Anyone who ventures into the chapel of the Interfaith Center (IFC) on a typical evening early this fall will see something alien to most Americans, but familiar to 1.5 billion people across the world - a Ramadan service for the Muslims of Hopkins and the surrounding community.
During this time of the year, Muslims around the world celebrate Ramadan, the month when Islam's holy text, the Qur'an, was revealed.
"The Qur'an is the pinnacle of Arabic poetry," freshman Husain Danish said, "so during the service, the motions of everybody praying reflect the rhythm of the prayers."
As the sun sets, people start filing into the dimly-lit IFC chapel. Attendants are of all ages, ethnic origins and styles of dress, ranging from women in hijaabs and men in prayer caps to students in jeans and hoodies. The diversity is remarkable, but equally mesmerizing is the unity once the muezzin gives the athan (call to prayer) and everyone comes together at the front of the chapel.
Each congregant removes his or her shoes and makes the same motions, moving in harmony with the words of the prayers. After the service, the JHU Muslim Association (abbreviated as JHUMA, a pun on jummah, the weekly Friday afternoon prayer for Muslims), hosts a dinner for everyone to break his or her fast. Tables in the basement of the IFC are crowded with Hopkins students and other Muslims from the community who are welcomed by JHUMA since there are no mosques nearby.
Last February something happened to challenge the idea that all Muslims, despite cultural differences and different upbringings, could be united at Hopkins. The New York Times published an article entitled "Iraq's Shadow Widens Sunni-Shiite Split in U.S.," describing tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims on American college campuses. The article asserted that sectarian violence in Iraq had contributed to unrest between the two sects all over the world; most attacks are against Shiites, who are the minority in much of the world but the majority in Iran and part of Iraq.
In the article, a Hopkins student responsible for stocking a reading room with Islamic texts said that she had been told by JHUMA to remove some of the books by Shiite authors because there were too many of them.
The statement shocked the Hopkins campus, particularly JHUMA's leaders, who claimed that they had never promoted inter-Muslim tensions.
"What the Times said was the complete opposite of the way it is here," JHUMA President Omair Javed said. He emphasized that JHUMA gives all Muslims in the association the "prerogative to worship as they see fit," pointing to a prayer room in the lower level of the IFC. The room is small, faces eastward and has a prayer rug for anyone to use.
Javed explained that Muslims who use the room are either going for daily prayers between classes, since Muslims pray five times per day, or to pray in a different manner from the regular services. The services in the chapel are targeted toward a general group of worshippers rather than being sect-specific. "Anyone is welcome to come here and practice their faith," Javed said.
Javed wears Western clothes, and from the way he talks, one gets the sense that he knows how to transcend cultural boundaries. He declined to comment on his ethnic and national background, saying that he preferred to identify himself as Muslim, and that all other distinctions, whether sectarian, cultural or gender-based, are secondary.
Farah Qureshi, last year's president of JHUMA, was heavily involved in the reaction to the Times article.
She said that right after the article was published, JHUMA had a "town hall" type of meeting with the students in the association to hear what people had to say. Qureshi acknowledges that there have been occasional complications due to differences in people's interpretations of faith. Some people in the community have a more conservative view: They push for stricter separation of men and women and try to promote more conservative dress, among other things. In these cases, a compromise of some sort could usually be found. Qureshi was shocked that anyone would think sectarian discrimination existed on campus.
"Underclassmen turn to JHUMA for adjustment. Most of them come here having been the only Muslims in their communities growing up, and we want to be warm and welcoming and give them an alternate program to some of the new parts of college life that might be an unpleasant shock. We give them a safe haven," Qureshi said.
She stressed JHUMA's role in serving the community's basic needs and its emphasis on not imposing boundaries on people from different religious schools of thought. Qureshi said that they used the Times incident "as an opportunity to reach out to each other and embrace our shared values while also learning about and respecting our differences."
She said that although speakers who come to talk to JHUMA during association-inspired Islam Awareness Days or holy days are usually Sunni, an effort was made last year to have a Shiite Muslim give the jummah one Friday.
The vice president of JHUMA is Shayma Jawad. She is Iranian and a Shiite Muslim. Like Qureshi, she got involved in the executive board last year, trying to increase representation for all Muslims in the community.
"That was one encounter, and we learned from that. It was a concern and it allowed people to think more about differences in the way people practice, and hopefully this [incident] will help us not to marginalize others," Jawad said. Like Javed, she emphasizes that "commonalities are the most important" and that the association, despite all its diversity, is "still a cohesive group."
While the association works to constructively iron out its issues, Muslims on campus must simultaneously grapple with the issue of how they fit into a society that misunderstands them.
"I hate how emo kids can have a bullet hole through their ears and someone comes in with a hijaab and everybody's like, "Oh my god it's a terrorist!' I mean really, which one is scarier to you?" freshman Sarah Gubara said. She is Arab and Sunni Muslim and she describes herself as very devout. She fasts for Ramadan, does not drink alcohol and follows other major requirements of her religion, but dislikes more conservative Muslims' "holier-than-thou" attitude.
"Why make a big deal out of eating pork when you drink?" she said, denouncing hypocrisy in practicing Muslims who ignore certain traditions.
Gubara described herself as a talkative person who likes to acknowledge humor, particularly regarding attitudes towards Muslims in America, and sees no need to be demure or back down in the face of adversity. Gubara sometimes wears a hijaab, and stressed that she chooses to wear it more and more on a gradual basis for the sake of others.
She corrected the notion that she has to get used to wearing it, saying, "I'm not 'figuring it out.' I've made my choice to wear a hijaab and I don't need to get used to it. I'm getting the environment around me used to me."
She is not the only Muslim on campus who defies stereotypes. One source, an east African girl who preferred to be interviewed anonymously, described herself as a "fake Muslim." She expressed her frustration with cultural attitudes that pervert Islam.
"It's hard to be Muslim in American society, and American freedom is nice," she said.
Due to her parents' beliefs, which she sees as "hypocritical and overly patriarchal," she is not currently practicing Islam. Still, she respects the religion. She believes that Westerners' negative perception of Muslims stem from cultural perversions in the religion, which she observes in her own life and her own cultural background. She earnestly believes that people confuse religion with culture.
"It turned me off the religion for now until I can learn to separate the two," she said. She attended a JHUMA meeting at the beginning of the school year and said that Javed and Jawad were "very understanding" of her doubts. For now, she is taking time to understand the college environment - one that is more liberal than what she is accustomed to.
Jawad also understands the issues inherent in being a Muslim in American society. "I used to have to explain myself to people and get interrogated, especially in history and government classes," she said, describing post-Sept. 11 struggles in high school. Reinforcing what the source described, she expressed anger at the discriminatory perceptions of Islam.
"That's not Islam," she said of the Muslim stereotype. "That's culture. Culture causes misconception."
Jawad used the example of Khadija, the prophet Mohammed's wife and employer, to emphasize that Islam does not profess that women are inferior to men. She wears a hijaab every day, calling it "liberating," because she takes comfort in knowing that people are judging her by her actions. She feels that the hijaab equalizes her with men.
The most important part of a hijaab, she said, is what it symbolizes. The idea is that everyone, men and women, should be internally modest. Therefore many Muslim women do not wear hijaabs. It is a personal choice.
"You do everything in moderation. You reach out, and you be yourself," she said.
