Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Muslims Make Gains at U.S. Universities |
|---|
| jannah |
| 02/13/01 at 02:02:40 |
| If you are registered for the new york times website you can go direct: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/13/national/13MUSL.html?pagewanted=all February 13, 2001 Muslims Make Gains at U.S. Universities By JODI WILGOREN AMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 9 — At 1 a.m. on her first night as a student here at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sarah Ibrahim panicked. Her roommates were entertaining friends in their cramped triple. A committed Muslim who covers her hair around men outside her family, Ms. Ibrahim feared she might never be able to remove her head scarf and go to sleep. "I just called my dad and said, `O.K., take me home,' " Ms. Ibrahim recalled. But she soon returned to campus, the only freshman with a single room in the all-woman dormitory. Now a sophomore, Ms. Ibrahim often cooks Islamically approved food, or halal, in the suite she shares with eight other women, three of them Muslim. Men are banned from the restroom on her floor, and a suite-mate's boyfriend is careful to announce himself rather than barge in. "The second you say religious reasons," said Ms. Ibrahim, 18, a chemical engineering major from Wayne, N.J., "people are quick to accommodate." The number of Muslims at American colleges and universities has more than doubled over the past decade, and although they remain a tiny minority — under 1 percent — their presence is helping reconfigure many campuses in substantial ways. Arriving from around the globe and including African-Americans, they are creating vibrant hubs for what is the nation's fastest-growing religious community. But they are also presenting new problems for administrators eager to embrace diversity. From the College of Wooster in Ohio to Southern Methodist University in Dallas to the University of Southern California, students struggle to avoid classes during Jum'aa, the Friday afternoon congregational prayer. Dining halls provide boxed meals for takeout during Ramadan, a month of fasting from sunup to sunset. And then there is the delicate matter of using shared sinks to wash one's feet before prayer. Dozens of colleges and universities have hired part-time imams to minister to Muslims. At least 75 colleges have dedicated space for Muslims' prayers, said five times daily, whether it be a basement dormitory room, a stairwell landing in the library or a specially designed room like the one at M.I.T., which includes tiled areas with thigh-high faucets where students rinse their forearms, face and feet before kneeling toward Mecca. While any devout student is forced to make compromises and choices, Muslims face particular challenges because essential elements of campus life, like drinking and dating, are prohibited by their religion. Tensions often flare between Muslims and Jews on campus over conflicts in the Middle East, but now the two groups are beginning to forge links over common interests, including similar dietary laws and accommodation for religious practice. At Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., the first halal and kosher dining hall is scheduled to open this fall. "It's not coming at odds with the rest of the campus," said Altaf Husain, national president of the Muslim Students Association, which has 500 chapters throughout North America. "It's almost like saying while everyone else has their rights, we would like to have our rights." In part, the changes reflect a religious revival among students of all faiths, and a new trend of campus centers where Baptists and Buddhists, Seventh-day Adventists and Zoroastrians pass each other in the hallways of a shared building. Colleges typically do not keep track of students' religions, but an annual survey by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles shows that .9 percent of first-year students nationwide identified themselves as Muslims last year, up from .4 percent in 1990 and .1 percent in 1974. (Jews, meanwhile, have decreased from 5.4 percent of freshmen in 1970 to 2.8 percent in 2000.) The growth comes as a generation of children of Muslim immigrants reach college age and is fueled by an increase in international students. There are an estimated 6 million Muslims in the United States. Muslims are a diverse lot, with immigrants from Bosnia, Asia, Africa and the Persian Gulf praying shoulder to shoulder with American blacks and recent converts like Jennifer DiMarzo, a freshman at Simmons College in Boston. Yet Islam remains shrouded in mystery for many students, and Muslims often complain of stereotyping and discrimination. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, received reports last year that a student was expelled from class after rebutting derogatory comments about Islam; that a college employee poured glue in the shoe of a Muslim who was praying, barefoot, in the library; that Muslim-sponsored posters about the Middle East were ripped down on campuses; and that a professor used a textbook tainting Muslims as terrorists. Still, students report nascent partnerships with other religious groups on campus, particularly Jews, who were among the first to diversify American colleges in the 1950's. At Dartmouth, the president of the Islamic student group, Al-Nur, and the Jewish president of Hillel began having dinner together last year, and this fall the two led a candlelight vigil promoting Middle East peace. In pushing for the kosher-halal meal plan, a $300,000 project, they capitalized on the strength of their combined numbers, as well as the college's desire to promote harmony among diverse groups. Judaism and Islam have many parallel dietary restrictions, including ritual slaughter and a prohibition on pork, and many Muslims eat kosher meat. But after the combined dining hall was approved, Dartmouth was unable to find a butcher anywhere in the world that provides simultaneous rabbinic and Islamic supervision. So the college plans to provide separate halal and kosher meals under the same roof, with chefs respecting both traditions, by keeping milk and meat separate (a Jewish stricture) and avoiding alcohol (an Islamic rule). This fall, organizers hope to arrange what may be the first ever halal-kosher Thanksgiving, with a ritual slaughter at a turkey farm near campus involving both an imam and a rabbi. "When I close my eyes and pray, it doesn't really matter what Yousuf is praying next to me," Jason Spitalnick, the Hillel president, said of his Muslim counterpart, Yousuf Haque. At M.I.T. this afternoon, Jews in kippot waited for Sabbath services a few yards from Muslims putting on their shoes after Maghreb, the sunset prayer. Earlier, the hallway was filled with hiking boots and sneakers, loafers and lace-ups, as more than 100 students, employees, even cabdrivers, gathered for Jum'aa. Fadilah Khan, a junior, arrived late, slipping boots off from beneath cuffed jeans and taking a black scarf from her backpack. She had rushed from a lecture, stopping to drop her résumé at a job fair, and left quickly for a computer workshop. Similar scheduling snafus abound. Numan Waheed, a doctoral candidate in chemical engineering, skipped the Friday sessions of a required course, Transport Processes, until his grades slipped. Then he skipped Jum'aa. "I was completely lost that semester; when I came back in the spring, everything fell into place," said Mr. Waheed, president of the M.I.T. Muslim Students Association. "I honestly believed that I was failing the class because I was missing the prayer." Whether they come from a Muslim country like Pakistan, or grew up the only student wearing a head scarf at a public school, many students flock to the insular Muslim Students Association, which sponsors intramural basketball teams, ski trips and paintball along with religious events. Tonight, M.I.T.'s Muslims shunned fraternity parties for a feast of spicy stewed chicken, kefte, curried potatoes and yogurt sauce. Seif Fateem, a graduate student who once opted out of a game in a Microeconomics course because all the prizes were beer, tossed candy to those who correctly answered trivia questions: How many times did the prophet make Haj, or pilgrimage? (One.) What is the most common name in the world? (Mohammed.) How many brothers did the prophet Joseph have? (Eleven.) Men and women naturally segregated, gossiping in English and Arabic, but as the evening wore on, a young man approached a young woman, asking her to go talk to another young man, who was wondering the name of another young woman. Ms. Ibrahim posed for a photograph with Belal Helal, a graduate student from Saudi Arabia who was handing out Muslim literature those first weeks of freshman year, when Ms. Ibrahim was commuting from her father's home in Quincy, Mass., because of her roommate problems. They are engaged to be married next summer. "There's a whole culture of being different," Ms. Ibrahim shrugged under her mauve and vanilla head scarf. "You're considered somewhat cooler if you don't do what everyone else does." |
| NS |
Individual posts do not necessarily reflect the views of Jannah.org, Islam, or all Muslims. All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the poster and may not be used without consent of the author.The rest © Jannah.Org |