Thahabu

As I’ve been looking at schools I’d like to transfer to, I’ve been shocked to find that a few don’t have a Muslim Student Association (MSA). Muslim, Middle Eastern, and South Asian people have been subject to unfair treatment in this country, especially after 9/11. But right now, we’re at critical time when the marginalization of Muslims is very visible in the media. There’s no reason a school shouldn’t have some kind of organization that offers these students a safe space.

This is important to me because, having dealt with being ostracized on campus as a black person, I felt really alone until I met my good friend Nihal. She’s a Palestinian Muslim girl who kicks ass in every aspect of life. She’s so ambitious and motivated, she inspires me every day. We bonded over a common frustration with these boys in our sociology class last year, who’d sit in the back of the room and making frightening comments about people of color and women. One even suggested that black people benefitted from slavery because they were allowed to come to “our country.” I totally lost it. I turned around, looked him dead in the face, and called him stupid. Nihal thought it was so funny. She liked my energy and thought I was passionate, saying, “You were meant to make noise in the world!” She eventually introduced to me to her other friends in our school’s MSA and I instantly clicked with the vice president, Razan. I was suddenly part of a new friend group where I felt at ease. We share stories with each other and offer to help one another in whatever ways we can. They make me feel welcome in a place where I feel like an outcast. No one has held me down at this school the way they have.

Now whenever tragedies like the Chapel Hill shooting happen, or an act of terror is perpetrated by extremists, my heart drops, not only with the standard fear of, I hope no one harasses or harms Muslims out of ignorance, but also, That could be one of my friends being targeted, that could be Noran, Nihal, or Razan. It’s not like I didn’t have some idea of of the struggles Muslim girls experienced before I met my friends, but my understanding of the daily microaggressions and fears they face is more concrete now. After Chapel Hill, Nihal told me that, for the first time in 10 years of wearing hijab, she felt self-conscious that headscarf would make non-Muslims perceive her as a threat. In the wake of Donald Trump’s hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric, stories like this from my friends have increased. A few months ago a Muslim man was beaten up in Astoria, Queens, close to wear my friend Noran lives. I checked up on her to see how she was doing. She was fine but said it was scary to know that “none of us are safe.”

Not only have these conversations with my friends given me a reality check, but being in MSA has showed me the importance of solidarity and how it can be a source of healing. We’re there for each other in times of anxiety or fear. Everyone was filled with grief after the 2015 San Bernardino shooting. Razan texted me to vent. Earlier in the day she decided to start wearing the abaya. She felt so good in it and knew it was the right choice for her. But once the shooting happened, she started questioning whether wearing it was good idea; she didn’t wanna look “even more Muslim.” I told her I’d support whatever her decision, and she opted not to wear it. “I wish everyone knew how cool I was,” she told me, reflecting on how other students on campus tend to stereotype her as a conservative, naïve person because she wears hijab. It’s weird how the conversations I see around the way women’s bodies and choice of dress rarely touch on girls who wear hijab or other Islamic clothing. Razan’s really all about doing whatever she wants and not adhering to people’s expectations of her, but she still had to compromise the way she dressed for her own safety. ♦