MD MSA Not Perfect, But Still Home Say Students

Community News - Community News

Written by Mehreen Rasheed, Muslim Link Contributing Writer

Thursday, 11 March 2010 12:53

The Muslim Students’ Association at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md., raised about $17,536 at their annual fundraiser hosted on campus Mar. 6.

Students showcased the services and benefits the MSA provides to its members throughout the evening through speeches, testimonials and entertainment.The organization hosts jummah Friday prayer services on campus, daily congregational prayer, Islam and Qur’an classes, as well as general campus outreach events.

“We’ve created a place where Islamic etiquette is pushed,” said MSA President Adam Stephenson. “This is important to me because there are many fitnahs [trials] on our campus and we’ve created a place where we can feel protected from them and…feel confident in our beliefs before we go out again to be active citizens in the larger community around us.”

Muslim students first established the organization in 1969, and secured a full time prayer hall on campus in 1997. It provides students not only a place for daily congregational prayers, but a library and a space to spend time during the day. The MSA now has about 50 students attending general body meetings and up to 300 attending the weekly jummah prayer service, according to Stephenson.

Speaker Yusuf Silitine, director of the Arabic Program at Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., said he was touched when he saw the talents and potential of the MSA.

“People [at the mosques] always ask me, ‘where are the youth?’, and now I see they’re here, thriving in the MSA,” Silitine said. “You’ve built a sanctuary for yourself here where you are benefitting from the company of other Muslims.”

The students presented a short film to further illustrate the different aspects of the MSA. While parents were generally receptive to the students’ vision, some felt that they could have done more to reach out to the surrounding communities and parents.

“I wish more parents had come,” said Halima Quasem, a mother from Silver Spring, Md. “[The MSA] could have had more personal calls and ways to get people to come.”

Mumtaz Jahan, a Germantown, Md. mother, felt that the evening itself could have been more inclusive.

“The events were of interest to the students, not attractive to the parents,” Jahan said. “The video was funny, but parents would be more interested in learning about the Islamic things they do, like Qur’an classes.”

The MSA worked to contact as many people as possible, according to Event Organizer Karam Hijji, 21, a material science and engineering major.

“We mainly reached out to parents through the students,” said Hijji. “We also sent out emails to the local mosques.”

However, one of the biggest obstacles was the tight time constraint, Hijji said.

More than the activities and services the MSA provides, many students described it as fostering a close-knit community feeling of brotherhood or sisterhood.

For biology major Habiba Wada, 20, joining a Muslim student group in college was a welcome relief from being the odd one out in public school.

“It brings us Muslim students together on campus to allow us to feel like we belong to a community,” said Wada. “[It] is important especially for students who live on campus and away from their families.”

Sehar Maruf, 18, a biochemistry major, was involved in her high school’s MSA, and had heard before starting at college that U-Md.’s had a good reputation.

“It’s a really good support group,” Maruf said. “We’re all there for each other and everyone’s really understanding.”

Others, however, have pointed to deeper problems amidst apparent unity.

“On the surface it seems strong but we have internal divisions amongst ourselves, divisions based on which scholars we follow, how religious we are, and what sect we belong to,” said Ghazal Kango, 18, a bioengineering major.

Hammad Rasul, a junior economics and English major, said that minorities such as Shiite or Sufi Muslims have faced exclusion or prejudice at the hands of some MSA members.

“The only unity that is encouraged in the MSA is after everyone decides to conform to the beliefs of those students in charge and those who don’t are forced out,” Rasul said. “The MSA leadership puts people such as myself in a difficult situation where it makes me choose between MSA and my friends.”

Stephenson said he has not received any complaints about this matter during this year, but does not want the MSA to push people away and is attempting to create an open environment for all Muslims and non-Muslims.

“I feel as though we are better this year than we’ve been in the past…[but] I’m not going to say we’re perfect or even good on this matter,” Stephenson said. “If there is any issue, then…I am open to criticism, and happy to look into anything to make our MSA better.”