A woman’s conversion to Islam redirected workplace racism toward her new religious identity

Evidence

A Pakistani return migrant, Altaf, and his wife, Mary, an immigrant from Haiti who worked in a bank in the New York area. They met through mutual friends and soon decided to marry. Altaf worked odd jobs and, at times, as a computer-networking consultant. After they married, Mary converted to Islam and asked to be called Mariam. She slowly adopted religious dress and donned the hijab at work, which, she said, made her more noticeable in the workplace. Before 9/11, she said, she was treated with indi√erence and mild disregard, but immediately afterward, she dealt with direct comments and rude behavior. Female co-workers whispered that her husband had ‘‘made her’’ cover up and that she was ‘‘becoming a terrorist, too.’’ She initially treated such comments as jokes, but eventually she began explaining to her co-workers that her husband had never forced Islam on her and that she was more religious than he was. She had decided to don the veil based on visits to the local mosque and her interactions with other Muslim women. Nonetheless, her racial position in the workplace as black and as a Haitian immigrant began to take shape in relation to her husband’s religious and national background as a Muslim and a Pakistani. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 848

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the already-published article ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — here the hijab becomes a coded sign of political danger rather than mere immodesty, extending that moral-panic framework into contemporary secular workplaces. — connects to: Islamic converts show drastic observable lifestyle changes before embracing extremism — Ryan Andrew Brown, Todd C. Helmus, Rajeev Ramchand, Alina I. Palimaru, Sarah Weilant, Ashley L. Rhoades, and Liisa Hiatt (RAND Corporation), Violent Extremism in America:…, 379