Navigating How to be Muslim in the Legal Field

-- By LaraHafez - 20 Feb 2025

A Moment of Realization

"We need more Muslims like you in the legal field."

I was told this after hosting a Muslim lawyer from the ACLU to speak at our Muslim Student Union at Stanford. At that moment, I felt both seen and burdened by expectation. I had always been intrigued by the idea of becoming a lawyer, but I never truly knew what that would look like for someone like me. Both of my parents are refugees who never had more than a high school degree. The concept of professional success, especially in an elite field like law, always felt distant. I never knew if I had the potential to be a lawyer, but I did know one thing: I wanted to use my voice to support people like my parents and my friends who were members of my community.

Growing Up in a Voiceless Community

Many of my friends and neighbors were Muslim immigrants who had a target placed on their backs after 9/11. I grew up in a community that often felt silenced. We were the subject of suspicion, yet we had no platform to counter the narratives that vilified us. Many around me internalized this reality, choosing to keep their heads down rather than fight back. But I refused. I was stubborn and hated being boxed in by the perceptions of others. I wanted to give my community a voice.

At first, I thought politics would be the way to do that. I spent time getting people registered to vote, believing that electoral participation could change the system. But I soon realized that our political system was not built to represent people like me. In a post 9/11 world, stereotypes were louder than my words could ever be.

Confronting Islamophobia Head On

One of my most formative experiences came in my French II class when a student, emboldened by the passage of the Muslim Ban, stood up and declared to the entire room that I was a terrorist and a threat to the school. I am not visibly Muslim, but I openly mentioned my faith. That is why I have always understood my position to be a precarious one, but I thought my “progressive” Southern California community was a safe place for me. However, at that moment, I witnessed my classmates and substitute teacher do nothing to stop his tirade. Their complicity drove home the point that this would be the new “normal” for me.

My anxiety about how I was perceived grew exponentially, but I did not let that fear silence me. Instead, I channeled my anger into action. I joined clubs in undergrad that allowed me to use my voice, whether that was through mock trial or organizing protests on campus. I refused to be silenced. It was through this work that I realized I could use the law as a tool to fight back.

The Burden of Expectations

After talking to the ACLU lawyer and other advisors, I knew that a legal career could give me the platform I sought, whether as an immigration attorney, a civil rights lawyer, or in another public interest role. When people found out I was planning to go to law school, many in my community saw me as a representative of their struggles. They would remind me not to "sell my soul" and to stay true to my mission of uplifting marginalized voices.

I was always told money would never be worth as much as the impact I could make. And I believed it. I went into law school committed to doing the work that mattered to me. But what no one told me was that even in public interest law, I would still face tensions that challenged my sense of belonging and my morals.

The Challenge of Fitting In

As a Muslim, I have chosen not to drink as part of my religious practice. This choice, while deeply personal, has been one of the biggest barriers to feeling like I belong in the legal field. The difficulty is not in abstaining from alcohol, it is in navigating the social and professional consequences of that decision.

Law school and the legal profession often rely heavily on networking events held at bars and social functions centered around drinking. It is not just about being present at these events but about how people perceive me when I choose not to drink. Classmates have teased me for drinking water at a bar. Others have given me condescending comments like, "It is good that you choose not to drink," as if I were a child being praised for good behavior.

At professional events, the discomfort is even more pronounced. I have had attorneys tell me that it is rude not to at least hold a drink. Some have tried to convince me that I will inevitably start drinking by my second year of law school. These interactions have made me feel like an outsider, forcing me to wonder if I have to compromise on my values in order to be successful.

Redefining Success on My Terms

This internal conflict is one I continue to wrestle with. I want to belong in this field, but I refuse to do so at the cost of compromising my faith. My experience has made me acutely aware of how Muslim representation in the legal profession is not just about increasing numbers, it is about ensuring that we can exist in these spaces as our full, authentic selves.

I think back to the words that started this reflection: "We need more Muslims like you in the legal field." I now understand that being like me does not just mean being a Muslim in law, it means being a Muslim who is unapologetically themselves in law. It means carving out a space where my community does not just enter the profession but thrives within it. And if that means breaking barriers, then I will continue doing what I have always done, refusing to be silenced.

You are going to be not merely a member of your profession, but—just as you are the only law student in your law school—a leader in the portion of the profession that you choose to make your own. Whether your religion is central ro our peripheral to that life will be for you to define, neither the result of others' prejudices nor of their wishes. (In much the sane way, of course, that Jewishness is part of mine, or evangelical Christianity or Buddhism are parts of the lives of people with whom I have chosen to work.) This draft shows the way in which the past has influenced your thinking on that subject so far. It might bring an improvement if you were to imagine in the next draft not the attitudes your past has so far shaped, but the ones you would envision in your career at the other end, thinking backward from your life as a senior in your practice. Do you want to have been directly and constantly involved in what it means to be a Muslim lawyer, or would you prefer to live in a society and in a practice in which your religious and cultural commitments were of decreasing salience over time? Many of us do not drink on the job, or in life at all, and that has no religious significance whatever for some. Would it seem to you more or less satisfactory if your avoidance of alcohol were absolutely unremarkable and indeed unnoticed by your colleagues, even if that made the underlying issues of religious or social prejudice less visible and less politically relevant? Maybe by thinking about the relationships between faith and law practice as you would want them to be, rather than as the social bigotries of the time have cast them, we could discover something of intellectual and moral value to you.

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