Meet Karim
Interviewed by Johns Hopkins University students supervised by Dr. Homayra Ziad.
Interviewers: Sylvain Raj, Nafisa Haque, Marcos Hernandez, Sela Marin
About the Interview
Karim Amin has lived and worked in West Baltimore his whole life. He is proud and grateful to be in service to his community through various roles and projects, including arts programming, youth education, multimedia storytelling, and mutual-aid service. Karim observes that his childhood masjid community was a place of safety and support for himself and others growing up. Karim learns that service is a practice of faith. His relief service across the US and in Haiti has helped him connect with God, others, and the overlapping intersections of systemic violence.
Karim identifies self-care as a challenge in a line of work where people are often pulled to self-sacrifice. Karim recognizes self-care as a part of faith. Karim encounters frustration with service organizations which reproduce harmful power disparities between themselves and the people they serve at the expense of transformative change. Going forward, Karim hopes that his community will lean into art and creativity to tell their own stories. He imagines that reclaiming their own stories is a realization of justice.
Karim discusses the relationship between faith and service. Karim brings up an important reminder about self-care and the potential in faith to guide people to self-care. This also brings up the impact of the burden of addressing systems of violence on well-being. Karim recalls moments of interpersonal Islamophobia in the aftermath of 9/11 and how people in his community showed up for each other. Karim touches on a rift between Black and non-black Muslim communities and feelings of exclusion, highlighting the way Islamophobia/racism may manifest itself through the boundaries of some Muslim communities. Karim discusses the way some service or community efforts may reproduce harm, which ties in with institutional Islamophobia. Karim draws attention to the power of art and creative storytelling to heal as a community and take self-ownership of stories.
Guiding Questions
Karim discusses his frustration with some service and community organizations which reproduce harmful power relations with the communities they serve. Why is it important to empower people to define their own vision for the future and self-organize for that future?
How can faith and faith communities show up in communities responding to multiple areas of systemic violence, such as poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and mental health issues??
“I remember going in and both of my sisters wore their hijabs at the time. And we went into Red Lobster and it seems so minor. But I, you know, everybody’s eating and we’re trying to like be joyous because you know… we… you know it’s still her birthday. She was just turning what? Fifteen.
So, we in there.
And we haven’t… we tried to order our food. The lady comes over and her hand as she’s ordering is like this [trembles hand].
So, I’m just like, was she sick? Like is something going on?
So she’s, “uh uh uh”. We’re like, “okay, we just want to order our food.”
So, she starts turning red. Starts shaking and leaves. So again, my mind is, “is she okay, like?” So, maybe about 20 minutes later, she doesn’t show back up.
So we’re like, “That’s weird.” We’re at a restaurant 20 minutes later. You know what I’m saying? We didn’t get anything to drink. We didn’t get nothing. So, like we talked to the to the to the manager and was like, “um what’s going on?”
“Well…” Went back, tried to get her. They were like, “well, um sorry. We need to say something to you. You know, it may not sound great, but you got to understand what’s going on in the world.” And I said, “what do I gotta understand?”
She was like, “well, um since 9/11…”
I said, “9/11?”
I said, “yeah, you mean the destruction?” I said, “yeah everybody sad about that.”
“Well, because you know, y’all Muslim… Well I mean, she got the scarf on. It’s nothing against you. You know, we talked to our staff but you know because you got the scarf on, she feels like y’all like attack the country. Or she can’t serve a Muslim because, you know, it scares her. Y’all scaring her by having a scarf on.”
And I said, “Wait, wait, wait, what?” Like I said, I was used to… I’ve gone through racism. But to have it be that like religious xenophobia was like, wow. Like this is really happening right now. So, she doesn’t want to serve you. And with almost like feeling sympathetic for her.
Not for her racist feelings or xenophobic feelings but we’re sorry for her and we should feel sorry for her because she feels that way after the 9/11. And it’s only four days afterwards. And then I was like, “so what?” I was like, “yo yo so, so...”
And I was asking these questions almost facetiously. I was like, “so did she know somebody? Like somebody look...?”
“No well she’s shook off of 911.” I said, “so, she’s not going to serve us because we’re Black and Muslim, because she’s upset about 9/11.” ”
“I would say as far as other organizing, there was an interest in local organizing where I have... we had people that were from other communities that would call us.
Meaning, when I say us like the brothers and sisters that the... I would call them African American masjids, but masjids of certain African American neighborhoods.
And were asking us to come out and support them.
And it was an... it’s interesting because the support was like this... Like some people went out you know, provided security. There were discussions around it at communities. Because unfortunately a lot of Muslim sisters were getting attacked, period.
So, it didn’t matter if you’re Black, Somali... I mean African American Black, Somali, Ethiopian, Indian, Pakistani, Sikh. Um you didn’t have to be Muslim. People were getting attacked.
So, it was a lot around securing this... you know, sisters and brothers. People walking together. People trying to be with each other.
Um, but it was an interesting backlash too from the African American community because we were like, wow, like all of y’all are organizing and now you’re calling us to be Muslim together.
Whereas before we were the Black Muslims or the inner-city Muslims, that they would, you know, poke fun at or not want to interact with us or we would always be at odds with each other and different reasons.
But now after 9/11, you want us to come and protect you.
So that was... the organizing really showed, I think too, a rift between the African American [Muslim] community, uh Muslim community, and immigrant communities. Definitely. ”
“ I would say my vision would be to use the arts, um, whatever medium that may be, to express ourselves, to share our story.
I think sometimes we can, especially in faith communities... We get so caught into like words and dogma, that I think if we just showed ourselves, just told our story, just make that movie that you want to see.
Don’t say, “why don’t they show more movies with Muslims?” Just make it.
If you want to model, like “why don’t they have Muslim mo...?” Model. Like nobody stopping you. You know, especially now with social media and photography. Yo, just do it.
So, I really want... my vision would be to see us tell our story more, and I think justice, sometimes can come through those... just having those incredible images.”