The most remarkable thing about the Muslim Student Association is how unremarkable it is.
As a Daily Lobo reporter, I’ve covered countless student group and organization meetings. The MSA general body meeting Monday was, perhaps, the most typical student-group meeting I’ve ever covered.
The MSA served Papa John’s Pizza, discussed the outcome of a recent fundraising drive (the proceeds went to benefit Pakistani flooding victims,) listened to a guest speaker and set up a game night for members, all without mentioning religious activities.
The MSA is even organizing a trip to the upcoming Lobo men’s basketball game.
All this is remarkable, of course, because the image of the Muslim extremist has been drilled into our heads by endless media reports starting immediately after Sept. 11 and continuing viciously into the present day.
The members’ plain, wholesome American-ness flies in stark contrast to this alarmist narrative.
Take, for example, MSA President Salim Shakir. He wears an American Eagle beanie with a red sweater and black slacks. His look embodies the preppy stereotype of any American college movie of the last 10 years.
He’s a member of the Beta Alpha Psi accounting and finance honor society. Come on, accounting. How much more non-threatening can you get?
Shakir said even his own family members are occasionally surprised by how different he is from what the average American expects a Muslim to be.
Recently married, Shakir invited a non-Muslim cousin to his wedding, who reacted with surprise to Shakir’s normality.
“My cousin, he’s two years older than me, so the day before (the wedding) we had my bachelor party, pretty much. We went playing paintball and watched ‘Jackass 3D’,” Shakir said. “When he went back, my aunts told my mom that he was like, ‘Whoa, it’s crazy. They’re just like my friends!’ Maybe he thought my wife was going to be this person that doesn’t speak English. He’s like, ‘She’s just like any other American girl!’”
The media’s reaction to Sept. 11 and its ongoing portrayal of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan play a big part in creating anti-Muslim sentiment, Shakir said.
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“Of course, after Sept. 11, that was like the worst thing ever that happened to us. And I’ve never met anyone, any Muslim, that was like, ‘Oh that wasn’t a big deal,’ or anything like that. Everyone thinks it’s so terrible,” he said. “(And) there’s the war in Iraq and stuff like that. So it builds up some tension with the Middle East, which is mostly Islamic countries.”
Danya Mustafa, MSA’s publicist, said the American public has misconceptions about Islam, most of which are fueled by media portrayals of the religion and its practitioners.
“We’re average Americans, you know. We like to watch Disney Channel. We like to go to football games … We’re normal,” she said. “It’s just that small faction of people that ruin it for the whole group of people. And that happens in every society. Unfortunately, right now, it’s happening to the Muslims.”
The guest speaker at the MSA meeting, Mustafa Dill, went into details of the media coverage of Islam. Dill, a former web editor for the Santa Fe New Mexican, recently started his own PR firm, Ummah Relations. Dill said he plans to use his PR firm to help Muslim organizations counter anti-Islamic sentiment.
This actually makes Dill the second most remarkable thing about the MSA meeting.
For a newspaper writer, a PR man putting his spin-doctoring skills to use for a noble cause is like a unicorn or a yeti — a mythical creature.
Dill said Islamic groups’ ineffectiveness in conveying messages doesn’t curb continued Islamophobia.
“We’ve done this for nine years since Sept. 11, and (realized), clearly, ‘It’s not working,’” he said. “They put out these press releases that say, ‘Islam is a religion of peace.’ Well, of course it is. But if that’s all you’re saying, it’s not connecting with the non-Muslim public.”
Dill pointed to news stories about a community center in New York (the so-called “9/11 Mosque”) and a massacre at the Fort Hood military post committed by a Muslim soldier as examples of Muslim organizations’ poor use of PR.
“When you look at the press releases, you can say, ‘This is an abject failure.’ Like when you look at what happened, say, at the community center in New York … Or the press releases at Fort Hood, and how ineffective those were,” he said. “What should have happened at Fort Hood is we should have had stories available to surface immediately about American Muslims that served in the military and have died in the sacrifices for their country.”
There should be an emphasis placed on similarities between Islam and other religions, instead of the differences, said MSA board member Samreen Anwar.
“If you spend a day with us, you’ll see that so many of our religious beliefs match up with other people’s beliefs,” she said. “Like Christians, their religious beliefs are so similar to ours. Just maybe, like, two things are different, but there’s so many things we have in common.”
Now, to be sure, there are differences between Islam and Christianity and the MSA versus other student groups. But these differences are lifestyle and belief choices that have nothing to do with violence or aggression or anti-Americanism.
For example, the MSA divides men and women into separate groups for social events because of the Islamic belief that people should refrain from sexual activity before marriage.
“In Islam we’re not supposed to date, or do anything until we get married. … (Our board is) a little more conservative (than the previous MSA board) … so we want to have the girls in one little area and the guys in another little area, so it’s not mixing or anything like that, because that’s kind of against our beliefs,” Shakir said.
To clarify, I would like to call attention to Shakir’s use of the word conservative. “Conservative” is the political-spectrum opposite of “radical” or “extremist.” And the MSA is the living embodiment that most Muslims are the opposite of extremists.
