When University junior Omar Hagrass@@http://directory.uoregon.edu/telecom/directory.jsp?p=findpeople%2Ffind_results&m=student&d=person&b=name&s=Omar+Hagrass@@ traveled to the United States from Egypt for the first time last March, he expected his peers to be uneasy about his religion.
“I knew that people here do not know about Islam and I thought that one day I would face some discrimination,” Hagrass said. “I thought some people, when they heard I was from Egypt, might find it really interesting and some people might link it to my religion and keep their distance.”
Now, after almost two terms completed at the University, Hagrass said the experience has not been entirely what he expected. As a member of the University club men’s water polo team@@thanks for giving me an opportunity to fact check this. http://pages.uoregon.edu/uopolo/roster.html@@ and of the International Student Association, Hagrass has connected with students from different backgrounds, races and religions, and his friends — both from the United States and abroad — have embraced his faith.
For example, Hagrass and other Muslim students felt welcome in celebrating their faith through three days of celebrations last week honoring the prophet Muhammad as part of the Eid al-Adha Islamic holiday.
For Hadgrass, however, the prediction that many of his peers would be misinformed about Islam has in many ways held true.
“I think Islam is the most misunderstood religion in the West,” Hagrass said, explaining that post-9/11, his religion is for many still inherently linked with terrorism and anti-American sentiment from the Middle East.
“Yes, they were Muslims, but what they did had nothing to do with Islam,” Hagrass said of the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks. “There is a difference between extremist Islamic and Islamic.”
Hagrass said that challenging these preconceived notions is sometimes difficult because of a general resistance by many students and professors to debate controversial topics with Muslim students.
“People don’t want to talk about race. They don’t want to talk about religion,” Hagrass said. “People don’t want to talk to me about my religion because they think I will be offended, which is not true.”
For Hagrass, in order to help people correct their misconceptions about Islam, they must first understand the political context by which these misconceptions formed. Today, rooted in any discussion about Islam, Hagrass said, is a debate about politics.
“I don’t see any harm of it turning into a religious political discussion,” Hagrass said. “People in the Middle East feel their freedom was stolen and much of the reason was the American government.”
This resentment towards the U.S. government foreign policy, Hagrass said, has contributed to an inaccurate portrayal of Islam as anti-American in general.
To former University student and Muslim Student Association Vice President James Dos Santos@@I think it’s this guy, http://www.linkedin.com/in/abdossantos but it doesn’t say specifically that he was VP of the association@@ — who converted to Islam his sophomore year — the key to getting a more balanced understanding of Islam is by getting a more well-rounded education of religion in general.
“I read the Bible, the Torah and the Quran,” Santos said of immersing himself in religion sophomore year. “They are all really similar.
“People think we’re all different, but we’re very similar.”