Muslim American Women in Sports: Constraints, Challenges, and Empowerment

• In Event: Reconceptualizing Sport: From International Solidarity to Multicultural Imperialism

Abstract

There is a lack of scholarship on sporting culture for Muslim American women. In the United States, Muslim institutions, including mosques and community centers, encourage young men to play sports in order to assimilate to American culture by providing sporting spaces on their premise (Thangaraj, 2015). Young Muslim women are often explicitly excluded from these spaces, left to pursue sports on their own time. These young Muslim American women use their bodies in sports to claim power in different spaces to challenge racializations and gendered stereotypes tied to Muslim bodies and gendered expectations within the Muslim communities.

Presenter

• Sara Seweid, City College of New York