Feeling Muslim
By Nourhan Elsayed
February 15, 2015
Before
college, I never felt Muslim. I feel a lot of things, all of the time—but very
rarely do I feel Muslim. On good days, I have the privilege of taking Islam for
granted. I forget I wear hijab and I assume that people are staring at me
because I’m just so damn beautiful. On good days, I get to bask in the comfort
of Islam being my way of life. I get the security of a faith that preaches
“beautiful patience,” that teaches me to not ascribe intent to the actions of
others and that consoles me with the emphasis on God being the most merciful.
On good days, I just assume that people see my hijab as a symbol of my love of
God and my desire for humility. On good days, I don’t worry what people think
of my faith, because I assume my actions speak on behalf of my religion.
But in
the past few years, there have been a few times where I’ve felt Muslim. When
the Boston marathon bombings occurred—I felt Muslim. I felt what it meant to
walk into a store and have 10 years of inaccurate media fueled hate projected
on to my body by someone who knew nothing of me. When the adhan was going to be
announced from the Chapel, I felt Muslim. When people’s comments about my faith
were wrought with a brand of animosity I still wish I didn’t know existed so
close to home, when people threatened to hurt Muslim students on this campus, I
felt Muslim.
In
post-9/11 mainstream America, to be Muslim is to be the bearer of evil. To be
Muslim is to be a backward, women-hating, sword throwing savage. When I feel
Muslim, I feel those labels forced upon my body. I feel those ideas being
painted all over me. I feel myself unwillingly shrink to become small and
irrelevant under the force of years and years of negative antagonistic
media-created ideas of what Islam is, and what it means to be Muslim.
After
the loss of Yusor, Razan and Deah I am overwhelmed with emotion, and I won’t
try to force my words to make sense of this tragic and senseless loss. This has
easily been the hardest thing I’ve lived through and I wont try to relay the
kinds of pain and sadness and earth shattering sorrow for their closest friends
and family that I and so many others are feeling. I feel a lot of things as a
result of their loss, but more than anything I want to feel hate at the man who
committed this horrendous act. I want to project these feelings onto him. I
want him to feel the pain we all feel as a result of him taking their bodies
from us. I want him to bear the hate that he projected onto the bodies of those
three incredible individuals. But I can’t hate him. I can’t hate him for the
tainted images of Muslims he has internalized. I can’t hate him because films
like "American Sniper" exist and because there are hundreds of
Facebook pages demonizing Muslims. I can’t hate him because in his mind he
wasn’t killing the Yusor, Razan and Deah that were known and loved by so many.
In his mind, he was killing the very face of evil and ugly that the media
portrays to be Muslims. He was killing because he hated what he thought Yusor
and Razan’s hijabs symbolized.
I can
hate that the media has created an idea of what it means to be Muslim. I can
hate feeling Muslim. With the speculation that has emerged about the intent of
the horrendous crime, I feel Muslim. You can’t fight something you don’t name.
The media’s hesitation toward calling this a hate crime says to me that people
think that the right to practice Islam without fear is not a cause worth
fighting for. Without naming this as the hate crime it was, the message is that
hate toward Islam is not a cause worth deconstructing and extinguishing.
As I
stood side by side in the crowd of over 5,000 people asking God to grant mercy
to Our Three Winners, I pleaded God to not let the lives of these three
absolutely remarkable individuals go in vain. I pleaded God that Muslims and
non-Muslims alike take this tragic incident as a reminder of the importance of
combating anti-Muslim and anti-minority propaganda. I pleaded God that these are
the last souls taken by ignorance and hate. I prayed to God that one day,
feeling Muslim didn’t mean fearing for your life.
Nourhan Elsayed is a Trinity
junior.
Source:
http://www.dukechronicle.com/articles/2015/02/16/feeling-muslim#.VOTfCvnF9nN
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-media/feeling-muslim/d/101573