Soundslide journal: The Muslim Student Association (part one)

For much of the last three weeks, I spent lots of time editing a Muslim Student Association soundslide with Risa Chuman. She dedicated plenty of time to work on the edits, so I really owe her for a lot of the work she did.

In this project, we took photo and audio recordings from the Muslim group's Hijab Day event. For this occasion, the group posted a desk with hijabs for women to wear on Tuesday, Oct. 26. The participants would borrow a hijab (head scarf) and wear it for the whole day on Oct. 27. Then they would talk about their experience at the Muslim Student Association's meeting on Oct. 28.

The photo shoots were the easiest part of the entire project. Risa was having some technical problems with her camera, so most of the photos were from my camera. I'm still nervous whenever I take photos, so I really have to get used to taking photos at public events.

I thought part of the project would end up as a photo journal of Risa's experience in taking the Hijab Day challenge, so I took some pretty funny photos of Risa. She smiles and laughs a lot, so she was very photogenic for the occasion.

By the time we were finishing the story, though, Risa wanted to focus more on the other students who participants. I would have liked to publish her photos, but the decision really helped us focus more on everyone else's perspective.

The last part of the soundslides project was a recording from the Muslim Student Association meeting. The recording actually was the least useful part our project for the entire week. I was upset that I couldn't include some of these interesting discussions about religious rights for women.

In many ways, the Muslims at the meeting were much more progressive than many other Americans were. The Muslim Student Association president, Zakiya Khalil, especially had some interesting discussions about how the hijab actually liberates women.

"When you're covered up, you don't have to please anyone else," Khalil said. "You are how you are. You don't have to please that person or that person, because you should be content with how your body is. You should respect yourself and honor yourself and be a dignified human being."

Khalil also spoke about how women without a hijab have to constantly worry about how their hair looks. In some ways, a hijab helps to teach women that they don't have to set themselves apart from everyone else just to be dignified.

"Today, we see people doing crazy things," Khalil said. "Like, they're wearing the worst clothes and they're being constantly uncovered. So I don't know if that means they're being liberated. In Islam, if you're covered up, you're liberated, because you don't have to please anyone else. You just do whatever you want because you want to do it."

The discussion actually counteracts many American perceptions of Islam. American television is almost constantly obsessed with showing how the hijab imprisons women to live in impoverished communities under the scrutiny of all the men in the country. I've seen this awful misconception all the time on CNN and various other news networks, reported by people such as Christiane Amanpour.

Ironically, Amanpour held an even more racist debate on the October 24 program of "This Week" on ABC. It involved people who are presumably members of the Muslim community in New York. Her big question was probably the stupidest question: "Is Islam dangerous?"

Of course, it isn't a dangerous religion. It is focused on pleasing Allah, who cares for all living things. However, her panel consisted of a few moderate Muslims and lot of lunatic radical Muslims. The entire program was rigged to make us think that the Muslim community is divided by extreme tension between fundamentalists and moderates.

I couldn't help but wonder if these people were paid by ABC to act this way. Then again, the Muslim communities in other Southern California cities vary from place to place. For example, the Muslim Student Association at Cal State Long Beach often had guest speakers who spoke out in public about how the U.S. government is a bunch of hypocrites.

I wonder if it's even possible for anyone to act sane at a time when America is at war with the Middle East. Whatever the case, I'm glad that El Camino's Muslims are truly acting with the spirit of Allah.

War stinks.