Expanded Definition
Centering the most marginalized means redistributing power: There isn’t just one definition of “most impacted Muslims.” By centering the most impacted Muslims, we consider privilege and power in every space we are a part of and consider whose lived experiences and situated knowledge are being centered. We strive to redistribute that power, so that the people who are closest to the problem, and are thus the closest to the solution, can drive the solutions.
Centering the most marginalized means clarifying the root causes: We define the most impacted Muslims through our ongoing quantitative and qualitative data-gathering. We center the lived experiences and situated knowledge of our communities, drawing on works of Black Feminist thought such as the Combahee River Collective and Kimberlé Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality.
- When we say the “most impacted Muslims,” we are acknowledging Muslims have different lived experiences. We are centering those who live at the intersection of violence, including but not limited to state/police/military violence, gendered violence, structural racism including anti-Blackness, ableism, class oppression, and anti-Shi’ism.
- Centering the most impacted guides every arm of our work, including health education, political education, survivor advocacy, workshops, and more. It is a compass we use to guide our work, and the blueprint for how we build, strengthen, and sustain communities of care.
Centering the most marginalized means a rejection of perfectionism and embracing humility when centering the most marginalized. It is our mission and goal to center the most impacted: and as our team expands, we will continue to deepen our work. Striving to serve the most impacted includes coalition-building, being in community, and relationship building. In practice, centering the most marginalized means being aware of how power and privilege show up in virtual and physical spaces and considering questions like:
- What lived experiences are represented? Which voices are we missing?
- Are these spaces and conversations accessible [widely defined] to our communities? This includes thinking about trauma-informed practices, childcare, and physical abilities.
- What is being valued in this space? How are our practices disrupting white supremacy culture?
Centering the most marginalized re-affirms that there are some Muslims that have always resisted oppression, even if that is by the simple act of existing. As the Combahee River Collective writes, “Black women have always embodied, if only in their physical manifestation, an adversary stance to white male rule and have actively resisted its inroads upon them and their communities in both dramatic and subtle ways.” We continuously strive to honor this legacy of embodied resilience and continued work of resistance.