Fwd:Muslim Women - Call For Submissions

>From : Debbie Smith <[email protected]>
Reply-To :  [email protected]
To : "Faisal" <[email protected]>
Subject : Muslim Women - Call For Submissions
Sent : 01 May 2004 09:52:14

Dear friends
Please help distribute this call for an anthology to whatever listserve you 
and your friends might belong. Please post away...
Sarah


Muslim Women Redefine WAR

This anthology seeks to redefine the stereotypical definitions of "Muslim" 
women that over flow Western discourses on the Islamic Other. The veil, 
seemingly the age-old symbol of our repression and the archetypical 
rationale for our rescuing by the west, has become a transparent symbol of 
Islamic "barbarity." In this anthology we seek to move beyond such sterile 
representations and narrow debates, calling for work that engages the 
complexity that make up "Muslim" women's contemporary realities. We seek to 
construct a multiple-voiced text and many-sided vision of our lives as 
"Muslim" women by forging ourselves into new creative collectivities. In 
this process the category "Muslim" must be rendered anew through our own 
politics and cultural practices and such a rendering must reflect the many 
valences of our multiple histories because we come from all parts of the 
"Muslim" world-whether we are from Saudi Arabia, Britain, Indonesia, Sudan 
or Black Muslims in the United States. Through this anthology we seek to 
build coalitions among "Muslim" women, broadening the definitions of "war," 
and giving voice to the multiplicities of our lives. The reason why we have 
put "Muslim" in quotes throughout this call is to move away from those 
tendencies that seek to reduce us to monological stereotypes and to define 
us in one homogeneous way.

This anthology encourages submissions that might subvert these stereotypes, 
claim them and move beyond them or perhaps simply ignore them. Through 
poetry, prose and photography we wish to express the multiple voices that 
move within us and in our communities, voices that trouble the dominant 
generalizations. Submissions should speak of war broadly but of struggles 
specifically and redefine war and warring, from our bodies to the so-called 
war against terrorism, from the war against hetronormativity in our homes to 
the construction of the nation, from the war for control over our sexuality 
to the war against cancer.

For ages it seems we have been torn between two empires, one that claimed 
our freedom in rapacious capitalism and another that claimed to breaks these 
bounds by divesting us of our cultures. Both were caught in a shadow dance 
of proliferating arms. Now with the end of this so-called Cold War, the 
nuclear race over and bombs under every pillow we are at the beginning of 
another divide. Today, the US and its military is seeking to impose a (new) 
world (dis)order creating new dictionaries of control, defining, normalizing 
which person and populations, which nation and which culture can enter the 
theater of "civilization." Sometimes this is simply a matter of which look 
matches this weeks terrorist. Can we really believe what they claim 
constitutes a threat when people are being held captive without due process, 
unjustly profiled and targeted and carpet bombed, from immigrant ghettoes of 
the US to Camp X-ray at Guantanamo Bay, from Palestine to Iraq, to 
Afghanistan, to Kashmir? We are living in a period where violence is the 
rule of the day, where states sponsor and legitimizing violence seeking to 
control populations, to define a "just" death and to monopolize the right to 
kill.

As our lives become targets of manufactured "truths", and the real questions 
hidden behind corporate media sound bytes, Islam becomes the new demon to be 
exorcized. While corporate radars drain our economic and natural resources, 
and war lord militias backed by the US confiscate our lands, our cultures 
are "occidentalized"; the Pentagon has co-opted The Battle of Algiers. It 
becomes even more urgent to open our selves to the multiple forms of 
struggles-to the many becomings that our survival demands. As "Muslim" women 
we are at the forefront of struggles and war all over the globe. We are 
targets of hate crimes in the US, we are also suicide bombers in Palestine, 
"Muslim" women are taking up arms and throwing their bodies against military 
machines while offering their sons, brothers, husbands, fathers and friends 
to.

Through poetry, prose and photography this anthology seeks to bring together 
the experiences, dreams, nightmares and views of "Muslim" women in their 
daily struggle in and against wars throughout the world. As the war against 
"terrorism" unfolds, we seek submissions that address the every day of 
"Muslim" women's lives and that reconnect our resistances, spirituality and 
religion, and our memory, loss, violence, sexuality and love. Issues such as 
but not limited to:
Muslim Women and the Nation

Terrorism

Counter terrorism

Muslim women and the Nuclear Bomb or WMD

Muslim women and women of colour

Building Coalitions

The war in Kashmir, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Nepal, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Middle East, New York City,
Indonesia, Algeria, Sudan, etc. etc.

Hate crimes

Queer Muslim women and their struggles and wars

The border the body and the Muslim nation

Motherhood and war

Pregnancy and War

Military Tribunals

INS detention and deportations

The construction of the wall in Palestine

India Pakistan border

Nightmares and September 11th

The Gulf War

Media and Muslim women

Organizing and Muslim women

The veil and liberation

The Quran and war and women

Muslim women and health

Reproductive rights to the fight for better health care/facilities

Cancer and Muslim women

Submission deadline: November 15th, 2004
Please send submissions to:
Sarah Husain
Email: [email protected]
1115 Lasswade Dr.
Tallahassee, FL 32312, USA

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