“Doing anything that could potentially taint your reputation, whether it be something as simple as dating or moving out of the house, sometimes seems not even worth it,” says Lena (not her real name), a 26-year-old in Brooklyn. “Yes you can be a visionary or trailblazer and try to reconcile Muslim traditions with Western culture. But at what cost? Girls with their own apartments and jobs want to get married too.”
“You grow up these very conservative households and you’re told from birth on, ‘You’re not allowed to date, you’re not allowed to date, you’re not allowed to date,’” says Aizzah Fatima, an playwright whose one-woman show Dirty Paki Lingerie tackled the stereotype of Muslim women in America. “Now you’re like 23 or 24, and your parents are like, ‘Hey, what’s wrong with you? Why can’t you find a guy?’”
I’m told that these conferences have become so popular (and so sexually charged) because it’s like a Spring Break for Muslims. There’s a sea of new of faces, the majority of which you’ll never see again. The pressure is on to find someone now, amplified by the bleak dating scene back home. When you’re Muslim, you can’t just go to a different bar every night.
This is so fascinating.
