I Chose, Lipstick Jihad By Azadeh Moaveni Essay

Master Fard Muhammad is Allah in person. His father knew of a message that had to be delivered to his people, but he knew that as a black man he could never just come into solid white America with no problem with the authorities. He knew that he need to go to the caucasus region and find a pure caucasian woman to give birth to his son, so that his son could deliver the message to his people. Some may say that Master Fard Muhammad can’t be God because his mother is white, but that is fallacious. Dr.Wesley points out that if you plant an apple seed in Africa, Asia, Or Europe it will still germinate as an apple tree. Just like Fard was the seed of his father and his mother was like the soil.

Nydell, Margaret K. (. K. Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Modern Times. Intercultural Press, Yarmouth, ME, 2006.

In an autobiographical story, “Journey by Inner Light,” the author Meeta Kaur shares her audiences her rebellion against her cultures of Sikhism. With her life feeling lost, Kaur began feeling dissatisfied and decided to cut her hair against her cultural belief in order to fit the young American lifestyle. She felt like she had lost her self-identity and her inner connections to her principles. As Kaur comes back home to her family, a mixed feelings of guilt and shame filled her when her mother saw her hair. After realizing her mistake, she returns to her mother and ancestors’ way of life to find a solid ground and foundation based of her people’s way of life. This autobiography made me realize that as much effort we give to run away from our

Farah Ahmedi was a woman who wanted to cross the border to Pakistan from Afghanistan. The story “The Other Side of The Sky,” elaborates on this statement by describing Farah Ahmedi’s life, the author states, “Their only hope was to escape to Pakistan”(para. 3). This quote explains that Farah Ahmedi did not want to leave the country out of her own choice, it was necessary. Her country was war torn, so she and her mom had no choice. After the very hard journey to cross the border through mountains, and four years in Pakistan, Farah and her mother were finally chosen to come to America. A quote from an interview with Farah elaborates on this statement by stating, “After four years of hardship [in Pakistan] she and her mother are chosen to come to America.” (authorlink 4). Just because Farah and her mother got out of Afghanistan, didn’t mean that the hardship was over. She had lost all of her family except for her mother when she was in Germany getting her prosthetic leg. Farah wanted to have a better life, so she made the decision to cross the border, helping and changing her life forever.

“I hate your Arabic!” I snarled in my broken English. My mother stared at me in confusion while I seethed about my heritage internally. For whatever reason, this toxic state of mind stuck with me through my elementary-school years. I promised myself that I would strive to become like everyone else and slowly began to erase my Lebanese culture from my mannerisms.

Growing up as a first generation Pakistani American Muslim not only came with the benefits of being exposed to different cultures, but it also came with a continuing challenge to incorporate the two cultures and my religion into the society we lived in. There was always a need to be more American, more Pakistani, while respecting the boundaries of religion. When we went to school, we weren’t American enough, when visiting Pakistan we were often labeled with the acronym ABCD- American Born Confused Desi. We were neither here, nor there. No matter how hard we tried to assimilate into the two societies, we could feel the absence of understanding and acceptance. This search for an identity not only allowed me to easily interact with people facing similar dilemmas, but it allowed me to embrace culture, religion, and people that were different.

Anzaldúa identifies her cultures struggle into adapting to the community she lives in. She begins her challenges with the incident of the dentist in order to emphasize her concern, as in not her own mouth, but more specifically their language. If you want to be American, speak ‘American’ (Anzaldúa 471). She is

Nowadays, cross-cultural communication is one of the keys to survive in this society. It plays an important role in our society. The book, A long way gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier, describes several cross cultural issues. This book is based on the true story of Ishamel Beah, who was solder in Republic of Sierra Leone. During his life time, he face a number of cultural shocks and tried to adapt each situation. Through story of his life, we can recognize some cultural differences and similarities between his central culture, Sierra Leon, and other individuals/groups. Thus, in this essay, I would like to discuss how are cultural differences and similarities between Ishamel’s culture and other cultures revealed. There are three main points; cultural differences shows cultural conflict and cultural integration, and cultural similarities reflects the Americanization.

Most people when they hear the word "Muslim" they only think about the Middle East, without realizing that there are Muslims everywhere. A Muslim is someone who follows the religion of Islam, but it does not necessary need to be people from the Middle East. There are a lot of people around the world that decide to become Muslims for many reasons. These three young women Nousheen Yousuf-Sadiq, Maria M. Ebrahimji, and Kameelah Janan Rasheed come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, but considered themselves as Muslims. In their individual short stories, they talk about the difficulties that they have being an American and a Muslim woman at the same time. It is difficult for them because having these two identities interferes

For this assignment the cultural manifestations I selected to discuss as being important to our Unit’s success are Wasta, Deference to authority, and Tendency to seek compromise. Of course understanding all of the cultural manifestations are important to our unit’s success, but each region within the Middle East-North African (MENA) region will have their own variations based upon which branch of Islam is dominant in the region, what that region’s experience has been with the U.S. or a Western presence in general and numerous other factors such as the prevailing socio-economic factors of the region.

There are many countries in the world and every country is unique and individualistic with many exclusive qualities. Everyone in the world has a culture but it is not easy to accept or agree with other people’s culture. The ethnography, “Guests of the Sheik”, written by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea really captures what it is like to live and to be immersed into another culture. Ethnography is “comprised of the writings of the anthropologist, detailing the life ways of a particular culture, investigated by means of direct fieldwork” (Arenson, and Miller-Thayer 1). Elizabeth Fernea lived in a small village of El Nahra in southern Iraq for two years to gather data for her anthropologist husband Bob. In the beginning, she had limited knowledge of Iraq, its religion or culture, but as she started connecting with the women of the society, she came to learn both about this foreign country and about herself. Acculturation is “the process of acceptance resulting for the contact between two cultures, or an individual interacting in at least two cultures” (517). As she builds relationships with the woman’s, she is acculturated.

Another one of Pratt's Arts of the Contact Zone is also a key in maintaining your national identity is Transculturation. Transculturation is the combining of two cultures or traits from two different cultures. This can help in maintaining national identity by having the cultures meet half way, instead of conforming and letting your identity slip away from you. Here, pull an example of transculturation from Said's text. For instance, the use of the Mercedes. Even though Said describes it in negative terms, the use of the Mercedes has come in handy for Palestinians. This is just a suggestion, you may find another example.

Cultural conflict and popular culture are two experiences in life that assist in defining intercultural communication and how its influence affects our daily intercommunication. Cultural conflict is inevitable as we live out our daily lives in the identities we have selected for ourselves, the identities relating to our ethnicity and in those identities others have selected for us. These identities are bound to conflict with another individual’s identities which is why there is a need for understanding what intercultural communication is and how it can be enhanced becomes vital to peaceful living around the world.

The lives of Muhammad by Kecia Ali is a modern book that describes the way the life of the prophet has been told by past authors. It looks at the manner in which he lived his life and some of the decisions that he made. However, many other authors who have written about the life of Prophet Muhammad but Kecia Ali bring out the unspoken perspective that many people hardly notice. She shies away from describing the truth spoken by anti-Muslims and Muslims alike. On the contrary, she analyses both factions of the narrations and tells the story of Muhammad in a new light.

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis, makes important strides toward altering how Western audiences perceive Iranian women. Satrapi endeavors to display the intersection of the lives of some Westerners with her life as an Iranian, who spent some time in the West. Satrapi, dissatisfied with representations she saw of Iranian women in France, decided to challenge them. In her words, “From the time I came to France in 1994, I was always telling stories about life in Iran to my friends. We’d see pieces about Iran on television, but they didn’t represent my experience at all. I had to keep saying, ‘No, it’s not like that there.’ I’ve been justifying why it isn’t negative to be an Iranian for almost twenty years. How strange when it isn’t