This Fall break, I travelled with seven other Duke students across North Carolina, discovering the stories of Muslims in the “Old North State.” As with all the best experiences, I left with more questions than answers.
The first question that usually comes up is “Why in the world would you want to do something like that?” Part of the answer is because through many student groups, Duke can provide money for those who can think of something to do during their Fall break that sounds more worthwhile than loafing around and watching Netflix at home. Beyond that, believe it or not, Muslims in North Carolina actually have valuable stories to share.
Many people are unaware of the presence of Muslims in this state beyond the image of doctors with funny names, African Americans with radical politics and militant Islamist youth. How do we get to a point where the public perception of Muslims is fuller and more genuine?
One way is to study the history of the state. In Fayetteville, we learned about Omar bin Said. Bin Said was a member of the aristocratic class and somewhat of an Islamic scholar in what is present-day Senegal, and was brought to the United States as a slave in 1807. His demeanor and knowledge of Arabic were a source of intrigue for his slaveholder as well as for modern scholars. His autobiography, found in 1995, is the only American slave narrative known to exist in Arabic. Some of his Arabic writings are available in the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library of UNC.
This isn’t just an interesting story; it illustrates that the United States, and the state of North Carolina in particular, has had encounters with Islam and Muslims from its earliest days. It’s also a reminder as to how the effects of slavery and colonialism continue to play out and affect our daily lives. How many Muslims in the United States are the descendants of slaves? How many are the descendants of people colonized by European imperial powers? The presence of Muslims in America forces this country to address those ugly realities of our history along with those of our current foreign policies.
But what I found more useful on the trip than researching in libraries was to actually hear the individual accounts of Muslims across the state. When the media only replays certain narratives of Muslims, people’s individual voices are drowned out. Muslims mainly exist in the general public’s consciousness when they hear about a terrorist attack. They aren’t the cancer survivors, the parents concerned about their kids getting into a top college or the high school graduates with hopes of leaving the ghetto for good.
Humanizing Muslims by sharing their everyday human struggles, however, wasn’t the main motivation of my trip either. I didn’t travel around North Carolina during my Fall break to remind others that Muslims also bleed, fart and cry. That may be a useful reminder for some, but I hope that the majority of my audience can discuss things at a deeper level as well.
Some of my struggles growing up, and that continue today, have had to do with feelings of alienation and a lack of belonging. Part of it was probably due to general existential angst, but a significant amount of it was more directly due to my Muslim identity in the society that I live in. As part of negotiating these struggles, I realized the value in reflecting and sharing stories with others who have had similar experiences.
Don’t be fooled to think that there’s such a thing as a singular “Muslim experience.” If anything, this trip has reinforced that this is far from the truth. It is fascinating, however, to see how so many individuals are tied together by the delicate string of a common-faith tradition. People often use their faith or spirituality to find a sense of belonging. The sense of belonging isn’t limited to the four walls of the mosque; for the believer, it extends beyond them and encompasses the entire universe, even past death. It’s amazing to see that sense of community persist when the walls of almost every mosque we visited had been vandalized at one point or another since Sept. 11th. Despite the unwelcoming gestures from a select few, Muslims continued to create their sense of identity within the larger society.
In sharing stories with other Muslims in North Carolina, we shared our hopes and dreams along with our fears, anxieties and questions: Where did this Islamophobia come from and when and how is it going to leave? Why are so many mosques segregated along racial or ethnic lines and what role will the new generation of Muslims play in solving this problem? How do you preserve a rich and valuable tradition but allow it to grow with the changing times? How do you find love in a world that seems so hopeless and disconnected?
Of course, there are no easy answers to any of these questions. But this Fall break, the eight of us—the self-titled “Nomads of North Carolina”—found a way to begin to work some of them through. You can follow some of those thoughts at our blog: www.nomadsofnc.wordpress.com.
Ahmad Jitan is a Trinity junior. His column runs every other Thursday.
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