WE ARE BIRDS OF THE SAME FEATHER
After writing a short tribute to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a friend of mine asked, “What does Ruth Ginsburg have in common with Muslim women?”
I could feel my mood change rather rapidly. The question immediately made me feel annoyed. For a brief moment, I felt if my friend had been even slightly more attentive in the last few years, her question could not possibly be asked. Justice Ginsburg had faced all kinds of discrimination throughout her life. As a Muslim in American society, my challenges have been undeniable. As a black woman, Muslim institutions still do not fully understand how to communicate nor completely grasp the black voice; that challenge, too, is undeniable.
The lives of women, be they Muslim, Jewish, Athiest or Buddhist, are studied, and their personalities are examined and dissected, often with enormous self-confidence, by men with uncelebrated attributes, who have no right to decide the fate of a woman’s body, nor do women whose self-portrait depicts her own person.
My first inclination was to describe Justice Ginsburg as being a bridge between women for supporting women’s equality. A bridge, however, was not the most fitting. A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle, like a water or road body, without closing the way underneath. Bridges are constructed to provide passage over obstacles, usually something that is otherwise difficult or impossible to cross.
She was, without any doubt in my mind, a powerful motivator. Motivation has been considered one of the most fundamental reasons that inspire a person to move forward and achieve a common goal. It was in RBG that activists formed coalitions seeking to further the civil human rights and achieve total freedom and justice for their peers, despite race, religion, or choice.
A woman is going to have to make sacrifices in multiple ways in order to obtain the kind of equitable rights and physical autonomy that she is correctly due in a country that defines itself as a democracy. Women are so much more than the sum of our parts. We are part of a nation in which justice must be done. Single mothers in this country work year after year and watch their male co-workers receive more money and promotions. She hears the president of her company speak about employees’ advancements. But what can that mean to her? Her children cannot experience the benefits of her co-worker’s promotion.
The announcement of the Supreme Court Justice’s passing met me with a sense of loss and defeat I have rarely felt before. In part, it was because I simply would miss one of the most valued cheerleaders of my lifetime. She was sensitive not just to a woman’s right to chose but to a woman’s right to have control over her body. This was a jurist who gave a lifetime to taking womanhood seriously and spoke to all women in her court decisions, at times that counted, in a voice that made us fearless instead more fearful. Yet also it was because the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States of America in Washington D.C. may not belong to women now so much as it has seemed to at other times, but it is time to move past the moment. Those who are prepared to continue in the struggle for equal pay. employment mobility, ending gender discrimination, ensure protection against sexual assault for women in the motion picture industry or in a detention center, have to be counted on to pull up their “big girl pants” and use their vast intellectual and physical tools without an ounce of indifference, to look upon the discrimination of their sisters in a defensive state of mind.
We are birds of the same feather with the potential to soar. “The bird ventures to break out of the shell, then the shell breaks open and the bird can fly openly. This is the simplest principle of success. You dream, you dare and you fly.”
Khalilah Sabra (@khalilahsabra) // Muslim Americans For Social Justice & Diversity // BIA Accredited Representative (Immigration Law) // www.masijc.org
