{"id":3322,"date":"2009-11-06T15:02:28","date_gmt":"2009-11-06T20:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/?p=3322"},"modified":"2017-06-22T10:21:43","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T15:21:43","slug":"msa-works-to-break-stereotypes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2009\/11\/06\/msa-works-to-break-stereotypes\/","title":{"rendered":"MSA works to break stereotypes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"OfficerWidad Boussaha, a Muslim engineering student from Algeria, hopes the Muslim Student Association will help change the way students at Sinclair Community College see Islam.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to show the meaning of Islam because many, many people felt that Islam is just terrorists,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cWe want people to know the true Islam is peace.\u00a0 This is the first meaning of Islam.\u201d<\/p>\n

……<\/span><\/p>\n

The Muslim Student Association<\/strong><\/p>\n

The MSA is an organization of faculty, staff and students who happen to be Muslim, according to Assistant Professor Abdullah Johnson, who serves as the club\u2019s advisor.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not there trying to make anybody Muslim,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Club<\/p>\n

Johnson said the club is a place for Muslims and non-Muslims to come together, ask questions about Islam and learn from each other.\u00a0 He encourages teachers who are covering Islam in their classes to invite members of the club to discuss Islam with their students.\u00a0 The club also does community service together at sites such as the House of Bread, according to member Ramon Mejia.<\/p>\n

Johnson said club members sometimes face discrimination because of their faith, and he encourages them to respond to discrimination with patience.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to stand firm in your faith.\u00a0 You have to be patient,\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cWhy get caught up on why people don\u2019t like you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Reversion to Islam<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mejia, who was raised as a Catholic, thought Islam was a religion of hate before he was deployed to Iraq in 2003.\u00a0 After hearing the Islamic call to prayer in Baghdad, Mejia became curious about the religion and studied it for the next five years.\u00a0 He chose to revert to Islam on Aug. 29, 2008.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Islam one does not simply convert, but one truly reverts to what one should have been all along,\u201d Mejia said.<\/p>\n

Mejia is not the only person in the MSA that has reverted to Islam. \u00a0Johnson was a Christian minister before his reversion in 1996.\u00a0 He said the change seemed like a natural fit for him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIslam is a simple religion,\u201d Johnson said.\u00a0 \u201cOther people make it difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wearing the hijab<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"DougBoussaha said she was born a Muslim.\u00a0 She chooses to wear a hijab, or scarf, to cover her head.\u00a0 She said she has faced discrimination from people who don\u2019t know her because of her choice to wear the head covering.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I came here the first time, people that don\u2019t know me, they start (to) look at me like I\u2019m mean or I\u2019m bad in my work, here, everywhere,\u201d Boussaha said.\u00a0 \u201cBut with time, they know that I\u2019m not a bad person.\u00a0 I don\u2019t hurt people; I just try to help people.\u00a0 From this point they start to understand me more and more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fatima Idmahand, a Nursing student, is also a Muslim woman, but she chooses not to wear a hijab.\u00a0 She said because of her choice, many people mistake her for an American even though she was born in Morocco.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I was wearing a scarf like her (Boussaha), they would think I\u2019m not from here, and they (would) know I\u2019m Muslim,\u201d Idmahand said.\u00a0 \u201cBut they don\u2019t know that the first time (we meet) because I don\u2019t wear the hijab.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diversity on campus<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"LeftJohnson thinks students need to be open-minded about diversity and remember that there are many cultures and lifestyles around them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you mature and learn about different cultures and different religions, you learn they all have the same problems,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Boussaha wants students to identify Islam with its message of peace, not with the violence associated with terrorism.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to say that everywhere there are good and bad (people) like here in the United States\u2026I want to say that (they are) everywhere, not just Muslim people, not just the Middle East,\u201d she said. \u00a0\u201cWe can\u2019t judge one person from 9\/11 to all people.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Widad Boussaha, a Muslim engineering student from Algeria, hopes the Muslim Student Association will help change the way students at Sinclair Community College see Islam. \u201cWe want to show the meaning of Islam because many, many people felt that Islam is just terrorists,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cWe want people to know the true Islam is peace.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[793,790,1976,792,788,791,121],"class_list":["post-3322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-hijab","tag-islam","tag-meagan-ewton","tag-msa","tag-muslim","tag-muslim-student-association","tag-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-RA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3322"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10088,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3322\/revisions\/10088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}