A devout Muslim student framed her forced resignation as moral martyrdom in King’s tradition.

Evidence

I was forced to submit my resignation due to the system’s inability to understand my moral obligations. For example, my beliefs prevent me from having anything to do with drinking/dancing. When I was young, the system told me to stand up and fight for what I believe in. While now I am being told to do the exact opposite, instead I should give up what I believe in for some rules and regulations. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for what he believed in and gave up his life for it. I too am taking that same stand by giving up my position to defend what I believe in. — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 371

Categorization

• XREF: The fusing of religious obligation with civil-rights martyrdom rhetoric echoes the pattern of politicized religious identity discussed in the reader’s notes on veiling as active revolutionary instrument.
• SEED: A possible angle: how young Muslims borrow the symbolic vocabulary of Black American civil rights to narrate their own institutional conflicts — copying the iconography versus earning the comparison.