I grew up in Los Angeles, and the racial division in my high school was exactly 50 percent Caucasian, 50 percent East Asian. Needless to say, I did not come into contact with Islam on a regular basis. I didn’t even know much about it at all. All of this changed when I came to Georgetown.
Georgetown’s strong Muslim student community was enough to get my attention upon arriving on campus, and when I chose to live on the Hindu Living Floor during my sophomore year (located on the ground floor of Copley, where the Muslim Student Association’s prayer room is located) and participate in the South Asian Society’s Rangila dance show, I was suddenly thrust into contact with people from many different religious backgrounds to which I had never been previously exposed. A few of the people with whom I became very close were Muslims, and one of them became MSA President his senior year.
At first, I was utterly clueless about Muslim religious history and practice. But once I became slowly more exposed, it piqued my interest. Suddenly, I found myself signing up for more Islam courses (and eventually justifying it by declaring a uslim-Christian Understanding certificate). Now, as a senior, I have even chosen to write my thesis in Asian Studies on tourism and its interaction with two minority groups in China: Tibetans and uslims.
Why and how did this religion, to which I was so utterly ignorant about before college and to which I have no cultural or familial ties to, come to occupy such an important place in my undergraduate career?
First of all, it has to be the people. We all know that recent media portrayal of Muslims has painted an awful picture of Islam and its followers. Luckily, there are organizations like the Georgetown MSA that serve to tear that picture in half. Anyone who has participated in an MSA-sponsored event here on campus can attest to the openness and truly welcoming way in which anyone is accepted to learn and participate in the religion.
The MSA-sponsored Ramadan Fast-a-thon, which occurred last Wednesday, is a perfect example. Their eagerness to re-educate people about Islam and its values and to welcome anyone regardless of faith is easily seen when you walk into an event like the Fast-a-thon dinner, any iftar, or a prayer or education session in the prayer room.
Second, the religion itself has a natural pull. For anyone not previously exposed to it, simple self-study or taking a class or two opens up a world of experience. Being a student of history, I am very interested in how previous events have shaped the Muslim world today and right now I am taking a class on Islamic law and politics. Every time I enter that class, a new misconception clears in my mind – contrary to contemporary media views, Islam in its true, unadulterated sense is not spread via “the sword” by forcing conversion, something absolutely forbidden in the Quran; it accepts all people of the Book who act morally as those who will be saved on Judgment Day.
Furthermore, Islam acknowledges all previous prophets as true messengers of God and even says that each world community has had a prophet. Now, as I get into the nitty-gritty of political organization in the classical period, more misconceptions about Islam’s true nature are being revealed – there is so much to learn that I don’t want to stop until I feel I have a true understanding of the religion.
My personal experiences with the members of the Georgetown MSA have led me to deeply respect them both on an individual and a group level. Together they are a group of people with an extremely strong sense of faith who live their lives by a moral code that amazes me. But on an individual level, an MSA member is just another Georgetown student like you or me. From this group have come some of my closest friends who have taught me about a religious outlook on life that is both new and different, but at the same time interestingly familiar.
Lauren McGaughy is a senior in the College.
