Lives of American Muslim Teens
NGUYEN: Cheerleading, shopping, hanging out with friends. That's a typical teen girl's life. But for some Muslim-American teenagers, there are other worries, like how to keep the faith while facing the pressures of growing up. The story is part of our special "Uncovering America" series.</s>NGUYEN (voice-over): Bayyina and Nabilah Hassan are two Atlanta teenager sisters trying to navigate the sometimes rough world of growing up.</s>VOICE OF BAYYINA HASSAN, MUSLIM TEENAGER: Knowing where you belong, like in choosing your friends wisely. Because now, you're going through stages where you're trying to learn who to trust or who not to trust.</s>NABILAH HASSAN, MUSLIM TEENAGER: Peer pressure just by clothing, ways to dress and just all the negative influences.</s>NGUYEN: And they spend their free time like most American teens.</s>N. HASSAN: Hanging out with my friends, going to the movies, just doing different stuff with my friends.</s>B. HASSAN: I like to shop a lot.</s>NGUYEN: The Hassan sisters are featured in the latest issue of a brand new magazine for teens "Muslim Girl." The publication is designed to help Islamic teenage girls balance their faith in a pop culture world.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As Muslim teens, we try to guard our modesty, you know, not to wear anything that will attract eyes. So that's kind of a challenge.</s>NGUYEN: The Hassan sisters attend the WD Mohammed High School. It's one of roughly 182 private Islamic schools in the nation, according to the Department of Education. Nabilah says her faith helps her deal with the pressures facing a teenager.</s>N. HASSAN: It's just like maintaining to continue your faith. The average teenager gets into so much stuff because they don't really have guidance, but we feel like we have the right amount of guidance. We're not going to get into everything that everybody's getting involved with.</s>NGUYEN: The sisters wish non-Muslims would try to understand their religion more.</s>B. HASSAN: I think that the biggest things that they believe that we are terrorists because of all of this drama that's going on right now. But I think they just need to know that Muslims, we are very peaceful people. Well, at least, we try to be.</s>N. HASSAN: I think with the 9/11 attacks, you can't blame all Muslims as a whole for what a few people decide to do.</s>NGUYEN: Meantime, Nabilah and Bayyina are just worried about doing well in high school and getting into a good college.</s>N. HASSAN: At times, I can't wait to get out of the house. But my mom always tells me, just enjoy your youth while you can, and that's what I'm trying to do.</s>NGUYEN: A new publication "Muslim Girl" magazine is looking to help teens like the Hassan sisters. We're now joined by the editor in chief, Ausma Khan, joining us from Ottawa. First of all, "Muslim Girl" it's a really great magazine, but I want to know, how did the idea come about?</s>AUSMA KHAN, "MUSLIM GIRL" MAGAZINE: Well, before we launched "Muslim Girl" magazine, there really was nothing like this for our community, and we attended the Islamic Society of North America conference in 2005, and we heard from many girls and young women about how much they felt excluded or marginalized or misrepresented in mainstream media. And they really wanted a forum where their voices could be heard and their stories told in a positive and celebratory manner, so that's what we decided to do at the magazine and we wanted to connect these girls to one another and also to open up a broader dialogue with other communities.</s>NGUYEN: Well, it has to be a bit of a balancing act, because the Muslim community is pretty diverse. So how do you address that diversity?</s>KHAN: Well, that's actually a part of our editorial platform, is that we want the magazine to be as reflective of the actual North American Muslim community as possible. So the stories we tell are about girls from very different backgrounds from all over the country and we also have a lot of stories from girls from other parts of the world. So we are recognizing the diversity in our community and celebrating it.</s>NGUYEN: You know, we have a picture of that debut issue of "Muslim Girl." We're going to put it back up, that cover. It features a girl wearing a hajab (ph) and holding a U.S. flag. Tell us about the message that you're trying to send with this magazine.</s>KHAN: We really wanted to make an impact with that photo on the first cover and get people thinking about who Muslims in America are and how much a part of society that they are. And what message that we're trying to send to both Muslims and non-Muslims who pick up our magazine and look at it is that Muslims are your friends and your neighbors and they contribute in many positive ways to American society, that they think of themselves as Americans. So you haven't seen the whole story and we're here to tell you the other side of the story.</s>NGUYEN: Because these are teenagers like everybody else. They want to talk about fashion. They want to talk about dating, parental pressure, control, that kind of thing. So is it truly a teenager's magazine?</s>KHAN: Absolutely. I think we're talking about a lot of things that girls want to hear about. They want to hear about relationships. We have advice columns. They want to know about how to deal with friends at school, with parents, with teachers. They ask questions about boys. So in that way, it's very much a magazine for teens and for young women, but we're also talking about developing girls from within, developing their ideas, their intellect, their emotions and their spiritual achievements. So we try to give them tools to accomplish this in all areas of their lives.</s>NGUYEN: And what kind of response have you gotten?</s>KHAN: Overwhelmingly positive. We've heard a lot of great things from girls. We've heard even from parents and grandparents, people saying that, wow, we wish a magazine like this had been around when we were teenagers or when we were young women, because they're telling these great stories that they know are in the great community, but which we don't get to see very often.</s>NGUYEN: Like I said, it is really a fascinating magazine. It is a good cause, because like you said, there is plenty of people who wanted to see something like this and now it's finally here. Ausma Khan, editor in chief of "Muslim Girl" magazine, thanks for your time.</s>KHAN: Thank you very much.</s>HOLMES: Well, we've got our "water cooler" coming up next and just wait until you see what this guy can do on one leg.</s>NGUYEN: It is truly remarkable. It is the hottest video on the web, coming in just two shakes.