On Thursday, Nov. 14, the university’s Hate Bias Response Program, the Muslim Alliance for Social Change and the Muslim Student’s Association hosted a discussion entitled Deconstructing Islamophobia. The talk’s panelists discussed the implications of Islamophobia abroad and on campus before providing audience members with some tools to combat this form of bigotry. 

The talk, held in ESJ, consisted of an opening exercise , a series of questions from Muslim students aimed at the panelists and finally a Q&A. During the opening exercise, each audience member was given a playing card and asked to hold it without looking. They were asked to intermingle, keeping in mind that those with lower numbers held the lowest position on the social totem pole, while those with the highest numbers had the highest positions. Once everyone had returned to their seats, Timea Webster, one of the evening’s hosts, asked what audience members noticed about the event. One attendee said they noticed groups forming, while another said it was “unpleasant” to categorize people based on the number on their card. Webster, who works as the assistant to the chief diversity officer in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI), asked the audience to reflect on why the activity fits with the topic of Islamophobia. She then explained that, as members of a marginalized group, Muslims are often treated as less than on the basis of this one facet of their identity. 

“How many marginalized people are terrified because they’re being treated a certain kind of way walking through this world?” Webster asked before passing the microphone over to Nana Brantuo, a graduate assistant with ODI and the night’s emcee.

The evening’s panelists included Su’ad Mahmoud, a junior studying computer science; Kristin Garrity, a senior research fellow with the Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University and a white convert; and Darakshan Raja, the co-director and co-founder of the grassroots organization Justice for Muslims Collective. 

“I want to first take a moment to… ground ourselves and think about how we’ve been socialized in this country in particular to think of Islam, to think of Muslims, not only domestically but internationally,” Brantuo said.

Brantuo explained that Islam is frequently perceived as barbaric, violent, uncivilized and extremely patriarchal. She displayed the “Cycle of Socialization,” which states that we’re born as blank slates and develop biases as we grow up as a result of our environment.

In the first question of the night, Brantuo asked the panelists to share their thoughts on the presence and persistence of Islamophobia in our country before and after the 9/11 attacks. Raja said that Islamophobia is embedded and built into our nation. She added that white Christian supremacy plays a major role in allowing Islamophobia to thrive in the U.S., and that Islam is perceived as un-American and undemocratic in this country.

“I will also be remiss to not mention that in the Americas in particular… a good chunk of folks who were enslaved were actually black Muslims,” Raja said. 

She also touched on the resistance and rebellion of black Muslims against slavery in her response. Resulting bans were instituted against Muslims because Islam was perceived as an “ungovernable, un-enslavable” religion. 

“Obviously, post-9/11, because of the war on terror, we’ve seen an escalation of it, but I think to only position Islamophobia as a post-9/11 phenomenon would be to do a lot of disservice to the deep histories of different Muslim communities being targeted in this country,” Raja said. 

Mahmoud said that Islamophobia itself is a lucrative business, and asked the audience to reflect on what the world would be like if it was no longer funded. She touched on the cross-generational trauma that Islamophobia has on Muslim families, citing the Rohingya people in Myanmar and Bangladesh and the Uyghur people of China as examples. 

The next question Brantuo asked was about the ways in which Islamophobia influences the betrayal of Islam and Muslims in American media. The first panelist to respond was Mahmoud, who said that as a hijabi, she has noticed a fascination in American media around women who veil. 

“There are a lot of TV shows and movies that portray women in hijab… as oppressed, and they are unable to communicate or live freely, and lack intellectual range… We see this construct of liberation when these characters end up removing the hijab,” Mahmoud said. 

Garrity took note of the different popular tropes around Muslim women perpetuated by the media. She said that Muslims in the media are portrayed as excessively violent, are examined under biological or race science, are forced to be either the “good” or “bad” Muslim and are subjected to white saviorism.

Raja pointed out that Islam and the Muslim world are mostly portrayed as “background noise” in movies, i.e. lots of desserts and background dialogue in languages associated with the Muslim world. She noted that it’s often difficult to tell if the dialogue is supposed to be in Arabic or Urdu. She said that Muslims living in the U.S. feel the need to Americanize themselves so they aren’t associated with these generalizations.

The third question Brantuo asked panelists was about how Islamophobia has personally affected them. Mahmoud discussed the unfair treatment and oppression she faces due to the intersection of her black, Muslim and female identities.

“My mom, when she first came here in 1988… was wearing a hijab and she was just on her way home, and a lot of the kids from the neighborhood ambushed her and threw eggs at her,” Mahmoud said. “It educated me about how Islamophobia was before 9/11.”

Mahmoud said that she is sometimes approached by people who are upset about her speaking up in class. 

“I’ve had a lot of people tell me I’ll go to hell, or I’ll burn, or they just give me threats… to my safety because I wear a hijab,” she said. 

Mahmoud also spoke about the difficulties of coming across people targeting Muslims while she’s out in public and the fear she feels when she gets notifications about acts of violence at mosques. A family member of hers recently had her hijab pulled off of her head.

“This constant state of worry and fear… It really disrupts your psyche and prevents you from being able to focus, and you’re always on high alert,” Mahmoud said. 

As a convert to Islam, Garrity faces some different struggles. She said that much of the discrimination she experiences comes from family member that don’t understand her choice to convert.

“I’ve lost some family, I’ve lost a lot of friends… I have a 4-year-old and I’ve had some family members… who grimaced at his touch… and wouldn’t even acknowledge my spouse who is from Turkey,” she said. 

Raja, raised in a working class South Asian community in the Bronx, said a lot of the Islamophobia she’s faced has resulted from state policies passed in response to 9/11. Many people in her community were undocumented at the time of the attack and ended up getting deported.

“We’re one of the largest communities of Muslims in the entire country,” Raja said. “Some folks have called it the 9/11 generation, because a lot of our political consciousness around Muslims in this country was unfortunately shaped because of the backlash that our communities experienced.” 

Raja also recalled there being a Muslim registry in her area. Community members who did not register faced incarceration. 

In the fourth and final question of the night, Brantuo asked the panelists what they think non-Muslim people can do to be good allies. Mahmoud told a story of a time that a non-Muslim person physically stood between her and some individuals harassing her at a train station. They did so without positioning themselves as a white savior, and the two became friends afterwards.

Garrity emphasized the importance of keeping up to date with Muslim issues and reminded the audience to think critically about the West and Islam without assigning their own biases or meanings. She said that meeting and befriending Muslims isn’t enough, and that there’s still a need for “critical reading and unlearning.” 

Raja said it’s important for non-Muslims to be aware of the ways in which universities can be complicit in Islamophobia. 

“Violence against our community is not just interpersonal… it’s being legislated,” she said.

Raja also stated the need for anti-bias training on campuses and for non-Muslims to both listen to Muslims and elevate their voices.

During the Q&A segment following the talk, associate professor Dr. Sahar Khamis took the mic to emphasize some of the issues brought up by the panelists, such as the impact of the white savior complex and what she calls the“Muslim women syndrome,” in which non-Muslims feel the need to save Muslim women. She asked the audience to think about what else can be done to change these narratives. 

“Having Muslim characters on the screen is not always the solution,” said Khamis, who works in the communications department. “It is necessary but it’s not sufficient, because sometimes these characters can also be seen in [a] stereotypical light… I personally think that owning our own narrative and having our own voice [are also important].”

Sophomore criminology and psychology double major Isabelle Dyson said she heard about the event through Khamis, whose “Digital Discourses in the Muslim World” course she’s taking.

“What I found really interesting was hearing about the perspective of a converted Muslim,” Dyson said. “ Her struggle showed many similarities to others, but also differences especially in terms of her family and how they treated her after she converted.”

Dyson said the speech gave her a better understanding of how Islamophobia works, particularly how it affects the everyday lives of Muslims.

“I naively thought it was something that only extremists really participated in and spread that kind of hate, but it was eye-opening to see just how hard it is for them on a daily basis,” Dyson said.