Oh, and don’t forget the ubiquitous Minions (Bonus: an original comic about Muslim Minions):
These could only have been created by Muslims who have been deeply immersed in Western culture and still hold strong to their faith˳ They are literate in both the language and expectations of their religion and the famous people and characters that surround them˳
They change the world to suit themselves˳ More conservative Muslims who believe in the traditional Islamic way of life tend to avoid the influences of western culture, but those in touch with Western culture have the creativity to imagine how both can work together in harmony˳ With just a tweak in Photoshop, they can convert the entire cast of Furious 7 or edit Aladdin and Jasmine’s loving relationship into a halal one˳ These two worlds might be at odds with each other, but they can just make it work˳
Double Violation
But does it work? The audience for these memes is a cross-section of people who care about being good Muslims but also appreciate pop culture˳ If you stand on any side of that demographic, they might feel very strange to you˳ If you’re more of a conservative Muslim you might find offense to associating Islam with these otherwise problematic references˳ You can pretend Leo DiCaprio is Muslim, but can you really forget his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street? If you’re not very religious or non-Muslim, it all just seems like a perverse appropriation of pop culture to fit the Islamic ideal˳ Is it okay to draw a hijab over a Disney princess? On either side something just doesn’t seem right˳
The benign violation theory may explain why it feels so uncanny˳ To reiterate the theory, for a situation to be humorous, it must be benign and violate expectations˳ The above memes certainly violate the expectation that pop culture and Islam don’t or shouldn’t mix together˳ But are they benign? If you’re not a member of that small demographic you might be able to empathize with them anyway and find the humor˳ But you might also empathize with the other side of that demographic and find it an affront to religion and pop culture˳ It feels like a double violation˳
And that’s okay
This subsection of the Muslim community is in a unique position of cultural dissonance˳ A great example is the second-generation immigrants in American Muslim communities˳ In Children of Immigration, Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco describe the three different types of social identities that immigrant children adopt:
…“ethnic flight” (abandoning their own ethnic group and mimicking the dominant group), “adversarial identities” (constructing identity in opposition to the mainstream culture and its institutions), and “transcultural [bicultural] identities” (developing competence to function in both cultures)˳
These particular Muslim immigrants likely find themselves falling into the latter category with “transcultural identities˳” It’s not an easy thing to deal with, as both cultural identities will inevitably clash with one another˳ These weird memes are just a symptom of that˳ They say “I’m hip enough to hang out with, but give me a sec I gotta pray Asr first˳”
That isn’t to say that Muslim-Americans are the only affected group˳ Western culture is omnipresent throughout the world, and Muslim countries are no exception˳
The Muslim community hasn’t been the most fortunate when it comes to its public image in the media˳ These memes reveal a more humorous side of young Muslims that many non-Muslims may not have ever seen before˳ They show that cultural barriers are much more fluid than we think they are, and that the Internet can bring together Muslims just as well as Facebook moms˳
Perhaps the initial uncanny feeling we get is just a gut realization that Muslims are as similar to non-Muslims as they are different˳
