ATLANTA: Around September 11, 2001, not long after she founded the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta, Soumaya Khalifa heard from a group whose name sounded like " Bakers Club." It wanted a presentation.
The address was unfamiliar, but she went anyway. The group turned out to be the Bickerers Club, whose members love to argue. Islam was their topic du jour and their venue was a tavern. Khalifa laughed, and made the best of it.
Khalifa, born in Egypt and raised in Texas, wears a head scarf but also juggles, comfortably, the demands of American suburbia: crowded schedule, minivan and all. She is one of a type now found in most US cities: vocal Muslim women wary of predominantly male leadership of their community and weary of suspicions of non-Muslims about Islam.
These women have achieved a level of success and visibility unmatched elsewhere. They say they are molded by the freedoms of the United States and by the intellectual ferment stirred when American-born and immigrant Muslims mix.
"What we're seeing now in America is what has been sort of a quiet or informal empowerment of women," said Shireen Zaman, director of Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, founded after 2001 attacks to provide research on American Muslims. "In many of our home countries, socially or politically it would've been harder for Muslim women to take a leadership role. It's actually quite empowering to be Muslim in America."
Tayyibah Taylor is a convert of Caribbean descent in Atlanta who founded a glossy magazine, Azizah, to celebrate Muslim women of achievement. "I didn't see Islam as taking my freedoms as a woman," said Taylor, who is 57 and studied the Koran in Jidda for six years. "It really opened up worlds for me."
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