Loud Silence, Secret Support: Funding US Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence

Abstract

Drawing on materials and moments from ethnographic research between 2009 and 2019, this article focuses on the many challenges that US Muslim advocates and service providers face in having to raise funds for their important work against domestic violence. It illustrates and critiques that effective advocacy work against domestic abuse faces a plethora of challenges that, brought together, reinforce the trauma of silence around domestic violence. In conversation with the author’s 2019 monograph, Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence, this article considers gendered anti-Muslim hostility in US society, Muslim reticence to consider critiques of Muslim gender norms and practices, as well as an emphasis on visible philanthropy as such challenges and explores how Muslim anti-DV advocates respond to them.