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Religious Liberty Attorney, Online Editor Describes Gender Issues In Islam, Other Faiths

The Jewish Star of David, Arab- Christian Cross and Crescent on the front of Beit Hagefen Arab-Jewish Center in Haifa.
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The Jewish Star of David, Arab- Christian Cross and Crescent on the front of Beit Hagefen Arab-Jewish Center in Haifa.

According to a 2013 Gallup poll, 56 percent of adults in the United States said religion was “very important” in their lives, with another 22 percent saying religion was at least “fairly important.”

Asma Uddin works to protect the religious liberties of all Americans as a lawyer with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. She also founded the online publication AltMuslimah.

The Becket Fund has been involved with many high-profile legal cases dealing with religious liberties, such as the landmark Supreme Court case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, and Uddin says restrictions of religious freedoms happen every day.

Many of these cases involve the religious rights of prisoners, such as Holt v. Hobbes, where a Muslim prisoner was forbidden from growing a half-inch beard.

“It seems like such a small issue… [but ] it’s about the broader principles at issue … [prisoners] don’t give up [their] constitutional rights … [but] prison officials all too often so easily just wave away those rights,” Uddin said.

While the Becket Fund is not the only organization to handle these sorts of cases, Uddin believes it is unique in its outlook.

“We take the uniform approach in all of our cases that religion is a positive and that we’re going to protect it regardless of whether the adherent is an adherent to a majority religion or a minority religion,” Uddin said.

She hadn’t always planned on being an attorney for religious freedom cases, but her decision was based in her own experience with religion.

“I was always interested in religion … [and] I had decided I needed to make a change and I needed to do something that I was truly going to be good at and that I would love … [so] I thought about religion,” Uddin said.

Uddin grew up a Muslim in the United States and says she had to do a lot of soul-searching to decide what the religion meant to her, but that one thing remained constant.

“I ultimately always held the belief that religion was a positive force for individuals and for societies,” Uddin said.

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Interview Highlights

On Being A Muslim-American

9/11 was probably a turning point in the experience of American Muslims in this country. Before, most people didn't really know about Muslims or Islam – or if they did, it was really just another religious group. And then when the spotlight was unfortunately put on us with 9/11, it became a much more complex existence. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues – and myself included – in the community, in the American-Muslim community, often feel like we spend so much of our time defending our faith or being spokespeople for our faith. And that really detracts from just being religious believers and being able to focus on the spiritual aspects. But it's the nature of our world; it's the nature of our current experience,, and I have embraced the activism that comes with it, the responsibilities that come with it.

On The Legal Case Over The Islamic Center Of Murfreesboro

One of our cases [dealt] with the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. There was an entire CNN documentary made about the conflict, where some of the local residents opposed the expansion of the Islamic Center. And they engaged in vandalism and also burned down a lot of the construction materials. And then there was also a legal challenge arguing that the Islamic Center is not protected by some of our laws that protect religious land use because, the argument went that Muslims are not religious believers, Islam is not a religion, and therefore is not deserving of protection.

On Shaping Her View Of Islam

Even pre-9/11 there were a lot of questions I had about my faith from just kind of being exposed from my travels to other countries, to Muslim-majority countries, but also seeing a lot of foreign students on my college campus and understanding over time that there are multiple Islams; it's interpreted and applied in infinite number of ways. Someone has once said that the number of Islams are equal to the number of Muslims, because each person approaches and lives it differently. And just coming to that realization over time and also understanding that there are some interpretations and some Islams that I just couldn't accept. The internal struggle I went through to understand whether or not I was a fully authentic Muslim even as I was rejecting the other interpretations. And I came through it through nuance and through the internal dialogue and through the all of the spiritual reflection, but over time I realized that there are a lot of Muslims who don't reach the same conclusion or who don't engage in the same level of analysis and ultimately are turned away from the faith or left struggling and ultimately feel really lonely and isolated.

On The Web Magazine, altM

We do focus solely on gender issues, but we define that pretty broadly. And so you'll see a lot of story-telling and personal experiences. That part of it – specifically because the story's been told by an American-Muslim woman – that's really the gender angle there. Because I think that those sort of identity-based negotiations that we have with ourselves and our community are very much part of the discussion. But in terms of the specific gender issues, they range from the international, looking at the specific women's rights struggles in particular countries … and then domestically, very specific inter-community issues such as the experience of women who have decided to take on wearing the headscarf or women who have worn it for many, many years and decided for various reasons to stop and what type of social backlash they dealt with. We've talked about courtship, relationships, sexuality in the Muslim context

FULL TRANSCRIPT

REBECCA CRUISE, HOST: Asma Uddin, welcome to World Views.

ASMA UDDIN: Thank you.

CRUISE: You are currently an international attorney focusing on religious justice. It's a very interesting idea, religious justice. Where did this come from? What was the path that you took that really led you to get a degree of this nature and to do the work that you're doing?

UDDIN: Well I think in some ways I was led to this position without really having planned for it. I was always interested in religion; it was one of my majors, one of my three majors in undergrad. 

CRUISE: Three majors? [Laughs]

UDDIN: Yeah. And it actually became a major simply by virtue of me taking one too many classes in religious studies. Then I went to law school largely because – I wish I had some grand plan – but actually I went to law school because I really didn't know what else to do, and it was a point at which I had decided I needed to make a change, and I needed to do something that I was truly going to be good at and that I would love. And so what did I think of? I thought about religion, because it was something that was a common thread throughout my educational career. And my perspective on religion, despite all the experiences that I had that were complex and that gave me a fuller idea of the role that religion plays in peoples lives, I ultimately always held the belief that religion was a positive force for individuals and for societies. And so I was looking for a place to work where they respected that role of religion in the public space. And my job search was made pretty easy by the fact that there's only one law firm in the entire country that defends religious liberty for people of all faiths and comes at it from a perspective of religion being a source of good.

CRUISE: And this is a personal experience for you, as you explained. You grew up in this country as a Muslim in the United States, growing up in the last two decades or so when the idea and the image of Islam has, perhaps, been affected by certain events – 9/11, for example, comes to mind. What was it like growing up in the country as a Muslim-American?

UDDIN: I think you're right in saying that 9/11 was probably a turning point in the experience of American Muslims in this country. Before, most people didn't really know about Muslims or Islam – or if they did, it was really just another religious group. And then when the spotlight was unfortunately put on us with 9/11, it became a much more complex existence. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues – and myself included – in the community, in the American-Muslim community, often feel like we spend so much of our time defending our faith or being spokespeople for our faith. And that really detracts from just being religious believers and being able to focus on the spiritual aspects. But it's the nature of our world; it's the nature of our current experience,, and I have embraced the activism that comes with it, the responsibilities that come with it.

CRUISE: Well the organization that you're now working for, there's been a number of cases where you have had the opportunity to be involved in protecting religious liberties. One of those that will resonate, perhaps, with many Oklahomans is the Hobby Lobby case. Can you maybe talk a little bit about your role in that very famous case?

UDDIN: Yeah. So Hobby Lobby is one of many cases that we are handling, and are still currently handling, dealing with the HHS Mandate, which was a mandate that was part of Obamacare, part of the Affordable Care Act. And that essentially mandated that certain employers – not all employers; there were certain exceptions for certain types of employers – to cover contraception for their employees free of cost. And in the Hobby Lobby case specifically, it wasn't all contraception that the employers objected to covering; it was a limited number that they would characterize as abortifacients. And we have numerous clients, both Catholic and non-Catholic, who have really strong religious objections to having any role in the provision or facilitation of the use of these drugs. And we've defended those rights, because ultimately there's a sincere religious belief at the core. The government, by imposing this duty – which a failure to fulfill essentially leads to millions of dollars in fines – it's just a classic example of something that's wrong under the religious freedom jurisprudence of this country. 

CRUISE: Are there other cases that come to mind when you think about these issues where there's controversial decisions that are needing to be made that are perhaps getting attention, or maybe not getting attention? Ones that we maybe didn't hear so much about?

UDDIN: Well unfortunately, religious liberty restrictions are happening every day, and many religious groups face them – some more than others, some at different levels. Certain groups, like in the case of these HHS Mandate cases, a lot of it is really religious organizations facing it. But then you have scenarios, especially dealing with minority groups – whether it be Sikh-Americans or Muslim-Americans – who are dealing with them at the more individual level. But some of them you hear about them in the news; they get much attention. For example, one of our cases dealing with the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. There was an entire CNN documentary made about the conflict, where some of the local residents opposed the expansion of the Islamic Center. And they engaged in vandalism and also burned down a lot of the construction materials. And then there was also a legal challenge arguing that the Islamic Center is not protected by some of our laws that protect religious land use because, the argument went that Muslims are not religious believers, Islam is not a religion, and therefore is not deserving of protection. And so cases like that, which was also handled by the Becket Fund, have made, obviously, the headlines and warrant an entire subject of a documentary. But then there's so many others – whether it be the ability of Sikh-Americans to carry their symbolic kirpan, which is a small blunt knife, into a federal building – that get less attention. Numerous other land use cases that happen every day – there's so many of them – they don't make the headlines, but there are religious organizations dealing with them every day. There are prisoner's rights cases where prisoners are seeking the right to have access to religious diets or religious material, and those cases are always ongoing. Again, some catch the headlines. Most recently was our case at the U.S. Supreme Court involving a Muslim prisoner who was seeking to grow a one-half inch beard who wasn't permitted to because a prison policy said that all prisoners had to be clean-shaven unless there was a medical need for it. And it seems like such a small issue. A lot of people think, "Why is the Supreme Court taking a case on about a half-inch beard?" But it's not about a half-inch beard. It's about the broader principles at issue. The fact that there were laws passed by Congress understanding that when you enter prison, you don't give up your constitutional rights, you don't give up your fundamental human rights, your right to religious liberty. Religion plays a huge role in the rehabilitation of prisoners and prison officials all too often so easily just wave away those rights. And so there are protections put in place that require officials to produce the right evidence before they engage in these restrictions. So again, these sorts of cases happen all the time. Some of them get a lot of media attention and some of them don't.

CRUISE: Given that it seems so, in some ways, common, it's somewhat surprising that there really is only the Becket Fund that is dealing with these sorts of cases.

UDDIN: Well there's definitely other groups. The ACLU has a freedom of religion program; the American's United for Separation of Church and State has their own set of cases; and then there's prisoner rights groups and so on. But what makes the Becket Fund unique is our singular focus on religious freedom cases, the fact that we are a group of attorneys of diverse faith backgrounds working for clients of diverse faith backgrounds, and we take the uniform approach in all of our cases that religion is a positive, and that we're going to protect it regardless of whether the adherent is an adherent to a majority religion or a minority religion.

CRUISE: Well this is very fascinating. You've also been doing some other very interesting work, which goes back to your position, or your role, as a Muslim-American and also as a female Muslim. You have recently created a very, very interesting web magazine called altM, and the goal of this web magazine is to discuss gender and Islam. It has a number of articles that are included that look at different issues that women might face, different sects or brands of Islam. Very, very fascinating. And I understand that you came to this decision to create this based on an experience in a book club. Can you talk maybe a little bit about that?

UDDIN: So, even the book club came from somewhere. And really all of it's rooted in my experience growing up a Muslim female in America and everything that that comes with and – we were speaking about this earlier – just the complicated experience of American-Muslims. And even pre-9/11 there were a lot of questions I had about my faith from just kind of being exposed from my travels to other countries, to Muslim-majority countries, but also seeing a lot of foreign students on my college campus and understanding over time that there are multiple Islams; it's interpreted and applied in infinite number of ways. Someone has once said that the number of Islams are equal to the number of Muslims, because each person approaches and lives it differently. And just coming to that realization over time and also understanding that there are some interpretations and some Islams that I just couldn't accept. The internal struggle I went through to understand whether or not I was a fully authentic Muslim even as I was rejecting the other interpretations. And I came through it through nuance and through the internal dialogue and through the all of the spiritual reflection, but over time I realized that there are a lot of Muslims who don't reach the same conclusion or who don't engage in the same level of analysis and ultimately are turned away from the faith or left struggling and ultimately feel really lonely and isolated. And that's really where the website came from. So the book club was the first step along the way to kind of take it from an individual to a collective experience. And so the book club discussion group was my attempt at gathering people together to talk about relevant literature, and it really cemented my belief in the fact that there is a need for this, that this forum was needed.

CRUISE: And what are some of the issues that are discussed on the webpage? What are some of the issues that Muslim-Americans or Muslims in general face – particularly gender issues?

UDDIN:  So we do focus solely on gender issues, but we define that pretty broadly. And so you'll see a lot of story-telling and personal experiences. That part of it – specifically because the story's been told by an American-Muslim woman – that's really the gender angle there. Because I think that those sort of identity-based negotiations that we have with ourselves and our community are very much part of the discussion. But in terms of the specific gender issues, they range from the international, looking at the specific women's rights struggles in particular countries, to throughout the Arab Spring, for instance, we were looking instances of sexual harassment that were happening, but also just the role of women and how it was really a revolution that was undertaken by men and women together, equally. In fact, the entire Egyptian Revolution was started by a Muslim woman. And so exploring the international parts and then domestically, very specific inter-community issues such as the experience of women who have decided to take on wearing the headscarf or women who have worn it for many, many years and decided for various reasons to stop and what type of social backlash they dealt with. We've talked about courtship, relationships, sexuality in the Muslim context – which is actually the one area, I think, where our multi-faith relevance began to emerge as more and more women of other faiths started contacting us and telling us that "so-and-so article talking about this relationship issue is something that we experience in our faith community,” pretty much verbatim. And that's where the conversation started opening up and we were getting emails from Jewish women, Evangelical women, Catholic women. And one particular Catholic woman, she wrote a piece for our site. So the piece that really started the whole thing was really her quest to find a modest wedding dress. She was getting married in a Catholic church and wanted a modest dress and couldn't find it anywhere and she ended up with a Muslim seamstress, and of course there were conversations about shared values of modesty. She wrote a piece for us, which went viral. And ultimately that same women then started our sister site, altC, which stands for Altcatholica – so it's a Catholic conversation on gender issues. And now we have launched an umbrella magazine called altFem that covers broader issues of feminism and faith.

CRUISE: Well it's so interesting that you have women of different Islams and then bring in women of different faiths as well and realize that there are quite a few similarities, even if they are dealt with and felt perhaps differently. Well very, very interesting topics that you're dealing with and we'll continue to follow your research and your successes. Thank you so much for being here.

UDDIN: Thank you.

Copyright © 2015 KGOU Radio. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to KGOU Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only. Any other use requires KGOU's prior permission.

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