Tahirah Amatul-Wadud

This story is part of a new project by writer Jenny Bender and artist Amanda Herman, who have teamed up to interview and photograph Muslims in the Valley. The full exhibition, which features 10-15 photographs and interviews, opens Nov. 11 at Northampton City Hall, as part of Arts Night Out, and will remain on display for 30 days.

Tahirah Amatul-Wadud‘s parents converted to Islam when she was three years old. She now lives in Springfield with her husband and seven children. She has a law practice based in Chicopee, where she advocates for individuals under religious persecution.

“I’m proud of myself as a Muslim. I want my children to be proud of themselves as Muslims. But I want them to really understand what that means. What their obligations and rights are — as Muslims and as Americans and as global world citizens. For most of my life, being Muslim was nothing more than being tall or a girl or a mother. But now I’m looking at being Muslim from a different lens. Some people don’t feel the need to justify their existence. But my right to be is under attack. It’s forced me to confront a lot of things about being Muslim, including making sure I know the tenets of my faith inside and out. Not just what I was raised to believe or learned vicariously, but, “What do I know? What do I need to learn more about in order to appreciate being in this struggle for this identity? Why would people find the need to challenge my existence? How do I help other Muslims survive being under attack? I want people to see me as a human but to also see that my story is probably not that much different than theirs.”