Valentines: "MuslimVDay Cards - The Decade Retrospective" by Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed
MuslimVDay Cards - The Decade Retrospective
For the past decade on every Valentine’s day, I made a set of six cards around my interpretation of what I think Muslim Valentine’s Day should celebrate. The project first started when I was on book tour for the anthology Love, Inshallah in 2011, and on the book tour we writers would get questions asking us about if Muslim women actually fell in love. The cards were my facetious and sarcastic response. I wanted to push back on the box that I was being placed in, and disrupt the narrative that people had in their head. I wanted people to feel uncomfortable, and to laugh when they looked at the cards.
After making the cards for the past decade - and getting national recognition for the cards and were featured in on CNN, NBC, NPR, NowThis, HelloGiggles, and more - I’ve decided to retire the project.The times have changed and the culture has shifted significantly since the project first started. Here is a retrospective of my favorite cards from each year.
Check out Taz’s #MuslimVDay card sets on ETSY here: TazzyStarShop
2012
In the early 20-teens, islamophobes were actively protesting the building of mosques by standing in front of constructions. This card highlights that we support erections of all kinds.
2013
The racist Stop and Frisk policy in NYC stopped hundreds of thousands of people, mostly black and brown youth. We do not support NYPD stopping anyone, but I wouldn’t mind if a hottie consensually stopped and frisked me.
2014
In 2013, NSA was intercepting laptops purchased online and injecting spyware to watch our every move. But sometimes, it’s nice to know someone is looking out for you.
2015
It is rumored that a Malaysian Airlines flight that disappeared into thin air that year was the result of a terrorist hijacking. Let’s reappropriate the word “hijacking”.
2016
I thought I was done making cards because I decided I was an adult now.
2017
During the 2016 Presidential Elections, Muslims were the hottest topic at the debates and Trump’s fearmongering on the campaign trail led to a dramatic increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes. So I brought the cards back. Trump just couldn’t stop talking about how he wanted all the Muslims to be in a registry. The only registry I want to be on is a wedding registry.
2018
The Muslim Ban was one of the first policies that Trump enacted and thousands of activist showed up at airports across the country in protest. In our perfect world, no one would ever be banned.
2019
Trump could not stop talking about building a wall at the border, but over the course of his presidency, he epically failed at building anything. When it comes to true love, no wall can keep us apart.
2020
I thought I was done again!
2021
The pandemic happened, and there were so many pandemic puns, I couldn’t quit the cards. Who wasn’t looking for a boo to quarantine with together?
2022
An FBI informant who pretended to be Muslim and infiltrated mosques in Southern California turned around and sued the FBI - it went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2021. But sometimes, a little voyeurism is sexy.
About Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed
Tanzila “Taz” Ahmed is a political strategist, storyteller, and artist based in Los Angeles. She creates at the intersection of counternarratives and culture-shifting as a South Asian American Muslim 2nd-gen woman. She’s turned out over 500,000 Asian American voters, recorded five years of the award winning #GoodMuslimBadMuslim podcast and makes #MuslimVDay cards annually. Her essays are published in the anthologies, New Moons, Pretty Bitches, Whiter, Good Girls Marry Doctors, Love Inshallah, and in numerous online publications. She has published two poetry collections Emdash and Ellipses (2016) & The Day The Moon Split in Two (2020), is featured in Tia Chucha’s Coiled Serpent (2016) and her poetry has been commissioned by the Center for Cultural Power, PolicyLink, the Garment Worker Center, KPCC’s Unheard LA, and more. In Spring 2019 she was UCLA’s Activist-in-Residence at the Institute on Inequality and Democracy, in Summer 2017 was Artist-in-Residence at Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art Culture & Design, and in 2016 received an award from President Obama’s White House as a Champion of Change in Art and Storytelling. A protest sign she designed for the 2017 Women’s March sits in the permanent archives of the Smithsonian Museum of American History.