A difference in faith

Muslims at UCI and CSUF approach religion differently, both privately and publicly

By: Jessica Terrell
Posted: 4/24/08

A young man in an orange T-shirt and jeans stands at the corner of a second floor balcony, watching the setting sun paint the sky with streaks of orange and pink.

Glancing down at a concrete clearing where a solitary student sits bowed in prayer, the young man on the balcony cups both hands around his mouth and begins to sing the Adhan, a traditional Islamic call to prayer that is sung five times a day in Muslim communities across the world.

"Allahu Akbar," he calls. "Allah is most great."

Slowly, students began to gather, making a neat pile of backpacks and skateboards before lining up in a row to begin their evening prayers.

The students are members of the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine, a group that has been called an extremist hate group by some critics and was recently referred to as the most conservative Muslim Student Association in the country by the New York Times.

In contrast to their frequently negative portrayal by the media, MSU members describe their club as a friendly and open student organization that supports a moderate lifestyle, while encouraging open discussion in the community.

Their club is an independent branch of the MSU, a national organization with clubs on over 200 college campuses across the country, including Cal State Fullerton.

From reports of anti-Semitism on the UCI campus to struggles at Harvard to obtain facilities deemed proper for Muslim women to controversial speakers and national debates about inclusion, the struggles of the Muslim student groups are playing out under public scrutiny.

With varying degrees and methods, the clubs at CSUF and UCI deal with the modern expression of the Islamic faith - A religion that many people still regard with suspicion, but is gradually integrating into American life.





Two campuses, two worlds

Despite falling under the umbrella of a national organization, the two branches at CSUF and UCI are starkly different groups with very different leaders, representing multiple facets of a shared faith that has been thrust into the spotlight in recent years.

At CSUF, the club is led by an easygoing student from El Salvador who converted to Islam after a join-a-club day. UCI students are led by a conservative Muslim who had no intention of leading until group prayer inspired him to invest his time in the club.

At UCI, club President Omar Zarka, 21, explains that it is a measure of respect for him to refuse to shake a woman's hand. At CSUF, club President Kevin Santos Flores, 24, shakes hands firmly and sits alone in a room with a female reporter with the door closed, something that would be taboo to conservative Muslims.

Flores, who attributes many of his decisions to his Central American heritage, said, "I respect people's beliefs and don't condemn them if they don't want to shake hands, but personally, I do."

In Irvine, up to 40 students gather several times a day to pray in a small private square behind the Cross-Cultural Center. At Fullerton, Muslim students eschew the meditation room in the Titan Student Union because of students who use the room to study or "make out."

Instead, students like Flores find space to pray in offices, next to buildings and on quiet balconies facing East toward Mecca.

Some Fullerton members attribute the differences in organization and active participation to a commuter school mentality that pervades student life on campus.

"UCI has a strong MSU, but lots of people live in a two-mile radius," said Fullerton club member Sumanah Mithani. "Being a commuter school makes it harder to organize student groups."

The Islamic standard

The national organization recently came under increased public scrutiny when The New York Times reported on an MSA West conference where club members from different campuses grappled with ideas about inclusion.

Different branches and their respective leaders spent time at the conference debating whether their clubs should embrace all Muslims or only those who conform to strict Muslim tenets. Some members view these growing differences of opinion as a positive sign.

"I think that when there is a difference in opinion in an organization, it is a sign of maturity," said Irvine club member Omar Kurdi, 20.

Opinions differ on topics like intermingling between men and women and proper feminine attire.

At UCI, President Omar Zarka said part of his job as president is to make sure that club events adhere to a basic Muslim standard.

"The basic Muslim standard would be, if you are having a meeting, men should sit on one side, women on the other," Zarka said.

Even at the more traditional Irvine club, Islamic adherence differs among members. For example, not all women at Irvine wear a hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf. However, board member Nida Chowdhry said that some women feel inspired to don the hijab after joining the club.

"Whether or not someone is dressed inappropriately is not up to the discretion of the MSU to do anything about it," Zarka said.

The line is drawn when the problem is behavior, Zarka said. He would, for example, ask a student who brought alcohol to a meeting to leave because Islam forbids the use of alcohol.

Because of their modest dress, Muslim women are often the focus of media attention. But from a behavior standpoint, Zarka said males challenge behavior more than females do. An example, Zarka said, would be men running through the women during a water balloon fight at a coed barbecue.

"Out of respect for the other gender, we are expected to act appropriately," Zarka said.

Most members are aware of what type of conduct is acceptable. Chowdhry, who occasionally referred to Zarka as "Omar" and then corrected herself to say "Mr. Zarka," said that female members who have been around the club would know to sit a few feet away from Zarka.

At Fullerton, Flores said he doesn't try to implement any male or female segregation. Despite his relaxed views, Flores said that at most events, women tend to sit with women and men tend to sit with other men.

When it comes to encouraging certain behaviors, Zarka said the club tries to approach it in a friendly peer-to-peer manner.

"Nobody is perfect, but we can give each other advice about living up to [our own] standards," Zarka said.

Keeping up this Muslim standard of behavior on a college campus is part of the challenge of being both Muslim and American. It is going to be difficult for the Muslim community to cloister the younger generation and keep them away from American secular values, said Professor Ben Hubbard, who teaches comparative religion at CSUF.

"They are certified fully-fledged Americans who want to be a part of the country politically [and/or] culturally," Hubbard said. "That is going to cause some strife in families, but I think it's going to happen. It is inevitable in some ways."

Chowdhry, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Pakistan, said her generation feels a stronger sense of ownership and citizenship than their parents, which makes them more confident about merging their faith with American life.

"We are Muslim-Americans. There is a difference in that I feel like our generation, to a certain extent, is more confident and less afraid of practicing our faith," Chowdhry said.

A debate about Israel

Most of the controversy - and there is a lot of it - surrounding the Irvine club centers on their views of Israel. The club has sponsored a number of speakers - some of whom have been labeled as anti-Semitic - discussing the Israeli-Palestinian debate.

The events have brought a lot of heat onto the club, and a lot of it has been taken out of context, President Omar Zarka said. For example, "When someone says Israel should be wiped off the face of the planet, they are talking about policies ... That Israel's policies should be wiped off the face of the planet, not the Jewish people."

Irvine members insist there is a big difference between criticizing Israel's policies and anti-Semitism. Some in the Jewish community disagree.

"They claim to be against the political views of Israel," Jeffrey Rips, executive director of the Hillel Foundation of Orange County, said. "But what they do, a lot of it crosses the line and becomes anti-Semitism."

The group at Irvine has a tendency to invite inflammatory speakers to campus as opposed to people who might be critical of Israel but are more conciliatory, Professor Ben Hubbard said.

A youtube.com video shows an event held on the UCI campus from May 15-18, 2006 with students marching and chanting "Judaism - Yes, Zionism - No." During the same weekend, controversial speaker Amir Abdel Malik Ali, speaking from behind a podium covered with a "Israel, the 4th Reich" sign, called Rupert Murdoch, the creator of Fox News Channel, a Zionist Jew and said, "You got to call it the way you see it. There is a holocaust happening in the Holy Land. There's a genocide happening in the Holy Land. There is oppression happening in the Holy Land and it must be fought and it will be fought and it is being fought."

Hubbard said there is a fine line between rhetoric and anti-Semitism.

"Of course, it all depends on who is doing the defining of the terms," Hubbard said. "But when criticism of Israel becomes so sweeping and so intense that it morphs or transforms into 'The state of Israel is illegitimate' or 'It shouldn't exist at all,' then you're getting very close to saying the Jewish people are illegitimate."

Irvine board members said their aim in organizing events is to raise awareness and to bring about debate. They try to choose speakers by a club consensus and said the speakers (even the most controversial ones) are educated people who really care about the topic. They said that people who think they are fanning the flames of anti-Semitism are not listening to everything the speakers have to say and take snippets out of context.

"No one is saying Jews should be evacuated from Israel," UC Irvine club member Omar Kurdi said. "No one is saying those things."

Critics of the Irvine club argue that MSU sponsored speakers do little to encourage rational debate, but rather, add fuel to a fire with no positive purpose. Club members argue that this is not true. Indeed, Nida Chowdhry said that they would not talk about Palestine and Israel if there was no hope.

"We can make a difference. I think we are told we can't make a difference, so we don't," Chowdhry said. "It's not a wasteland of politics that we can't solve."

President Zarka said he believes Jews have a right to a Jewish state, and his problem with Israel does not lie with the idea of a Jewish theocracy. His problem is with Israel's policies, including the eviction of Palestinians from their land. Zarka advocates a one-state solution.

Although Zarka denies allegations that the club wore green armbands in support of Hamas at a recent rally (he said the armbands were to show solidarity with the Palestinian people) he said, "I think everyone in the MSU agrees Palestinians have the right to resist impositions of Israeli policies ... How they go about doing it is up to them in their context."

However, Hillel's director said the group clearly calls "for there to be no state of Israel.

"There is no ambiguity in what they do," Rips said. "That's not disagreeing with the policies of the government. They say it is, but it's not. It is not about the policies of Israel; it's about the right of existence of the state of Israel."

The UCI club's views about Israel are mentioned in a recent report on anti-Semitism at UCI that suggests the university administration take a more active roll in controlling on-campus clubs or suggests that Jewish students enroll in college elsewhere.

Reports of anti-Semitism

Allegations of anti-Semitism at UCI were investigated for three years by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights after a complaint was filed by the Zionist Organization of America. After visiting the campus numerous times, investigators concluded that when incidents did happen, the administration acted appropriately, said UCI Director of Media Relations Cathy Lawhon.

The issue did not close with the release of the OCR report. The Hillel Foundation of Orange County announced the formation of a second task force, called the Orange County Independent Task Force, in February 2007. After a year of investigation, it found the opposite of the Federal investigation.

The task force released a lengthy report in February and suggested that action be taken to curb anti-Semitism on campus.

However, MSA's Nida Chowdhry questioned the report.

"It wasn't an independent task force. An independent task force comprised of who? There was a bias there already," Chowdhry said. "I think the independent report that came out was just looking for any loopholes it could find in the first report and trying to stretch that and make something out of that."

Following the release of the second report, Sen. Arlen Spector (R - Pa.), Sam Brownback (R - Kan.) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R - Ariz.) sent a letter to the secretary of the Department of Education questioning the results and procedures of the OCR investigation.

Professor Ben Hubbard, who attended a community meeting about the second investigation, said there is disagreement within the Jewish community about how significant the anti-Semitism is at UCI. Some current students found that there is not much anti-Semitism, but former students and community members are more critical, Hubbard said.

"There is division about whether or not students should fear for their lives, which is ridiculous, and whether or not the situation is just lovely," Hubbard said. "The truth is probably somewhere in between."

Lawhon said the university is not going to start condemning speakers.

"While we may hate or dislike what they have to say, we have to support their First Amendment rights," Lawhon said.

Jewish student leaders at Irvine released a statement at www.ochillel.org that says the Jewish community at UCI is thriving.

"The reality is that verbal anti-Semitism spurred by controversial student groups unfortunately continues to exist on campus. However, Jewish student life is able to expand and prosper," wrote the students.

CSUF student Dean Abramowitz, who graduated from high school in Irvine, said he doesn't think anyone on the UCI campus feels like they are going to be attacked by a Muslim.

"But I think when we sit down and talk about it - It's pretty amazing that there is a group so radical about their beliefs here in Irvine," Abramowitz said.

The most hated group on campus?

A basic Internet search for the Irvine Muslim Student Union will return articles and blogs referring to the group as promoters of radicalism and anti-Semitism. The club's reputation does not go unnoticed by its members.

"After hearing all this rhetoric, we start to believe it ourselves, that we are the most hated group on campus," Irvine club member and cultural coordinator Omar Kurdi, 20, said. "And that's not true. We get a lot of respect."

Some members said there may be intentional reasons behind what they view as rumors and inaccurate reporting that were taken out of context.

"There are people and groups that don't want our message to be heard and they are going to try and stifle us in any way that they can," Kurdi said.

Irvine's Nida Chowdhry said the club's reputation and the way the media portrays Muslims make her nervous.

"I hesitate saying some words out loud. It stinks to worry that someone might hear part of your conversation and assume something," Chowdhry said. "Why can't I say Jews and Israel? think I have been made to feel this way."

UCI club President Omar Zarka and Chowdhry said that a lack of cultural understanding contributes to the reputation of the club. Chowdhry, in particular, talked about how disappointed she has been with media coverage of the club.

"Ignorance is a really scary thing. All these terms that are being thrown around, like militant-Jihadism and Islamo-facism - It's so funny when you are of the faith, and you are like 'What are they talking about?' If you had a basic understanding of the faith, you would see this has nothing to do with the faith," Chowdhry said. "It's scary when people don't have a basic understanding and so what is told to them, they take it."

Interaction between MSU members at Irvine and Jewish students is improving, according to Kurdi, who said that he knows many of the Jewish student leaders on campus by their first names. Their speakers have brought about an increase of discussion and debate on campus, Kurdi said.

Many Jewish students at Irvine and many Muslim students are Persian, said UCI student Stephanie Haddad.

"They interact well a lot of the time," Haddad said. "They have the same values, and it's interesting to see how much religion can affect things. I think the media makes it out to be a lot worse than it is."

Repeated attempts to contact Jewish student leaders involved with Hillel were unsuccessful.

Prayer's End

The Irvine club's evening ritual of prayer is obscured from the rest of campus by a high concrete wall, hidden away from the hurried crowd of students rushing to class as the street lamps click on and the crescent moon rises in the sky.

By the time the Adhan is completed, 15 or so students have lined up in the concrete square. One male student stands in front, reciting a passage from the Koran. The students, heads bowed in reverence, look like so many of the other students on the UCI campus, differentiated only by their solemn poses and neatly trimmed beards.

Nida Chowdhry, her headscarf covered by a grey hooded jacket, shivers slightly in the breeze. Only one other woman has arrived for prayer.

"I don't know where all the girls are," she said. "I think they went to get ice cream."

She shrugs and walks off to join in the prayer.

Going a different way

As the only child in a Protestant family that fled the civil war in El Salvador, Fullerton club President Kevin Santos Flores knew his decision would be hard on his mother.

Flores tried to warm up his mother to his choice of converting to the Islamic faith.

"I think she felt like she had failed because as a Christian, you try to save as many people as you can," Flores said. "I think with me changing religions, she felt like she had failed somehow."

Flores said his mother worried that he was being influenced by crazy people or that his life would be harder as a Muslim-American.

"She was just worried that they [the government] could label me a terrorist and I wouldn't have any rights," Flores said. "I think she is still worried."

Despite his mother's reservations, Flores said he felt like he had found his truth in Islam. It was not the result he had expected when he began a search for religious meaning a few years before.

Out of high school, Flores said he partied hard before deciding to search for deeper meaning in his life.

"I wanted to know what reality was, what the truth was," he said. "I started searching. I believed that the truth lay in one of the main three religions."

He studied Judaism for a little while, but did not like the idea of a "chosen people." Islam, a religion he said he knew little about outside of Malcolm X and "Indiana Jones" movies, was last on his list.

After studying a pamphlet on Islam, he came by a Muslim Student Association event at Cal State Fullerton's annual Discover Fest.

Naseef Kazi, who was club president at the time, recalled Flores moseying into one of their events toting a skateboard. He approached Kazi and said he had a few questions about Islam. He told Kazi he wanted to know the "truth."

"It was an interesting approach," Kazi said.

After spending time studying the religion and hanging out with club members, Flores converted. The actual act of converting was easy. It was adjusting to a new lifestyle that took a little time, he said.

Flores stopped hanging out with many of his friends for a while so that he could get used to Muslim standards, like not drinking alcohol.

"Not eating pork was hard," he said.

Flores invested a lot of time in the club and in Fall 2007, with many of the club's leaders graduating, he ran unopposed for president.

Kazi said the Fullerton club was more conservative under his leadership but that clubs at Fullerton tend to be cyclical like that.

The Fullerton club sponsors a variety of campus speakers and cultural events, but unlike their counterparts at Irvine, the Fullerton club has made a deliberate choice to avoid politics.

"We try to keep our focus on religion and welcoming students and stay away from political statements," said CSUF club member Sumanah Mithani. © Copyright 2008 Daily Titan