How One Person Makes a Difference by Cara Ober
The first time I witnessed my mother saying “As-salāmu ʿalaykum” to a woman in a hijab, I was old enough to appreciate the kindness of her gesture but young enough to still feel mortified. Why did my mother have to be so weird? We were at a local shopping mall and, if I remember correctly, the woman smiled a terse smile, nodded her head, and hurried away. Or maybe she responded with a big smile and returned the greeting with, “Waʿalaykumu s-salām.” Over the years this event has repeated itself so many times that it all blends together into one memory for me.
I called my mother the other morning to ask about this and she answered in a drowsy voice. My father had not yet brought her a cup of coffee and she was still lying in bed. Despite a lack of caffeine, she was willing to answer my questions and spoke with conviction once she got going. “When you’re teaching content area reading and coming across Middle Eastern information, you have to learn about it or it’s useless to students,” she said matter of factly, when I asked about how this all started.
My mother is a veteran schoolteacher with a smile that can melt butter. Although she has chosen to live most of her adult life in a three zip code town teaching mostly white Christian children, when a Muslim student enrolled in her sixth grade reading class, she took it upon herself to find out more about his religion and culture. She wanted to be a better teacher to all the students in her class, including this one specific boy, and she was intellectually curious about her own role as an educator. She started out the process by speaking to a Muslim professor at the local college where my father taught, and then read a few books that he suggested.
The following summer she enrolled in a summer course on Islam at Georgetown University for teachers of middle and high school students and commuted to DC for a week. The following year she signed up for a course on Islam at Common Ground, an art and music festival hosted for two weeks each summer at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD. That course was taught by Ira Zepp, a Philosophy and Religion professor at the college and the author of A Muslim Primer: A Beginner’s Guide to Islam published in 1992. Zepp, now deceased, was a beloved figure at the college and in our town because of his adherence to peaceful and enlightened Christian views. He was the person who conducted all the weddings for the artists and hippies and atheists and he authored a number of books on religion.
My mother and the other students in Zepp’s course read his book, which covers the basic tenets of Islam, and then discussed it over the next two weeks. According to Amazon, where it is available for sale, “The reader is introduced to the authority of the Quran, the prophet-hood of Muhammad, the Wisdom of the Law, the Five Pillars of Islam, and to other fundamental principles of the religion. Distinctions are made between Sunni and Shiite traditions and the Sufi mystical dimension of Islam.”
When some of my mother’s friends asked her why she was taking the class, or stated that they couldn’t understand why she would be interested in learning about Islam, her answer was simply that she was curious. She wanted to know more and she wanted to be a better teacher.
“After these courses, I felt like I had a better understanding,” she said from her phone in bed. “I didn’t know anything about it before. All I learned in school was the Crusades. Once I learned the history and origins, the basic aspects of the faith, I realized that the Quran has a lot of New Testament [Biblical] references, and more similarities to Christianity than differences.”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about America’s complicated relationship with Islam since President Trump’s sudden issue of a travel ban on Muslims from seven countries. To me it seems like an obvious chapter in the Fascist Playbook: target a small cultural and religious minority; scapegoat them and stoke fear against them among those with little access to education or travel in order to consolidate power against an imaginary enemy.
Despite committing a tiny fraction of the violence in this country and zero attacks coming from any of the countries selected for this ‘temporary’ travel ban, Trump-supporting Americans have accepted this irrational, illegal, and racist order with zeal. I suppose these were many of the same US citizens cheering on a bogus war in Iraq that many of us opposed at that time? I realize that it doesn’t help to demonize these Americans the way they are demonizing our Muslim brothers and sisters, but it’s hard not to blame people for their willingness to pin their own fears upon a people and religion they know nothing about.
Instead of building walls and instilling fear, a commitment to cultural education is the key in avoiding a recurrence of some of our country’s worst mistakes. During World War II, the US turned away Jewish refugees from Europe, forcing them to return to Hitler’s death camps. Then, our government confiscated the lawfully owned property of Japanese American citizens and imprisoned them in internment camps. These episodes are shameful stains on our collective history, because they are so inhumane and cruel, and also because they could have been so easily avoided. They were products of hysteria rather than fact. These kinds of events should never be repeated, but here we are, about to make the same horrible mistakes.
I keep thinking about my mother, whose curiosity has lead her down such a different path than many of her peers who choose to live in unfounded fear of Muslims. I am reminded that her willingness to be even a little bit uncomfortable, to embrace elements of another culture in order to be kind, have cost her nothing while enriching her life significantly.
A few years ago mother retired from teaching in the public schools but she continues to mentor student teachers enrolled in McDaniel College’s education program. She also continues to greet anyone who appears to be Muslim with “As-salāmu ʿalaykum” (Arabic for “Peace be upon you”) and a great big smile, acting as a self-appointed cultural ambassador in restaurants, taxis, and supermarkets across America.
When I asked her why she does this, she replied, “I say it to anyone wearing a head scarf or when I meet people from certain countries. Sometimes people come up and hug me or want to talk to me. I make a point to greet people, to be kind in this way. It’s simply saying that I’ve taken the time to learn something about you and I feel positive towards you.”
“I think we all have a responsibility to learn about other cultures,” she continued. “And to realize that those who are radical don’t represent a religion, the same way that everyone who is a Christian is not a radical.”
Last year my parents sat next to a teenaged boy on a six-hour flight from Paris to New York. Always the inquisitive schoolteacher, my mother asked him many questions and they talked through the entire flight. The boy confided that he was a Syrian refugee, that he had to sneak out of Syria upon threat of death, and that he had been living in Damascus for the past two years. He was on his way to the US for the summer to live with his Aunt and Uncle and wasn’t sure if he would ever see his family or his home again. He told her of the sadness he felt when he thought of his old house and old bedroom, of the familiar places he might never see again. He said he was homesick, but expressed that he was happy to meet an American “like her” who made him feel welcome.
Reflecting on that encounter, my mother said that having a basic understanding of Islam allowed her to initiate a conversation with this young man. “It allowed him to feel comfortable opening up and for me to learn so much,” she said.
According to a 2016 Pew Research Center Survey, Muslims made up less than 1% of the adult US population and 63% of them are immigrants. The study said that about half of Americans (49%) think at least “some” US Muslims are anti-American, greater than the share who say “just a few” or “none” are anti-American. They found that Republicans have a less favorable opinion of Muslims than Democrats. In addition, nearly half of US adults (47%) say they do not personally know a Muslim, while a similar share (52%) do know at least one person who is Muslim.
In a country where half of the adults have never personally met a Muslim, but they’ve seen them portrayed as terrorists on television for the past twenty years, it’s not surprising that a lot of Americans’ beliefs are out of step with the facts. It’s easier to hate and fear. It’s easier for media to sell hate and fear than inspiration or happiness. The converse is that it’s impossible to hate a person, no matter what their religious or ethnic background, once you know them personally.
In a country built by the labor of slaves, immigrants, and many people of color, we’re still teaching the myth of white dominance, of Christian supremacy, and fear for those who are different. Why are we doing this? These are still the messages that dominate media and culture. It’s still what many Americans believe. For those of us lucky enough to know people of different faiths, nationalities, and ways of life, the threat of the unknown becomes ridiculous. However, much of our country is falling prey to petty myths, and giving in to the intolerance and fear that Trump continues to weild as a rallying cry.
As artists, educators, and curious human beings – how can we use the resources available to combat ignorance and fear? How can we convince those trying to sell disrespect that our country is no longer willing to play this game where everyone loses? How can we convince our Trump-voting relatives who claim that they’re not racist to open their eyes and see the damage being done in the name of “safety”?
It’s more important than ever that people educate themselves and others, to understand that every single person in this country is an immigrant except Native Americans. Our country is better than this. We all deserve better.
Despite electing our first black president with a Muslim middle name, or possibly because of it, the fear of that which is unknown has reached a boiling point in the election of a narcissistic con-man who gains validation through race-baiting and fear-mongering. Before he was a presidential candidate, Donald Trump gained political sway by promoting the Birther Movement, insulting our first black president with unfounded smears and attempting to delegitimize him and stoke racial hatred. Within this toxic climate, how can we continue to move forward as individuals, communities, and as a country?
When I think of the hugeness of this question, and how depressing it is that we’ve regressed so much in just two weeks, I am greeted by an image that makes me feel hopeful but also slightly awkward:
It’s a middle-class white grandmother in a shopping mall smiling broadly and greeting a random woman in a headscarf with “As-salāmu ʿalaykum.” It makes me cringe a little bit because it’s my mom and she is such a weirdo, but beneath that it makes me proud to be an American and proud to be her daughter.
I know that many of you feel frustrated and sad and distant from family members over this election. You’re disappointed in them for choosing the wrong candidate, for choosing the easier path of hate and fear over love and trust. What choice do we have but to continue to reach out to them, to show them that we are all the same, and that America is strongest when our actions are based upon generosity and equity?
The next time the subject of DT and his Muslim ban come up, tell your family member about your awesome Muslim friend that you met through the arts in Baltimore. Tell them about my mother, that she wanted to be a better teacher and that her curiousity has enriched her life exponentially. Maybe you should buy them a copy of Dr. Zepp’s Muslim Primer for their next birthday? You should definitely not keep silent. America needs all of us to take steps towards cultural literacy, tolerance, and education; to step back from isolation and scapegoating.
This is not going to happen without deliberately putting ourselves in situations where we feel awkward, uncomfortable, and vulnerable, the way it feels to say “As-salāmu ʿalaykum” to a random stranger. It’s strange to borrow another culture’s colloquisms and you wonder if you’re not somehow inadvertently offending someone? It’s definitely easier to just keep quiet and move on, but this risks nothing and accomplishes nothing. If we want to live in a better country we have to extend who we are, to be the person who steps up and says what needs to be said, because the alternative is not acceptable.
“Relationships are all formed heart to heart and person to person,” my mother said to me, after my dad brought her that cup of coffee in bed. “Understanding where people come from, and showing that you’re willing to listen to them is a gift.”
How can we convince more Americans to feel this way?
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Author Cara Ober is Founding Editor at BmoreArt. Her mother, Jan Ober, is a retired reading specialist and a mentor to student teachers at McDaniel College.
Photos: “Hug a Muslim” Images: From The Muslims are Coming: A Film by Negin Farsad and Dean Obeidallah, Feminist Muslim American photo by Catrell Thomas
Side Note: You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find a positive image of anything remotely Muslim in a Google image search. The vast majority of the images presented for “Muslims are awesome” show terrorism, hatred, and ignorance. Imagine how it must feel to see yourself and your religion reflect this way. #dobetter
