(RNS2-APRIL25) Director Michael Apted, seen here directing the film “Amazing Grace,” has
directed “49 UP” a new installment of a documentary series that follows a group of Britons through
their lives. Apted’s documentary is due to be broadcast on PBS this fall. For use with RNS-10-
MINUTES, transmitted April 25, 2007. Religion News Service photo.

(UNDATED) Like other American Muslim teenagers, Yasmine Hafiz grew up in Arizona trying to balance secular and religious cultures that seemed increasingly in conflict after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Tired of constantly trying to clear up confusions and combat discrimination, she, her mother Dilara and her younger brother Imran wrote “The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook,” a progressive overview of Islam and its policies on dating, drinking, terrorism and other topics.

Self-published in 2007, the slim volume sold more than 3,500 copies; Simon & Schuster published a second edition this year with two additional chapters. Hafiz, 18, is now a freshman at Yale University.

Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What prompted you to write this book?

A: We were always practicing Muslims, but I had never felt like it was a negative thing until after 9/11. My brother was in fourth grade at the time and another little kid accused him of being in the Taliban. There was a lot of ignorance and misinformation.

We were in a bookstore and I was looking in the teen nonfiction section and saw a lot of really nice resources for Christians teens, Jewish teens, even one for Wiccan teens, but there wasn’t one for Muslims.

Q: How did you, your brother and your mother write this book?

A: We sent out surveys to Muslims all over the country and then it took a couple of years to write it. My brother and I focused on the fun aspect, like the quizzes and the lists, and my mom would do more of the research. My mom would sometimes try to use words like groovy, but we stopped her.

Eventually, we got an agent, but we couldn’t get a publisher — the Muslim publishers said it was too liberal, and the mainstream publishers thought the audience was too small. So, we self-published, and now it turns out that there’s a huge non-Muslim market that’s buying it.

Q: Only about a third of the girls pictured in this book wear headscarves. Was that intentional?

A: We really wanted to show girls both in hijab and without hijab, because there are many Muslim girls who do both. Most books you see about Islam only show girls in hijab, and that’s not true to the reality of American Islam. Another stereotype about Muslims is that they are all from the Middle East and Pakistan and India so we made sure that we had pictures of all kinds of Muslims.

Q: Your own family is from Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Do you feel comfortable speaking for Muslims from other regions, or for teenagers growing up in more conservative households?

A: This book is meant to be a guide for children and their parents; it’s not meant to be the be-all, end-all authority on Islam. We didn’t want to alienate people by saying you can date whoever you want, because there’s some people who would be turned off by that. At the same time, we didn’t want to say you can’t do anything at all. Every family has to decide for themselves what their interpretations are going to be, just like in Christian and Jewish families.

Q: The two new chapters deal with interfaith friendships and post-9/11 discrimination. Why didn’t these topics make it into the first edition?

A: We thought of it after we had decided to self-publish, when that process was already underway. But, we’ve always been committed to interfaith. I was a founding member of the Arizona Interfaith Youth Movement and my mother is now the director. I went to a Catholic girl’s school, so I had a lot of Catholic friends, and now, my roommate is a Conservative Jew, and I love going to her Shabbat service on Fridays. I know there won’t be pork at the dinner, so that’s a good thing for me!

Q: What do you most want people to take away from this book?

A: I want them to think twice when they’re talking to a Muslim or they see a Muslim on TV, and realize that this is a religion that shouldn’t be demonized or stereotyped.

You can completely be a Muslim and an American at the same time. If this book can help one Muslim teenager feel better about their faith or help one non-Muslim person have a better understanding about Islam, then we’ve succeeded.