questions about writing a muslim character!

[moondragon8]

[edit: thank you for all of the kind advice! i am...very embarrassed about my mistakes, and have turned off my notifications for this post so i can look at the comments on my own time. i won't be deleting this post, since several people have said i shouldn't, but i will definitely be taking a while away to work on myself and my characters before i post here again. sorry to anyone i may have offended-- please believe that this post was written in good faith and i'm not as stupid as i may have appeared.]

hello! pardon me if i make any mistakes, i haven't been a forumposter since...2015, maybe?? anyway. i'm writing this story, taking place in modern-day new york, and one of the primary characters is muslim. (i hope that's the correct way to use that?) their name is lillud (weird name, i know, it's left over from when they were a fancharacter for a different fandom and i just got really attached to it), and they're...arguably one of the more normal characters in the story, lol. they're generally a pretty fly-under-the-radar person, excellent at setting boundaries, and not one to start drama but they love hearing about it secondhand. they're also the producer for a one-man radio show by their best friend, who they have been harboring a crush on for YEARS without saying anything.

HOWEVER i did not come here just to talk about my character i also have QUESTIONS! obviously i've already done some research on the basics of writing muslim characters (and one wikipedia rabbithole on the similarities and differences between kosher and halal! it was fun). i suppose mostly what i'm curious about is:
1. where is it common for islamic people to emigrate to the us from? at what times? (for context: i'm jewish, and something around fourth or fifth-generation over here! my family emigrated from somewhere in eastern europe, although for a variety of reasons we don't really know which country specifically. i kind of assumed that most descendants of immigrants also didn't really know which country specifically their family came from, and was surprised (and a bit embarrassed) to find out that that wasn't true, so i'm asking! also, a lot of jewish people in the us's families came over either at the turn of the century (1890s-1910s) or around the 1930s or 1940s, and i'm curious if there were similar waves for other groups. not super relevant to the story (probably??) but i'm curious!)
2. how much do people generally know about their religion? that's gonna sound like a weird question, but, like. many jewish people are pretty secular, but also if you've had a b'nai mitzvah, you had to read the torah and write some commentary on it, so you probably know at least the basics of the story and some random fun facts for parties (also you know what you have to say "actually that's just christians who do that, not us" about, lol). by contrast, i know a couple christians who know a LOT about the bible (came from very religious families) and many who know very little. curious what the range is, or what you perceive as the things "everyone" knows!
3. just kind of anything else you want to throw out there! i'm very open! stuff you don't see often in representation, stuff you DO see but wish you didn't, stuff you wouldn't think to google, etc.

thank you in advance to anyone who replies!!! sorry for my chronic wordines ^^

Comments

[conuly]

There are over two billion Muslims from a large number of different cultures - including, in the US, quite a lot of American-born converts (who can probably be roughly divided into "African-American" and "Other", but don't quote me on that). Asking "How much do Muslims generally know about their religion" is equivalent to asking "How much do Christians generally know about their religion". It is literally impossible to generalize.

All Muslims don't even have the same religious traditions. There are two huge branches - Sunni and Shi'ite, and a whole lot of minor ones. I suppose you could think of that as very roughly equivalent to the difference between Eastern and Roman churches in Christianity or, idk, between Ashkenazi and Ethiopian Jews?

You are asking an extremely complex question, and I'm not sure you understand how impossible it's going to be to simplify into an answer in a comment in this community.

I think you're going to have to start by narrowing this down first. Figure out where your character comes from and when his family immigrated or converted, and then ask your questions.

[aflatmirror]

Just on the first question of countries of origin for muslim immigrants to the US:

The biggest group is people from South Asia, so Pakistan, Bangladesh, India (due to the nature of the partition of India, the majority of South Asian muslims were either already living in the territories that would become Pakistan/Bangladesh, or were forced by violence to cross the new border into Pakistan/Bangladesh; TL;DR the former two are much more likely countries of origin).

The next largest grouping of Muslim US Americans is people from the Middle East and North Africa. In my quick research I haven't been able to find a good further breakdown by country, but the strategy I would use is to think historically. When did your character or your character's family come to the US, and what was going on then in different countries of the region that might prompt somebody to leave for the US?

Other parts of the world with significant Muslim populations are Central Asia, Malaysia and Indonesia (the latter is the most populous majority Muslim country in the world), West African countries such as Senegal or Niger, and coastal East Africa like Tanzania and Somalia. People from these countries aren't as likely to end up in the US whether from poverty (moving a long way is expensive), or because of differing colonial histories (most countries in West Africa with significant Muslim populations were colonized by France, so people there are more likely to speak French already and choose to emigrate to France over other European/Western countries). Of course, that doesn't rule out any of these countries. As little examples, my small university city secondary hometown has an Afghan restaurant run by a family that came here from Afghanistan, my Calc II professor's husband was Malay, there are plenty of Somali Americans.

It'll be a lot easier to answer your other questions once you have an idea of where your character is from!

ETA: you can also approach this from the other direction. Where in the US do they live, and what immigrant communities are found there? Look up different neighborhoods in whatever city you can think of, see what stores and restaurants and places of worship you find on maps.

[digitalsidhe]

It sounds like it might help you out a bit to see some good representation of Muslims in the US. Might I suggest Ms. Marvel? It's only 6 episodes long; if you skip the credits and recaps, I think you can probably binge it in about 5 hours. But it includes lots of scenes set in a mosque, or at a community festival sponsored by said mosque, and lots of scenes that deal with the main character's family's heritage and background (specifically in Pakistan, and in the historical events of Pakistan's founding). So that might give you an example of at least one way in which more-recent immigrant families keep alive their knowledge of and connection to their countries-of-origin.

I think it packs a lot of what you want/need into a fairly short time.

Bonus: It's not set in NYC, but it is in Jersey City, just across the river, so there's a similar "feel" in that sense.

[jellyfishlover]

Hello! Welcome to Dreamwidth!

If you're unsure about writing a character of that religion, reading autobiographies of people who are Muslim in America might help a lot in seeing how people of that religion write and talk about their experiences. Aside from that, watching "day in the life" or muslim-americans vloggers may help in that aspect as well. This might help with the "How much of their religion should they know" question.

If your not sure about where or when their family immigrated, these statistics from 2017 may help you find a place to start?

Anyways, best of luck with writing! :D

[silveradept]

Muslims emigrate from everywhere in the world, and for all the reasons that any other person emigrates. Where they end up in the US is varied as well.

And yes, there's an entire breath of understanding about Islam and its divisions as there are people who are Muslims. Some people choose the park of scholarship and deep dives into exegesis, and others may treat it more as a cultural, secularish thing.

So it's going to depend a lot about the other aspects of your character as to what kind of Islam they might practice, and how zealous they are about it, and what the society around them thinks about it.

[octahedrite]

First, narrowing down what country your character is from would help a lot. Think about why you want your character to have that specific religious/cultural background and how it would serve your story/world/plot. The resources everyone else has suggested should help. I'd even say this should be your first priority.

I second the suggestion to read -- I would recommend reading books by Muslim authors, from the country you end up going with, that feature Muslim characters.

(This might be a slightly controversial suggestion for this comm, since it's essentially "touch grass", but I hope you won't be offended -- it really really helps to talk to Muslim people in the real world. Might not be accessible or actionable for you, but if you can, then go for it.)

[beatrice_otter]

writingwithcolor on tumblr has a bunch of resources you might find helpful.

https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/tagged/islam
https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/tagged/muslim
https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/tagged/magic-muslim

https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/Recommendations

A guide to researching: https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/researchguideintro
Posts about various stereotypes and tropes: https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/Navigation2

[penwalla]

Hi! I'm an ex-Muslim, let me see if I can answer some of your questions.

- The most important thing you have to figure out about your character is where they are from -- the practice of Islam is widely variant depending on both sect and region, and what sect you're likely to be from is influenced by where in the world you are from.

- How familiar strangers are with Islam varies widely, but in my experience, unless you live in a very diverse area or an area with a big population of Muslims, your average American knows very little. In my experience having to constantly educate other people about your religion is part of the American Muslim experience. I think NYC is probably better about this than other places, but I wouldn't know for sure.

I have had to explain:
What the words "Muslim" and "Islam" mean because the person I was talking to didn't know that Muslim refers to a person who practices Islam

What halal is

Hijab discourse ad nauseaum

What Ramadan is

What Eid is

That Eid is not the equivalent of Christmas

Etc, etc.

- I will also add that many Muslims have traditional names in the same way Christians have names of Biblical origin, so it's worth thinking about your character's name and its origin. In the community I grew up it was really common to have three Faridas, three Fatimas, three Zahras, etc.

If you still have specific questions you can feel free to reach out to me.