Author Note

This research was supported in part by the Research Experience for Undergraduates program funded through the National Science Foundation. There are no conflicts of interest from authors toward the production of this manuscript.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Andrew S. Walters, Department of Psychological Sciences, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

A mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) design was used to explore the experiences of Muslim women moving to the United States from countries where either Islam is a dominant religion or Muslims comprise a majority of the population. Participants completed established scales measuring both psychosocial adjustment and various dimensions of spirituality. In addition, participants completed a biographic interview which assessed women’s sentiments about moving to the United States, their perceptions of treatment in traveling to or once arrived in the U.S., and how newly formed relationships were perceived to have affected participants’ intrapersonal, social, and spiritual experience. The contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954) guided the development of biographic interview questions. Participants scored similarly to population-based samples on indices of psychosocial adjustment and they reported high scores on measures assessing spiritual beliefs, strength of faith, and the Reflective Commitment subscale of the Islamic Reflections Scale. Three distinct themes emerged from interpretive analyses following in-depth interviews: 1) participants were aware of media-projected antipathy toward Muslims emerging from inflammatory rhetoric ensconced by political posturing; 2) the reception women received from the majority of American neighbors, friends, and coworkers was very positive; and 3) relationships formed with other Muslims – importantly, persons who also immigrated from other Muslim-majority countries – provided opportunities for personal reflection on the differences across cultural interpretations and practices of faith.

Keywords: Contact hypothesis, Islamic reflection, Muslim-identifying women, Qualitative-quantitative mixed design, Reflective Commitment, Spirituality

It is estimated that approximately 3.45 million Muslims (or 1.1% of the population) live in the United States (Mohamed, 2018). Muslim migration to economic powerhouse countries such as Germany and the United States began visibly increasing during the 1960s (a result, in part, of reforms to some immigration statutes; Salem, 2013), but the rate of population growth has risen in the past decade, such that, at present, estimates are that approximately 100,000 new persons identifying as Muslim are added to the U.S. population each year (Mohamed, 2018). A substantive turning point in the academic scholarship specifically including the lived experiences of Muslims and of Islamic traditions within the United States can be attributed to the sequelae of events occurring in the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (Abu-Raiya, Pargament, & Mahoney, 2011; Khan & Ecklund, 2012; O’Connor & Jahan, 2014; Shammas, 2009; Sheridan & Gillett, 2005). Amer and Bagasra (2013) document a steep slope of published research in the ten years following September 11, 2001.

Considerable research articulates the breadth of individual, social, and faith-based stressors Muslims experienced after 9/11 (e.g., Abu-Raiya et al., 2011; Abu-Ras & Suárez, 2009; Gaddis & Ghoshal, 2015; Jasperse, Ward, & Jose, 2012; Jung, 2012; Khan & Ecklund, 2012; O’Connor & Jahan, 2014; Martin, 2015; Nadal, Griffin, Hamit, Leon, Tobio, & Rivera, 2012; Sheridan, 2006). American Muslims report varying experiences of perceived discrimination, including microaggressions (Ghumman & Ryan, 2013; Hauslohner; 2017; Nadal et al., 2012; O’Connor & Jahan, 2014; Martin, 2015; Moradi & Hasan, 2004; Sheridan & Gillett, 2005; Widner & Chicoine, 2011) and a widespread, palpable experience of socially sanctioned negative attitudes (Cimino, 2005; Ghaffari & Ciftci, 2010). For at least some, perceptions of others’ mistrust, surveillance, or prejudice intersects with race (Everett et al., 2015; Halliday, 1999), gender (Davids, 2014; Hartigan, 2006/2007; Mir, 2011), and the integration of faith into identity and religious practice. For example, a large, interdisciplinary body of scholarship focuses on the intersection of identities and geography in relation to Muslim women choices regarding hijab (e.g., see Furseth, 2011; Hu, Pazaki, Al-Qubbaj, & Cutler, 2009; Mishra & Shirazi, 2010; Mouhktar & Walters, 2015; William & Vashi, 2007; Zimmerman, 2014). Religious orientation and religious identity have been found to be associated with intra-psychological processes, cognitive and emotional approaches to coping, health outcomes, and cross-faith values, such as empathy and compassion (Amed & Ezzeddine, 2009; Fisher, Ai, Aydin, Frey, & Haslam, 2010; Goldfried & Miner, 2002; Khan, Watson, & Habib, 2005; Oveis, Horberg, & Keltner, 2010; Samari, 2016).

At a national level, the dominant discourses about Muslims – both those in the United States and elsewhere – and of Islam became increasingly derogatory when, in 2015, a candidate for the United States presidency contaminated public perceptions of Muslims with actively untruthful claims. Stoking fears of otherness in a segment of voters unconcerned with displays of prejudice toward non-majority persons, averse to intergroup associations with others unlike themselves (Pettigrew, 2017), and steeped with inflections of fear and nationalism (Chacón, 2017), this candidate emboldened what may have been previously unrevealed prejudices with claims such as “Islam hates us” (Hjelmgaard, 2018). This same candidate, commanding nationally targeted television air time, claimed to have witnessed “thousands and thousands of people [Muslims] were cheering” at the collapse of the Word Trade Center Towers. It is important to note that there are no data to support this claim – that is, there are no documented witnesses or video footage – and, despite evidence to the contrary (that is, that the candidate appeared to have simply fabricated a story to an Alabama audience), these hollow claims were replicated and adopted by segments of the voting population (Carroll, 2015; Nuzzi, 2017; Sides, Tesler, & Vavreck, 2017; Waldman, 2018). The fervor to support and eventually elect a candidate whose central messages were based on creating uncertainty and fear toward persons with whom potential voters had no contact, who were postured as wholly different from “true” Americans (Major, Blodorn, & Blascovich, 2018), and who threatened the (non-stated but palpably salient) deservedness of white privilege (Giroux, 2017; Huber, 2016) granted permission among some segments of society to display emboldened bigoted behavior. Even in the recent past there have been negative consequences for Muslims as a result of the current political climate (Hauslohner, 2017; Pirani, 2018); nonetheless, Muslim Americans continue to see a path forward for themselves and their families in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2017).

These national and political events – the long-standing sequelae of 9/11 and a duplicitous but incoherent political culture – potentiate mental and behavioral health risks for Muslim Americans and Muslims non-citizens who live in the United States. Adjusting to new cultural, geographic, and educational (or employment) expectations and roles may strain psychological and emotional resources. Although the increase of Muslims in the United States is in part based on births to Muslim-identifying parents and to religious conversion, the majority of the population rate increase is attributed to migration. Thus, the stresses associated with relocating, often speaking a second (or third) language, and establishing a social support network can tax or exceed a person’s cognitive and emotional resources, thus elevating a risk of maladjustment (Adam & Ward, 2016; Goforth, Oka, Leong, & Denis, 2014; Stuart, 2014; Hassouneh & Kulwicki, 2007; also see Moffic, Peteet, Zakaria Hankir, & Awaad, 2019, for a comprehensive anthology of clinical implication of working with Muslim patients and clients). A legacy of faith-based assumptions about needing or requesting emotional or psychological help – a culturally grounded origination of mental health stigma – can also be salient to persons experiencing poor(er) mental health outcomes (Amri & Bemak, 2013; Ciftci, Jones, & Corrigan, 2013; Phillips & Lauterbach, 2017). Although the nature of Islamophobia can be conceptualized macro-sociologically (Marranci, 2004; Taras, 2012), the sequelae of experiencing individual- or institutional-based Islamophobia permeates mental and physical wellbeing (Amer & Bagasra, 2013; Samari, 2016; Samari, Alcalá, & Sharif, 2018; Yilmaz, 2016).

Although psychological resources such as self-esteem, perceptions of self-efficacy, and religiosity can buffer negative experiences (e.g., such as expressed prejudice, discriminatory treatment), these intrapersonal resources can go only so far in maintaining indices of adjustment (Ghaffari & Ciftci, 2010; Jasperse et al., 2012). It may be difficult for some persons to disentangle the cause of microaggressions, overt hostility, or active discrimination because many Muslims in the U.S. are both immigrants from non-European countries and (often) are non-white; thus, attributing an isolated cause of perceived maltreatment (e.g., “It must be because I am Muslim.”) may seem futile or at least ambiguous. In these ways, it is reasonable to speculate that at least some Muslim experience what has been coined racial battle fatigue; although much of the research in the arena of racial battle fatigue has focused on persons identifying as black/African American or Latino (Franklin, Smith, & Hung, 2014; Smith, Mustaffa, Jones, Curry, & Allen, 2016; Smith, Yosso, & Solórzano, 2006; Yosso, Smith, Ceja, & Solórzano, 2009), certainly foundational premises that characterize this set of stressors is relevant to persons of color immigrating to the United States (Blackwood, Hopkins, & Reicher, 2015; Cahill, 2010). Apart from identifying as Muslim, for many persons, the perception of racism seems reasonably plausible in attributing perceived negative treatment from others (Ciftci et al., 2013; Phillips & Lauterbach, 2017).

There is a long-standing history across professional disciplines that interrogate the cognitive processes and multiples biases that manifest themselves in prejudices toward others. Although the assumption that persons living in urban environments – where persons of different historical and cultural legacies often reside in greater numbers – display less overt prejudice toward social outgroups often is substantiated (Côté & Erickson, 2009), biases, once formed, often are difficult to change irrespective of geographic location. Persons who identify as a member of a minority group (religion, race, or immigrant status are most often studied) are themselves susceptible both to the same processes that create biases (Islam & Hewstone, 1993; Rowatt, Franklin, & Cotton, 2005) and can use compensatory mechanisms that minimize the perception of discrimination to maintain or improve positive self-schema (Ruggiero & Taylor, 1997). Results from experimental studies both expand an understanding for how biases might be increased or minimized (Everett et al., 2015) and provide opportunities for how positive attitudes and positive behavioral intentions among persons across social groups can be increased (Hutchison & Rosenthal, 2011).

At the individual level, there may be mechanisms or strategies for persons to buffer or minimize the negative effects of larger-scale prejudice – including both perceived and actualized prejudice – but these resources are variable across individuals, often finite, and can be especially taxed when a group is designated, usually arbitrarily, as a social outgroup. Over its history, documented tensions based on religion have characterized in-group/out-group relationships in the United States; nuances to this discourse might include, for example, differences between Catholics and Protestants or mainline Christian churches compared to fundamentalist and evangelical denominations. Religiously articulated biases, and social effects of those biases onto designated outgroups, is certainly not new. In the more current era, sentiments about Islam and of Muslims (or even perhaps individuals who might be perceived as Muslim) constitute a (at least politically) sanctioned outgroup. The individual and summative effects of biases against, and differential treatment of, persons identifying as Muslim are often collectively referred to as Islamophobia.

Although definitions of Islamophobia might vary, they generally coalesce around what Bleich (2011) articulates as the “indiscriminate negative attitudes or emotions directed at Islam or Muslims (p. 1593). The Islamophobia concept has been interrogated by researchers across a number of disciplines. Choma, Haji, Hodson, and Hoffarth (2016) reported, from three small samples of Christian-identifying college students, that “intergroup disgust sensitivity” – that is, persons’ dispositional responses of disgust or revulsion to outgroups – “robustly” predicted Islamophobia (p. 50), while Lopes and Jaspal (2015) found across two experiments that anti-Muslim prejudice was predicted by trait paranoia. Persons who score higher on measures of Islamophobia have been found to endorse negative stereotypes of Muslims (Sides & Gross, 2013) and to expect Muslims to forfeit their native culture (Kunst, Sadeghi, Tahir, Sam, & Thomsen, 2016). Lajevardi and Oskooii (2018) have shown that the more current, derogatory prejudices against Muslims show a parallel foundation to what they call “old-fashioned racism” (p.114); over time and circumstance, outgroups may change but the undercurrent processes in establishing ingroups and outgroups operate similarly. And while Merino (2010) found that those Americans who believe the United States is a Christian nation extend less attitudinal support for the inclusion of Hindus and Muslims into community life, he also found that interpersonal contact with Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims – as might be supported by the contact hypothesis – is related to favorable attitudes in relation to religious diversity and an increased tolerance for the inclusion of a mosque in one’s local community. Thus, although components of both the enactment of Islamophobia and in experiencing the effects of Islamophobia may share similarities with other socially or culturally othered outgroups, easy access to some television programming or online platforms incontrovertibly document the presence of Islamophobia in multiple spheres of contemporary society in the United States and other industrialized countries.

The contact hypothesis is an enormously rich theoretical lens through which to conceptualize and investigate bias, prejudice, and discrimination. Historically, the contact hypothesis emerged from a chapter of Allport’s paradigm-shifting classic work The Nature of Prejudice (1954). This theoretical framework has been used by researchers, interventionists, educators, and practitioners, has been the basis of literally hundreds[1] of empirical studies, and is still seen as a solid theoretical tool nearly 70 years after its inception (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2005). The original version of the contact hypothesis speculated that the probability for positive outcomes (such as increased favorable attitudes toward or less prejudice about minorities) increased if members of one group (often referred to as an ingroup) had contact with the minority group (often referred to as the outgroup). Positive outcomes are often believed to be maximized if a number of conditions are met (i.e., shared goals, contact occurs in a context where members have equal status). Early review articles consistently found that, when the favorable conditions were met – in research, in practice, in applied contexts such as neighborhoods or persons from different countries (even countries in conflict with one another) – reductions in prejudice in fact occurred (Amir, 1969).

Early research guided by the contact hypothesis was focused on race relations (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2005). Over time, and with literally hundreds of studies completed, the contact hypothesis has been a foundational lens to study dozens of ingroup/outgroup relations. Research study methodologies have included variations of ethnography, in-person interventions using qualitative methods such as focus groups, and experimental designs. Experimental studies document the powerful influences of in-group bias across conditions (Ben-Ner, McCall, Stephane, & Wang, 2009) but also show that disclosure – what stems from emerging relationships with outgroup members – reduces ingroup bias (Ensari & Miller, 2002). More recent research has shown that secondary or even “imagined intergroup contact” results in positive outcomes (Crisp & Turner, 2009, p. 231; Pettigrew, 2009) and that “mundane” activities with others (different from self) should be seen as agents of personal attitude and prejudice reduction (Dixon, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2005, p. 707). At the broadest conceptual level, primary goals of the contact hypothesis are to move persons beyond a “Us - Them” scheme to a “We” scheme (Gaertner, Dovidio, & Bachman, 1996), to understand the individual processes that facilitate – or resist – change, to maximize intergroup relations (e.g., see Hutchison & Rosenthal, 2011; Henry & Hardin, 2006; Pettigrew, Christ, Wagner, & Stellmacher, 2007), and to explore the multiple dynamics that characterize the persons from groups who have less perceived power or worth (Dixon, Tropp, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2010).

Goals of the Current Study

In the current study, we used core tenets of the contact hypothesis to explore Muslim women’s connection between contact with others, having once arrived and settled into a new country, and their perceived wellbeing. We specifically included women who moved to the United States after having lived in a country where Islam is a dominant religion or where Muslims constitute a majority of the population. This approach provided to us the unique ability to glean the perspectives of women who, in their native countries, were members of a dominant group (i.e., in terms of the contact hypothesis, were among the ingroup) and, in moving to the United States where Islam is not a dominant religion, then became a member of a minority group (i.e., an outgroup). This purposive sample allowed us to explore how contact with others was related to women’s perceptions of social, community, and work relationships. The contact hypothesis is predicated on the belief that, in interacting with persons who are different from persons in someone’s prior community or social network, assumptions about perceived differences across groups can be challenged and beliefs about fundamental differences can be minimized or extinguished (that is, moving from an Us-Them to a We orientation). Thus, we sought to explore how women perceived the tenuous dynamic of how building or co-creating relationships in a new country.

We used a qualitative-quantitative mixed-design (Creswell, 2014), and, in doing so, we were able to record participants’ experience both in terms of established measures of psychosocial adjustment as well as women’s personal narratives. This design allowed us to explore the ways in which women could narrate the juxtaposition of having lived most of her life in an area where her religion – and often her ethnicity – was in the majority and where, in a new country the same religion is far less common and frequently is enshrouded with fearmongering and falsehoods. Using women’s biographic narratives, we explored how Muslim women perceived, interpreted, and adapted to a substantially different cultural living context as they connected with persons in new and vastly different geographical and cultural environment.

Method

Results

One reason to use a mixed design is capture different domains of persons’ experiences. For example, in some studies, surveys – which assess attitudes or values – certainly could be asked via a one-on-one interview, but respondents’ survey-oriented data are often seen as more complete and internally valid if responses can be recorded privately (Creswell, 2014). On the other hand, narrative experience – life stories or the turning points that characterize a life event, for example – are often benefitted by using a different methodology, such as an interview. Multiple methods – such as those in a qualitative-quantitative design – allow one type of data to inform another (e.g., a score on a scale measuring depression can be contextualized with an interview that asks someone to speak to what depression feels like). In this study, the sample size met the threshold of data saturation (Charmaz, 2014; Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Strauss & Corbin, 1990). For the qualitative data, our sample size was more than adequate. For the quantitative data, the sample size is small and this precluded a number of statistical analyses. Instead, we see the value of our quantitative data as providing a richer characterization of our participants’ experiences and in complementing their narratives.

Discussion

This study, using purposive sampling, explored the experiences of Muslim women who had moved to the United States. Although women immigrated from a variety of countries, a common feature across their home countries was that Islam is a dominant religion. Thus, the women in our study moved from a country where their religion is prominent to a country where the same religion is far less common and is often misunderstood or politically maligned by cultural sources of power. About two-thirds of the women in our sample were married. Single women migrated to the United States to matriculate into college, or graduate or professional training programs. Among the married women, some accompanied husbands as they began university programs, and in other couples both husbands and wives matriculated into the university. Participants knew of media-promulgated discourses of caution blanketed to minorities traveling to the U.S. That is, although women in our study did not report that they experienced sustained negative treatment which they believed stemmed from Islamophobia, that is not to say the women were uninformed about the ways in which Islamophobia works outside of their home countries. Some women, for example, were cautioned by family about traveling to a country where sentiments against Islam are prevalent (i.e., institutional or social approval for Islamophobia); and some women reported hearing about, witnessing, or experiencing differential treatment in airports which they attributed to others’ designation of them as Muslim. But, on the whole, women still looked forward to the opportunities for themselves, their families, and the professional training that they would find in the U.S.

Although formalized hypothesis testing, at least those as understood within positivistic epistemologies, usually are not used in qualitatively based studies, this study relied on basic tenets of the classic contact hypothesis. We suspected that women, living in their native countries, would be keenly aware of the cultural and political tropes dispersed by powerful media complexes in U.S. about and against both Islam as an Abrahamic religion and individual Muslims. But if so, once arriving in a new location where they knew no one, women (or women and their husbands) would be tasked with developing new relationships: with neighbors, with other students or colleagues, and with persons with whom they might share fellowship. At the most basic level, the contact hypothesis posits intergroup relations can be improved when persons from disparate histories interact with one another.

During their interviews, all informants recognized that the opportunity to move to the United States – either as they or their spouses pursued higher education – privileged their futures in ways that likely would not have been possible otherwise. Consistent with the contact hypothesis, we found that women perceived moving to a small city (where very few other Muslims lived) propelled women and their husbands to meet (non-Muslim) Americans and to interact with them. Participants reported perceiving that, as they got to know their neighbors and university peers/coworkers, Americans were genuinely interested in learning about their histories and generous in including them into social groups. As they became more involved and invested in these relationships, respondents recognized that they benefitted from a more expansive social community. For example, participants whose children interacted with other children (e.g., at preschool) valued seeing children interact and play together without religious- or ethnic-based prejudices. At least for the women in our study – those who might be referred to as the outgroup in terms of ingroup-outgroup relations – social contact was seen as destabilizing and ultimately minimizing the preconceived assumptions participants reported they once believed about how Americans would feel about and treat them. Although there were some who assumed they would eventually return to home country or a country where Islam is a primary religion, all participants perceived that their residency in the U.S. had given them a promising opportunity to see themselves in broader and more inclusive ways.

Because they trusted the bidirectional relationships they built with others, participants narrated ways in which they hoped they could reciprocate kindness and courtesy in the sharing of their cultural histories. Once living in the U.S., a few women reported having heard of negative comments directed at other Muslims. But no respondents perceived that they were actively mistreated because of their religion and, to the contrary, the far majority of women reported perceiving their American neighbors and friends were interested in learning from them about their histories: familial, religious, and cultural. Only one woman in our sample reported an experience that she saw as discriminatory, but she stated repeatedly she thought this was attributable to her race, not her religion. Participants hoped that, through new relationships with Americans, they could serve, inadvertently, as ambassadors of how Muslims live values of peace and concern for their community. As one informant said, “It is possible to change their mind [stereotypes about Islam and practicing Muslims]. Because, for example, when they in their daily lives live with us, they see that we are peaceful.”

In addition to the relationships that women built and maintained with Americans, they also forged relationships with other Muslims in their new community. To these women, meeting and interacting with Muslims who themselves were from other countries was perceived as a transformative opportunity. It was through these relationships that most participants interacted firsthand with other Muslims not from their home country; as a result, this was the first time they learned from others how Islam is anchored and practiced in other countries. It was from these relationships that participants learned what may have been presented to them as a religious doctrine was, rather, a cultural tradition. Interacting with Muslims from other countries – countries with various traditions, potentially disparate governmental structures – expanded their schemes for additional ways in which they could conceptualize and enact Islam into their lives. Opportunities to hear and learn about other customs, to reflect on the historical legacies of customs from one’s home country, and (for some) dedicated academic course-based learning, positioned participants to dedicate time and reflection into solidifying how each wanted to incorporate existing and new practices of faith in her life. They perceived their experiences of moving to the U.S., developing relationships with (non-Muslim) Americans and Muslims from other countries – as they interacted with one another – as conduits to expand themselves intrapersonally and in terms of their faith. The women in the current study perceived that the confluence of several life events led them to reflect on their faith and religious orthodoxy in ways that they had not expected. Participants reported learning about Islam in ways that they had not learned in their home countries, and in challenging themselves to be open to the interpretations of others – including accepting that others’ customs and ideologies were valid – ultimately grounded their faith in new and more expansive ways.

There are strengths and limitations associated with all studies. The current study used a mixed design to capture a fuller experience in our sample than either a qualitative or quantitative method may have done alone. In relation to core questions we explored through biographic interviews, we reached data saturation (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Hennink et al., 2015) but we had hoped for a sample of 15-16. Although 13 women participated in the study, interpretive analyses were interrogated on the narratives of 12 women. The audio files from one participant, even with two high-end microphones, were so quiet that a transcript could not be created from that interview. Had we been able to include even a few more participants, it may have been possible to perform a constant comparative analysis of women from the same region or country. In addition, the participants in this study could all both write and speak English; some had taken years of English as part of formal schooling in their home countries. Thus, it is possible the sample participants may be different in some ways than women who are less proficient in English or may have felt inhibited participating in the study. On the other hand, we have no evidence that there was any systematic reason for women to have opted out of participation. In this study, Muslim women reported positive experiences living in a new country. During interviews, a majority of participants reported that they knew of the negative treatment some immigrants and some Muslim immigrants had received once having moved to the United States, but perhaps a more compelling result from the women in our study was that they reported very few negative experiences, none including anything they identified as severe. On the other hand, a different sample of participants, including women or men, who felt they had experienced effects of Islamophobia, may have yielded a different perspective on living in a new country.

We recognize the sample size does not lend itself to inferential statistical procedures, especially if this were a quantitatively based study with a goal of testing differences between groups; however, we believe that the descriptive data provided from established scales provides an important addition in characterizing our sample’s attitudes and belief systems. The biographic data shared by the women in this study provided contextually rich data, narrative data that many large-scale studies using only quantitative measures would be less likely to interrogate. We make no claim the narratives reported by these women, nor our interpretive analyses, characterize all or even most Muslim women. Still, it is possible that core outcomes of our interpretive data (e.g., how new relationships facilitate perceptions of wellbeing and social connectedness) could be useful to university or employment personnel as they work to maximize international students’ transitions to a new community.

Concluding Thoughts

Allport’s theoretically rich contact hypothesis suggests individuals or groups with different, often orthogonal, social groupings can learn to minimize their differences if they have positive contact with one another (1954). In the current study, Muslim women who had recently moved to the United States completed a series of established scales and participated in a biographic interview. Using reliable measures, we found that women in this sample scored similarly to the population on measures of psychosocial adjustment, scored high on various measures of spirituality, and reported that, on the whole, participants did not perceive that they had experienced discrimination or poor treatment because of their religion. Interpretive analyses based on individual interviews complemented the contact hypothesis in a number of ways. First, participants reported that they perceived warm, welcoming, and kind-hearted treatment from the persons they met in their new community; this was, in fact, contrary to many messages they had received in their home countries prior to departing those countries en route to the U.S. Second, participants came to learn that many countries – the United States as well as their home country – propagandize sweeping narratives against others that are sometimes, if not often, untrue. The women in this study, almost without exception, perceived the contact with Americans as not only contradictory to the global messaging about American immigration and opinions about Muslims, but was far more in-line with earlier, more savory, tropes about American generosity. And finally, participants’ contact with Muslims who they met in America – importantly, Muslims from countries with varying cultural traditions as related to Islam – served to expand and enrich women’s personal engagement with spirituality.

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Footnotes

1. As of 2001, over 500 studies were based off of Allport’s classic theoretical model (DeAngelis, 2001).

2. All but one participant self-identified as a woman of color. This designation may be important in that the community in which the study occurred is largely white and the cost of living is proportionately high relative to the overall state. Demographic data show that 73% of the population is white, 12% Native American (which is 12 times the national average for similar communities), 2% black/African American, 2% Asian/Asian American, 7% other, and 4% categorized as more than 1 race. The median income is $58,000, the median rent $1138.00 and the 5-room home price $297.00. Geographical and demographic characteristics actuate new social contact with existing members of a community, facilitating new relationships in line with the contact hypothesis.

3. All interviews were conducted by the second author who, at the beginning of each in-person interview, disclosed to participants from where in the Middle East her family had migrated and that she self-identifies as Muslim.