My American Jihad - A Review
My American Jihad, organized by the Muslim Students’ Association, was held on March 27th at 8:00 pm in the Union Showroom. This event was an attempt by the MSA to reach out to the diverse student body at UT to educate them about Islam and to challenge people’s misconceptions of Islam. In fact, an event like this one is extremely important to fill the vacuum that exists in today’s political climate, where any sign of overt Islamicism is looked upon with suspicion by most Americans. This could almost be described as a PR event, where all attendees were encouraged to voice their opinions and questions and to simply be more informed about and less fearful of Islamic religiosity.
The event began with a recitation of two suras or chapters of the Quran in Arabic, which were translated into English by Zignat Abdisubhan of the MSA . Then, Hani Mirza talked about the need for an event like this one at UT. The position of American Muslims in today’s world is between a rock and a hard place. The Islamic extremists in other parts of the world think they are too un-Islamic, while they are looked upon with suspicion by Americans and the US Government. America’s Muslim community is trying to find a middle ground and an identity between these two extremes. In fact, the many of the speakers stressed that Islamic extremists simply succeed in making life more difficult for most Muslims. In short, the event was meant to highlight Muslim struggles in America. This is why the event was named “My American Jihad”: because jihad in Arabic means “struggle”. In a sense, this event was about reclaiming the world “jihad” and giving it a less negative connotation, which could be symbolic of all things Islamic. Plus, the speaker added, it doesn’t hurt that the word “jihad” grabs your attention from the word go.
There then followed a series of students who made speeches about their personal jihad, and about their struggle to reconcile their faith (Islam) and their country (the United States). The first speaker. Bassam Tariq, recounted his experience of going to UT, one of the nation’s biggest party schools, and still being true to his religion. Once, he thought he was going to a ping pong tournament, which turned out to actually be a beer pong tournament. Needless to say, he didn’t participate.
The second speaker, Zahra Yusuf Ali, read a poem that she wrote that had been published in the magazine “Muslim Youth” titled “Where I’m from”. Her jihad was the wearing of her Hijab (headscarf). In the poem, she recounts how after the 9/11 attacks, she received many strange looks, but also some looks that went deeper than the rest, that understood, and empathized. The last line of the poem was
“I am from the religion of surrender,
I am from Islam.”
To Saba Syed, another UT student, her American jihad was answering questions about her religion. She discovered that although she was completely immersed in her religion at home, when she came to college, she was faced with a barrage of questions about her faith and her beliefs. And, to her astonishment, she realized she simply didn’t know how to answer those questions. For the first time, it made her doubt her faith, the same way she would doubt something as close and familiar to her as her family. Her struggle was to figure out the answers to those questions to herself, and to rediscover her faith in a whole new way. Hammad Rizvi then read out a poem written by Azam Farukhi, a former UT student, about the torture of eating Fish Fillet at McDonalds while watching his friends bite into a succulent Big Mac, because he couldn’t get a halal Big Mac. It was definitely something I could identify with, not because I couldn’t get halal meat but because I was trying to be vegetarian at one point while all my friends gorged themselves on chicken. There were other kinds of personal jihads: fasting for Ramadan, a notable example of slam poetry by Imaad Khan on being true to yourself and not lying. Overall, I thought all the speakers did an excellent job of exciting empathy and understanding through their personal stories of what it means to be a Muslim in America.
Finally, scholar Sheikh Islam Mossaad was called upon to expound on the meaning of jihad. He talked about different kinds of jihad: inner jihad where you turn inwards and struggle with the self, and outer jihad, where you struggle against different kinds of evil in the world. He emphasized that Islamic extremists were in fact harming other Muslims. Their acts of terrorism were indiscriminate, killing both Muslims and non-Muslims alike. He called for a deeper understanding of and respect for moderate Islam. He also talked about the experience of pretty much every Muslim leader in America with the FBI. They were all asked to report any suspicious activity they saw and quite a few of their congregation were taken for questioning by the FBI about conversations they had on their cell phones that might be construed as suspicious.
It is worthy of note that none of the men who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks were American Muslims. In fact, not a single American Muslim has been found guilty of an act of terrorism. This is in stark contrast to Europe, especially in England, where English-born Muslims were found to be engaging in acts of terror. In my opinion, this is probably because America is a country where almost anybody can get ahead if they work hard regardless of their religion, much more so than in other developed countries. This is the American Dream that every American prides himself or herself on, and which is at risk of getting compromised if ignorance and fear are allowed to take over Americans’ sense of generosity and fairness.
Finally, the floor was opened to questions. A girl in a Hijab wanted to clarify the position of Hijabi’s (women who wear the headscarf) , and the many misconceptions that are attached to them, especially the image of a Saudi Arabian woman in a burqa who can’t legally drive. Sheikh Islam Masood responded to this by saying that this is not a pan-Islamic attitude. For example, a Muslim woman in Egypt is very different from her counterpart in Saudi Arabia, who is in turn very different from her counterpart in India or Pakistan. However, in my opinion, I felt that the answer to the question was a little evasive. Sheikh Islam Masood answered that it does not say anywhere in the Sharia that a woman can’t drive. This can be attributed to the fact that the Sharia was written at the time of the Prophet Mohammed and there were no cars then. However, he failed to address how a country like Saudi Arabia, while following to the letter the strictest laws of its religion, manages to create a society that is supremely unfair to its women. The question of dialogue and re-interpretation of the traditional laws of the Sharia (which were codified in the eighth century) to promote equal opportunity for women was not addressed . For example, in India, it is still legal for a Muslim man to have more than one wife, while it is not legal for a member of any other religion to do so. Why is Muslim law in India more unfair towards women than the laws of other religions in India? This is ironic, because in the Mughal era, in terms of property rights and inheritance laws, Muslim women had more legal rights than their Hindu counterparts. In India (and Saudi Arabia, to state two examples), the Muslim community has not seen as much progress in terms of updating and re-interpreting its laws to fit modern notions of feminism as other communities have. Of course, I understand why the speaker was evasive about answering this question. His focus was on presenting a more moderate view of Islam, especially with regard to American Muslims. In addition, this problem is not faced by American Muslim women, who share equal rights with their male peers. Yet, I think it might have been productive for many non-Muslims in the audience to try to get a balanced picture of why Islam has a reputation (deserved or undeserved) of being unfair to women.
On the whole, I found it to be a very illuminating and interesting event. This was the first time in the two years I’ve been at UT that I’ve heard of an event created by Muslim students to make their voice heard in the larger community, and more such instances of this will definitely go a long way towards mitigating prejudice and suspicion towards Muslims in America.
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