234 - Arij Mikati - Reclaiming Our Histories, Reimagining Our Futures By Amplifying Muslim Voices

Jan 23

“Nothing makes me more hopeful than people who are just willing to change their minds when they have new information.” - Arij Mikati

Even if you aren’t a fan of Hollywood films from the 1980s through the early 2000s, chances are you can name the ethnicity of the “baddie” in 99.9% of them. Sure, my math might be a bit fuzzy––H’wood has a legacy of demonizing all brown-skinned folks––but an overwhelming number of screen villains during this period were either vaguely or expressly rendered as Muslim.

Decades of prejudicial portrayals are no match for Arij Mikati, the managing director of Culture Change at Pillars Fund. She designs and leads programming that challenges damaging narratives about Muslims in the U.S. and amplifies Muslim voices in artistic spaces. What struck me most about this episode is the joy that Arij and Anne infused into a conversation that could’ve (rightly) focused only on pain and anger.

Arij chooses to focus on hope, but her shift in mindset took time to nurture. She came of age as an American Muslim girl in the shadow of 9/11. While her religion seeded hope for the future, the messages from popular media overwhelmingly forced Muslims to operate in defense mode. Arij harbored a lot of shame as a result. “There's a lot of really amazing and beautiful things that I want people to know about our community,” she explains, “and just telling them about what we're not really prevented me from owning my own narrative.”

Culture Change uses storytelling to flip the script, celebrating the myriad identities that make up the Muslim community. The films championed are likewise complex and tap into universally enjoyable genres: coming-of-age, sci-fi, comedy, etc. “We’re not interested in PSA after-school specials about how great Muslims are. That's not what we do,” clarifies Arij. “To be super clear, we're extremely interested in high art, high taste, and good stories that also just happen to tell the truth about us.” A Muslim western? Why not?!

“The work I do is first and foremost for me,” says Arij, “the little girl in me who wishes she had an alternative to take as an example of how I could choose to define myself, how I could choose to tell my story.”

Joy and representation matter!

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RECOMMENDED EPISODE

CWH112: Derrick Dawson - Dismantling Racism

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

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Culture Change At Pillars Fund

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Arij Mikati is the Managing Director of Culture Change at Pillars Fund, where she designs and leads programming that challenges damaging narratives about Muslims in the U.S. and amplifies Muslim voices in artistic spaces. Her storytelling work seeks to change the lens through which Muslim stories are told to one that is authentic, complex, and honest.

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