Muslim
students lack support at Miami
Seif Hamid is a senior Marketing major at Miami. A skilled
DJ, he spends most nights performing at Pachinko's; he's also involved with
his hip-hop/world music group, The Desert Crew, and intends to go into music
management following his graduation in May. He is soft-spoken, articulate, and
straightforward about his beliefs.
He is also one of the estimated 5 to 6 million American Muslims. Although it's difficult to determine the exact number of American Muslims (due in part to the fact that religion isn't listed among the questions on the census), what's certain is that their religious needs aren't always met. The country has only one mosque for every 5000 Muslims, and many towns, including Oxford, have no place for Muslims to pray. Perhaps even more significantly, they have no place to meet.
"When I came here freshman year, I didn't know anyone," Hamid said. "There's not much diversity on campus. There's some, but I didn't know that freshman year. The one thing I missed was that there is no active Muslim Students' Association."
Indeed, the Oxford branch of the Muslim Students' Association dissolved years ago and today exists only on paper. Matthew Gordon, a religious studies professor and the organization’s former faculty advisor, believes that a lack of leadership killed the MSA, and Hamid has discovered that a lack of support is preventing it from being resurrected. When he and several other Muslim students campaigned to jumpstart the MSA two years ago, their fliers and posters generated some interest, but not enough to bring life back to the organization.
"It's one of those things that wasn't there when I was here freshman year," Hamid said. "It'd be nice if it were there."
Without an on-campus Muslim organization, or even a nearby designated place for worship, Hamid has relied on personal contacts to join up with fellow Muslims. His primary means, he said, is "...just meeting them, finding out they're Muslim. There's a very, very small Arab population on campus. Several of those students are Muslim. Some of them said 'I have a friend I want you to meet.'"
Although it may be difficult to be Muslim on such a predominantly Christian campus, Seif Hamid is nobody's victim.
"I've never run into any problems. The fact that I'm a Muslim is respected by my friends. The friends I met were always eager to learn about it. Most people are very accepting of the fact." Even after the tragedy of 9/11, a time during which American Muslims were mistrusted, threatened, and harmed by the paranoid, Hamid felt relatively safe.
"Luckily, nothing like that happened to me. I have close friends who live in other areas who did run into some problems, but nothing too bad in terms of physical harm. Just things I think shouldn't go on.
"Even around September 11 and recently, with the war... I may have gotten a few bad looks, but nothing worse.... it really wasn't even that big a deal. I was never scared to go anywhere or change what I was doing." He attributes this to the sheltered nature of Oxford.
Apart from the lack of an on-campus Muslim student organization, Hamid feels that the lack of nearby places of worship poses an obstacle for Muslims at Miami, but he finds that even this sort of adversity can lead to help from others. "There's no place, no mosque, no prayer room on campus. In my situation, I pray at home, or at work-- I work in the bookstore, and if I'm at work and it comes time to pray, I can go into my boss's office. Which is actually an example of how people have been helpful; they understand that I'm Muslim and I'm practicing." While there is no official prayer room on campus, Hamid doubts that there would be any obstacles to setting up an unofficial one: "I'm sure that if a group of students wanted to get together on campus some Friday -- Friday is the congregational day-- there'd be no problem in doing that."
Many problems that affect Muslim students do so in more subtle ways. Christine Asmar, a professor at Sydney, Australia's Institute of Teaching and Learning whose April 2 seminar at Miami, "Engaging with Muslim Students in Western Classrooms," focused on the plight of Muslims in universities, agrees that Muslim students are generally treated fairly well; their problem, she argues, is that the ignorance of Muslim tradition and culture in America-- as well as the automatic assumption that they're oppressed-- is overwhelming. This problem runs rampant at Miami, which Asmar refers to as a "J. Crew U."-- a school where conformity is stressed. Asmar believes that the lack of diversity leads students to warn their younger siblings away from the university in the fear that they, too, will be unable to express themselves at Miami.
Fortunately, Seif Hamid doesn't feel the pressure to conform to college stereotypes, particularly as they relate to alcohol, which is prohibited by Islam.
"It's not a problem by any means. There's the whole college atmosphere-- the whole Uptown atmosphere. The bar scene... I'm not always happy to be in that atmosphere. I'm not always excited about it. But it's not a problem; I never feel pressured to drink. I have my values." Content in his beliefs, Hamid believes that the desire to do good is universal no matter what religion one chooses to follow.
Despite the lack of a support group, the biggest change Hamid has experienced during his four years at Miami is spiritual. "I've matured in my faith," he said.