Religious literacy can combat Islamophobia, panel says

Islamophobia both at USC and internationally was discussed as part of a panel entitled “No Place for Hate: The Alarming Rise of Anti-Muslim Incidents on University Campuses,” which was held at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Tuesday afternoon.

The panel was part of the Journalism Director’s Forum and was held in conjunction with the Institute for Diversity and Empowerment at Annenberg and the Office of Religious Life.

“The fear — as I remember it — reached a fever pitch at times and sometimes built a mob justice mentality,” said moderator Sandy Tolan, author on the Middle East and professor of journalism at Annenberg, who, in his introduction, compared the fear of Muslims post-9/11 to the fear following terrorist attacks 15 years later in San Bernardino and Paris. “The people most affected by this particular sense of American patriotism were not victims of mistaken identity, but American Muslims themselves living as the country’s most vulnerable citizens.”

Panelists Varun Soni, the dean of religious life at USC; Edina Lekovic from the Muslim Public Affairs Council; Muslema Purmul, Muslim chaplain at USC, UCLA and UC Irvine; and Noorhan Maamoon, International Affairs chair of the USC Muslim Student Union and a columnist for the Daily Trojan, shared their perspectives on Islamophobia.

Maamoon has had firsthand experience with Islamophobia, and was adamant that talking about these issues would make a difference. Maamoon spoke about a time when she was walking to a football game with a hijab and someone yelled at her and her friend, “Terrorist!”

“At first it didn’t register what he said but then I realized that because he saw two girls wearing a hijab he thinks that we are, in fact, terrorists,” Maamoon said.

Purmul said that, as a Muslim chaplain, she talks to many women who are afraid of dressing as a Muslim because of the stereotypes that are associated with the typical headdress and clothing style.

“What comes up a lot for Muslim women is the fear of being targeted for dressing as a Muslim,” Purmul said. “The question that sometimes comes up is ‘Please tell me something that can make me stronger’ because I feel weak right now and I want to take [the hijab] off.”

Purmul responded to Tolan’s follow-up question on what she tells these women to help them with their faith by stressing the importance of compassion and awareness of one’s surroundings.

“I do encourage them to be cautious, and depending on who the student is and the specific situation, be more aware of their surroundings,” Purmul said. “But at the same time [I encourage them] to smile more, to love more, to reach out more, to connect more, to overcome the fear of being harmed and go out of your way to spread compassion.”

Along the same vein of compassion, Soni said that it is important to facilitate strong relationships between people of contrasting backgrounds in order to reduce incidents of Islamophobia.

“I see our Muslim and Jewish students going out to Skid Row and serving the community together and then going to the mosque or going to the synagogue to talk about how this experience made them feel,” Soni said. “We can create and promote and facilitate those types of relationships.”

Lekovic expressed the same sentiment as Maamoon, Purmul and Soni, but added that in order to overcome the fear of Muslims, more people need to get to know them. She said that two out of three Americans do not know a Muslim and that Muslims make up 1 percent of the American population.

“If 32 percent of [Americans] know some degree of that 1 percent of Americans who are Muslims, it’s not as depressing as it first looks,” Lekovic said. “That matters because we know that exposure is a way to begin to deal with and heal phobias.”

Soni, who is the first Hindu dean of Religious Life at USC, said that the best way to combat Islamophobia is to give the public a better education on different religions because at this point, he joked, atheists are the best educated on religion.

“We suffer in the United States from a lack of religious literacy,” Soni said. “People come to college with a fairly low degree of religious literacy, unless you are an atheist, humanist or agnostic, then you know more religion than anyone else.”

Hollie Bowers, a junior majoring in public relations, spoke  about the importance of coexisting with one another.

“I came to this event because I recently felt really passionate about religion and religious life on campus especially and coexisting together,” Bowers said. “We all have our different beliefs, and I think it’s important that we respect each other and hear each other out and support each other though the process of faith and growing and our own spirituality.”