David forwarded me a rather interesting article this morning… just down the interstate from PresbyLand, in Lexington, Kentucky, the University of Kentucky is preparing to welcome the nation’s first Islamic sorority. Gamma Gamma Chi was founded by a mother-daughter pairing who felt that the traditional sorority experience, with its reputation for partying, wasn’t in line with Muslim values. Students at UK caught on, and are now working with the school to organize the first campus chapter.

According to the news reports I read, this isn’t the first sorority out there created as an alternative to the dominantly white paradigm. Several NNPCW members are involved with African American sororities, the first of which was established in 1908. In the last 15 years, Hispanic/Latina, multicultural, and South Asian sororities have also sprung up in different parts of the country. I believe there are also explicitly Christian sororities on some campuses.

Now, I will immediately confess that I’m not an expert in Greek life. My little Christian campus up in Eastern Washington didn’t have a Greek system at all, and very few of my high school friends who went to other colleges did the sorority thing (the one who did dropped out after a semester or so). In fact, I would say that the Greek system wasn’t nearly as big in the Pacific Northwest as it is in other parts of the country. But hey, I guess we’re known for being anti-establishment.

The Greek folk do have a reputation, though. I remember years ago that Washington State University founded its statewide party-school reputation on drunk frat boys falling off a balcony. A 2001 national study reports that 62 percent of sorority members are binge drinkers, even though most sororities ban alcohol in the house. Combine that with the predominantly homogenous white, Christian culture of the Greek system, and it makes sense that Muslim women would want their own alternative.

One of the most heartening aspects of this story, I think, lies in the way in which the women at UK are claiming their own space and breaking away from the dominant culture’s stereotypes of the oppressed Muslim woman (and the culture’s sorority stereotypes, for that matter). The founders of the sorority say that one of their main objectives is to put a positive face on Muslim women, who are often portrayed by the media as powerless and oppressed. These women are resisting the media’s attempts to label them, first of all, and are also resisting the pressure to compromise their own religious values as they integrate into mainstream American society. They want to have the unity and solidarity of the sorority experience (one of the positives of the Greek system), but they’re doing it on their own terms.

Perhaps we Christian women should take a cue from our Muslim sisters as they refuse to let the media or the larger culture define their identity. And perhaps we can begin to find common ground for partnership with them as they take back what it means to be an empowered woman of faith from those who would attempt to rob that from us.

“How good and pleasant it is when siblings live together in unity!” --Psalm 133:1

Kelsey