The president of Maryville University’s Muslim Student Association wants to set something straight:
“People need to understand that the real face of Islam is the face you see in front of you right now,” said Shehmin Awan. “It is us three people.”
Awan was at St. Louis Public Radio discussing Islam and Islamophobia along with Evren Senol, a real estate agent and a native of Cyprus (who was raised as a Muslim but now attends a Presbyterian Church), and Saba Fatima, an assistant professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, who was raised in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
“It’s the billions of people who are practicing peacefully,” Awan continued. “It is not the face of ISIL or ISIS or whatever you want to call it. It’s not the face of a terrorist. It’s the face of a normal citizen trying to live their everyday life. All these politics are trying to divide people between religion and nationalities and race.”
Last month, the executive director of the St. Louis chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Faizan Syed, said that he received a call threatening his organization in the wake of the San Bernadino shooting. Also in December, Mohammed Baban, a former Iraqi refugee, said he and a group of friends were accosted by a man screaming profanities at them outside their mosque in South St. Louis.
Recently, the California-based Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism released data that shows the rate of suspected hate crimes against Muslims in the United States has tripled since the attacks in Paris in November, with 38 attacks. This uptick in hate crimes has included assaults on those wearing a hijab, mosque vandalism and death threats made against Muslim-owned businesses.
“What a true Muslim is, is being confused with a terrorist who is not really practicing Islam but is pushing political causes in the name of a religion,” said Awan.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has made statements condemning Muslims and saying they should be kept out of America. Senol, Awan and Fatima said his statements have had an impact on their everyday conversations.
Awan related a story of a friend who was confronted by a man at Home Depot saying, “I’m going to vote for Donald Trump just because I don’t want to see you here.”
“Trump has normalized saying hateful things about minority communities, be it Muslims, blacks, Hispanics,” Fatima said. “That guy hates all minorities, it seems.”
“The difficulty is getting masses to really open their minds to understanding differences in cultures and accepting those differences,” Senol said.
Awan said she first experienced Islamophobia when she was 6 years old. That was when 9/11 occurred, three hours away from her family’s home in Albany, New York.
“Someone asked my sister, ‘Do you have a bomb in your backpack?’” Awan said. “They had known us for years, they knew we were peaceful people, they knew our families, we used to play together…”
Fatima said that is the responsibility of those who are not subject to hateful speech to engage in conversations with their friends and families making their stance in support of Muslims clear. “It is not sufficient to say it in your heart,” Fatima said.
Fatina said Muslim Americans also have an added responsibility “to engage in American politics, to go vote, to develop a platform of political demands.”
Edited for length and reprinted with permission from news.stlpublicradio.org.
