine American Muslim identity. I choose this method over others, such as a large-sample survey asking for identity terms, for its ability to provide richer information on the motives and the history of the women, which I believe has led to a more thorough understanding of the behaviors I observed. Schiff (2003:285) explained in a similar study in methodology with Israeli-Arabs, “In considering whole lives, we retain a concept of the person as the subject matter throughout our analysis in order to interpret how persons manage collective identity… The result is a complex interpretation of lives rather than the percentage of people who give themselves one-, two-, or three-word labels.” Rather than addressing questions of how all Muslim American women behave, I instead am able to analyze themes in the women’s responses and behaviors as well as the differences caused by varying life histories and other identity categories they define themselves with. Allaine Cerwonka (Cerwonka and Malkki 2007:74), while describing her experiences doing field work in Australia commented that, “With time, I came to see that instead of being able to make such broad claims, ethnographic research done in very particular and deliberately choosen field sites does enable one to take a concept or phenomenon and understand it in deep, rich ways.”
Further, my experience with Muslim American women, before, during and after my fieldwork, impressed on me that this group is exceptionally heterogeneous containing women who rarely share similar backgrounds of ethnicity, nationality, class, or culturally defined race. Neither do they universally agree on the requirements of Islam. As a group, little besides the belief that there is one God and Mohammed is his prophet, can be prescribed to all or the majority. Even this most basic tenant is situated in the women’s lives in varying degrees of intensity and interpretation. This is not to downplay the seriousness of the religion of Islam or its believers; instead I wish to demonstrate that a study claiming to represent the belief and actions of such a large and diverse group is dubious at best.
Therefore the scope of this project is to observe the behavior of identity as practice. This was accomplished with approximately sixty-four hours of extensive interviews with individual Muslim women. In addition, I spent a year, from January 2007 to December 2008, less two months to allow the community to recover from damage caused by Hurricane Gustave, observing the women at the masjid, in their homes, in their neighborhoods and at school and work. This time of observation included special events, such as holidays and outreach activities, as well as mundane activities including eating at restaurants, grocery shopping, studying at the library, taking children to parks and so on. Finally, my field work included surveys of local media coverage and participation about and by the women I worked with and the local Muslim population.
Location and Population
Muslims are a notorious among scholars for being difficult to count in the United States. The largest demographic survey in the United States, the federal census, is not constitutionally allowed to survey religious demography. Thus demographic statistics on Muslim American’s is left to smaller organizations which generally have much smaller samples and only cover geographic areas that are of scholarly significance. Louisiana is not one of the states in which scholars or activists have a particular interest in Muslims. Therefore, demographic information on the Muslim population is particularly sparse and lacks quality collection methods.
According to a 2008 America.gov report on Muslims in America, there are eleven mosques in the state. However, this number is based only on the volunteered listings in the online directory of Islamic Centers organized by IslamiCity in 2008. In 2000, the Association of Religion Data Archives reported twenty-three Islamic Centers based on a survey by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB). Based on my experiences in Baton Rouge and information provided by my informants there are only two masjids in Baton Rouge. The number of Islamic adherents in Louisiana is consistently cited as 13,050, as nearly all publications on Louisiana’s religious populations are based on one survey from 2000 by the ASARB. Based on the 2008 America.gov report, Louisiana ranks seventeenth in total number of mosques among other states. Based on the 2000 survey by the ASARB, Louisiana is ranked twenty-first in total Muslim adherents among other states. However, these rankings can be misleading when considering overall distribution of mosques and adherent population. Forty-nine percent of American mosques are located in the top six states in number of mosques and 32% of American mosques are located in the top two states. Similarly, 56% of American Muslims live in the top six states in Islamic adherents and 32% of American Muslims live in the top two states.
 Figure 1. Graph depicting total number of mosques in the top twenty-five states in number of mosques. These twenty-five states represent 88% of the total Muslim population in the United States. Louisiana ranks seventeenth with seventeen mosques. This graph is based on data collected by the ASARD in a 2000 survey of religion in the United States (Jones, et al. 2000).
 Figure 2. Graph depicting total number of adherents in the top twenty-five states in Muslim population. These twenty-five states represent 95% of the total Muslim population in the United States. Louisiana ranks twenty-first with 13,050 Muslims. This graph is based on data collected by the ASARD in a 2000 survey of religion in the United States (Jones, et al. 2000).
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Demographic information on the national Muslim population is more abundant than state level demographics. However, that information is still inherently flawed because of a lack of survey resources and the diversity of the Muslim population. Estimates of the national Muslim population range from two to seven million (Cincotta, et al. 2009). The wide range of estimates stems from methodological differences in each study. Most estimates are compiled based on a combination of nationalities of immigrants, language and race statistics in other surveys and religious affiliation questions from public opinion polls (Pew Research Center 2007:11). Methodologies that are based on generalizations of the relationships between ethnicity, language and religion struggle to compensate for the vast diversity of the Muslim population in national origin, language and race and the increasing rate of conversion among natural American citizens (Pew Research Center 2007:11).
The Pew Research Center’s 2007 report, Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream, argued that based on national surveys Muslim Americans are well established in the United State’s classic categories of ideal Americanhood such as education and household income. According to their report, 24% of Muslims in the United States have completed either a bachelors or a graduate degree compared to the national rate of 25% (Pew Research Center 2007). Likewise, survey responses on income mirror national rates with 41% of respondents claiming income greater than fifty-thousand dollars a year, compared to 44% of the general population. The men and women with whom I worked generally fit within the observations of the Pew Research Center’s report. However, I observed a greater rate of individuals who had attended college than the 41% presented in the Pew Research Center’s report. This can be generally explained by the close proximity of Louisiana State University, which for many in the local Muslim population was the draw to the area, as many of them have taught or attended the university. Further, the leaders in the masjid’s community expressed a particular emphasis on the religious responsibility of Muslims to obtain educations and generally respect pursuits of knowledge.
Positioning Myself
Throughout my fieldwork, there were facets of my identity that were particularly salient for the situations I found myself in. These identities gave me access to information that I otherwise would not have. They also elicited responses from the women who spoke with me that I had not expected. In this section, I would like to briefly talk about these characteristics and how they have molded and shifted the results I received.
During the first half of my fieldwork, I was engaged to be married and during the second half of my fieldwork I was a newlywed. This quickly became common knowledge in the community because of the rings that I wore and because my husband frequently attended events with me. During events held at the masjid, women and men are separated and during these events my husband was warmly received among the men at the masjid. Unlike the other people in my life, my husband was a tangible aspect of my life for the community to witness. This impacted the way I was received by my informants in two ways. Firstly, most of the older women, approximately the age of my mother or older, spent a considerable amount of time giving me advice and inquiring about my wedding and my marriage. The relationships I developed with these women because of this tended to be more mentoring and motherly. Secondly, there were a handful of women who either were engaged or were seeking marriages. With these women, my relationship was more of camaraderie as we struggled with similar obstacles and were excited about similar prospects.
My geographic heritage made a considerable difference in the way I was received by the women in the community. My first introduction to the community was as a graduate student from the University of Southern Mississippi. Most people assumed prior to meeting me that I was born in Mississippi or another southeastern state. While under this assumption I was generally treated as someone with little to no understanding of Islam or Muslims. This was apparent in the advice given to me and the questions asked of me in these early encounters, “Don’t shake the men’s hands,” and “Are you surprised that I am not Arab?” With some of the women, particularly the younger women, I witnessed grand displays of “Americanism” during which they represented themselves prominently as educated, independent and strong. This is not to suggest that these women were not educated, independent and strong. However, during this period their goal, as many later told me, was to demonstrate that they were not the negative stereotype of oppressed Muslim women that was portrayed in the media and across the internet.
Early in my encounters with each woman, I told each woman that I was from Michigan. This drastically changed the way I was received by most of the women, although not by all. During my time with them, I learned that, as the home of the largest Arab population in the United States, Michigan was often seen as a bastion of tolerance and acceptance of Islam amid a sea of intolerance and ignorance. While in reality this is only marginally true and only in some areas of Michigan, it nevertheless pushed my position among the women into more of an informed sympathizer rather than an uninformed questionable individual.
Fortunately, my Michigan upbringing had exposed me to Muslim culture. However, my mother’s guidance through my childhood and my own academic interests were the larger motivators for my sympathetic and informed nature. Nonetheless, I used my identity as a Michigander to easily soothe worries and gain rapport among the community. Doing this, opened many doors for me into conversations and experiences I many not have otherwise had. However, this identity also had some drawbacks. I was expected to know most etiquette rules without instruction, which made my slip ups and bumbles more socially awkward than they may have otherwise been. Luckily, my age and my still intact non-Muslim status exempted me from real responsibility for my missteps.
Lastly, my identity as an Anthropologist or more broadly as a researcher had particular benefits and drawbacks. I was not the first person to observe, interview or study people from the masjid’s community. Ahead of me there were many reporters, social scientists, religious scholars from local synagogues and churches, school classes, and other interested parties who worked with the community. And with the current political climate and the openness of the community, I will likely not be the last researcher to have an interest in them. The main benefit of this was that the women I spoke to were generally relaxed in my presence and were comfortable speaking in the presence of a notebook and digital recorder. They were also excellent at anticipating what events and activities I would be interesting in observing. When I arrived for these events, they were well prepared for my presence. However, their extensive prior experience with researchers had caused most of the women to prepare, although often unconsciously, formulaic responses to questions that were delivered in even practiced voices. In some cases, it would take me many questions and redirections to receive deeper explanations and insights. Also, I frequently battled the misconception that I was writing “another” paper about Muslim women. There was a common understanding among the women that people who were interested in studying Muslim women wanted to write about the “amazing” fact that they were not oppressed. This led to many lectures on women’s rights in Islam particularly surrounding popular controversial topics such as hijab, arranged marriage, polygamy and education.
Finally, during my work with a few of the women, my relationship with them as an Anthropologist was tainted by a prior experience with reporters and social scientists. In one case, I was never able to establish the rapport I wanted with the woman, as her prior experience had been too difficult to overcome. A reporter had interviewed her about her Muslim heritage and had printed an article with construed information. The article had painted her as an extremely oppressed individual who was a victim of both her husband and her religion, although she was in fact a well educated and happy Muslim woman. The article resulted in controversy in her community. Ultimately, she was terminated from a public service job that she had spent many years working in happily.
During my fieldwork, many other facets of my identity were influential in my position in the masjid’s community and in my relationships with the various women. However, the above mentioned characteristics had the most profound impact on my experiences and on the data I collected. Thus, I have documented them here in an effort to forwardly state my position in the field and in this document.
