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Muslims on the Forefront T his summer I was awoken; awoken to a world where I am a key participant, where my voice is not only heard but demanded. This transformation in the notion of my own existence and role in the American government took place in the Muslim Public Service Network (MPSN) summer program called Muslim Student Network (MSN). As a group of students and young professionals, we took control of our own identity by uniting together to learn about the American political process and what issues are facing the Muslim American diaspora. Joined together we discovered the problems facing our community and how we can affect change by involving ourselves, in order to make sure there are people in the US government who hold our interests. This summer I forced myself to live in a house in Silver Spring, Maryland with Muslim students from a wide spectrum of ethnic, educational, occupational and religious backgrounds. From now on I can no longer deny the scope and reach of the Muslim American diaspora. Looking at America’s future through the visionary rims I have taken away from my summer experience, I see an unprecedented hope, desire, wealth of resources and, above all, potential in Muslim American youth. Specifically, we were interns working in the DC area and living together in a house. I interned at the State Department’s Office of Science & Technology Cooperation. I was confronted with a world of policy focused on promoting the image of the US abroad through grants and proposals supporting projects aimed at helping foreign nations build a culture of democracy. I actually found it quite interesting that out of all the other interns, in the MSN program and in the office at the State 17 Department, I was the only natural sciences major. Having meetings with NASA and other scientists, I came to realize it is becoming more important for people in the natural sciences to get involved in policy issues to becoming an interface that is able to communicate both in scientific and policy terminology. As for the MSN program, it was quite different being around Mona Abdel-Halim is a Biochemistry Senior at UT. She is also gaining certification in Public Policy and Social Inequality. Photos courtesy of Mona Abdel-Halim muslim voices a literary magazine
Muslims wanting to go into fields related to the public sector. For most first generation Americans and immigrants, the norm is to pursue prestigious and profitable fields such as medicine, engineering and pharmacy. But the mere fact that it was the first year never to have anyone in the program pursuing medical school was a strong indicator that times are changing – there is a growing integration and progression of Muslims into American society. Founded in 1994 by the late Maghroob Qureishi, the Muslim Student Network was a hope for integrating Muslim American youth into American policy-making by supporting and encouraging us to intern at various government agencies while providing supplemental education on issues facing Muslim Americans, such as the compatibility of Islamic and American banking and laws, immigration trends, and the integration of Muslims in American media and politics. During the span of eight weeks I attended classes on these issues with scholars from America’s Muslim community. We also had the privilege to visit public service outlets for Muslim Americans at the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR). Combining the lectures with actually witnessing Muslim Americans taking part in the American democratic process was a way of instilling us with the notion that people are already out there working for us and representing us. The largest purpose and aspect of the MSN summer program is, indeed, creating a network of Muslim Americans to help younger generations feel a sense of empowerment and enfranchisement. The MSN program inspired me to involve myself and others in DC and UT in political and social activism. During the last couple of weeks of my stay in DC, the horrific London bombings occurred. This was something that disturbed all of us, as we were shocked that British-born citizens could do something so outrageously cruel to their fellow countrymen under the adulterated banner of Islam. This fostered many discussions on how and why Muslim youth were following radical fundamentalists leading them to commit suicide bombings. Instead of getting bogged down in figuring out how these events happened, we realized the responsibility was now on us to prevent future attacks from happening. April 2006 ! Issue 1 !"#$%&$'(&')!*+$!$,$%)$'($!-.!/012&,!! 3,$%&(4'!#-2&*&(42!4(*&5&1,!&'!641+&')*-'!7898! by mona abdel–halim by mona adbel-halim As Muslim youth we are the ones who are looked to as the future of our communities, and it is our duty to make sure we possess and represent the moderate majority views of Muslim Americans. Without efforts towards this we are allowing for people who do not represent or know us to control the rhetoric of the media for us. This has especially become something I feel passionately about, as an American Muslim with liberal views strongly contrasting from suicide bombers’ views who claim to be Muslim, and who I and many others refuse to identify as associated with Islam. This was done by interacting with people who had participated in the program in past years and are now successful in various fields such as the Foreign Service, lawyers, workers in non-profit, and lobbyists. For example, interning in the State Department, I hardly ever saw anyone who was not Caucasian in any post working for the Foreign Service, which was very disheartening. But then I became good friends with a former MSN participant who is now a Foreign Service officer. She was able to share her experiences with me and let me know of difficulties as well as successes she has faced. This, coupled with lectures about diversity in the State Department by Foreign Service officers, has now encouraged me to take the Foreign Service’s exam next year and pursue a career in Foreign Service. I have also gotten to know a great group of self-motivated Muslim American youth leaders; and with myself, we have founded an organization called the Muslim American Project (MAP). We seek to mobilize and motivate Muslim American youth to become civically involved in their communities, to analyze and solidify their identity, and to promote religious moderation. Although this organization is concerned with efforts at the national level, it has also given me ideas and resources to start an organization at the local, UT level. This new sense of how easy it is to start a new organization or movement pushed me to open up a chapter of the Islamic Alliance for Justice at UT in this past fall (2005). There are only two other chapters: at George Washington University and Cornell University; both were started by a colleague of mine from MAP. I just hope that with my coursework and preparations for graduate studies I have the drive and time to follow through with the visions set forth in DC this summer. Note: In this article the author uses the word 'diaspora' in reference to the dispersion of Muslims who are American citizens living throughout the United States. Thus, it does not allude to Muslims as constitutively originating from a country or region outside of the United States of America. 18
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