Written by Colin Seger
(cseger@mscd.edu)
Recently, Metro hosted the Rocky Mountain regional Model Arab League. The event brought together delegates from the University of Utah, Air-Force Academy, University of Northern Colorado, Regis University and Metro. Each school represented one or more nation within the 22-nation Arab League and each delegate was expected to carry the foreign policy, including the traditional alliances, antagonisms and current strains of their respective countries, to the parliamentary discussion forum.
The Model Arab League provides insight into the nations and people in a part of the world that is too often neglected and misunderstood by the West.
For me, it provided not only insight into the Arab world, it also offered an unparalleled learning experience about America. Most of the women who participated for Metro wore the Hijab regardless of their personal religious beliefs. Only two women, a student liaison and organizer of the event, and a participant representing part of the delegation from Saudi Arabia, were Muslim and wear the Hijab everyday. The rest of the women from Metro were not Muslim and largely had no experience with the traditional scarf worn by some women in the Muslim world. The first insight into how Americans view Muslims is how we as a culture apparently like to stare.
Muslim women who wear the Hijab in America have the unenviable position of looking different from most Americans and, therefore, attracting the gaze of many. During a break from the Model Arab League, I decided to ask one of the non-Muslim participants if she had been treated any differently while wearing the Hijab. She responded with an emphatic, “yeah. Men especially stare at you, and if you look at them they turn away quickly.”
“Yeah, you get used to that,” chimed in one of the Muslim women in our group as we walked to dinner. Curious, I decided to watch other people as we walked. At first I didn’t think that such a uniform response was possible, but as we crossed Speer Boulevard. heads cocked to the right, tracking our group as we made our way. Then as we got close enough to each car, their gaze snapped forward to the car ahead as if their inattention to driving had suddenly shocked them back to attention. Still, the uniform reaction of drivers downtown at someone wearing a Hijab was enough to pique my curiosity and elicit a further inquiry.
After dinner I approached another non-Muslim woman who was wearing the Hijab. Emboldened by the success of my recent staring experiment I asked the same question to her: “have you noticed anyone staring while wearing the Hijab?”
“No,” she answered, “but some guy just yelled at us.”
Expecting a “yeah, maybe,” I was taken aback by what she had said and asked her to elaborate. She had been walking with the student organizer of the Arab League, herself a Muslim, and both were wearing the Hijab. A man walked by and said, “you’re in America.” Her companion “must have been used to it,” she said, “as she instantly addressed the man as “ignorant” while I fumbled on a response and then just echoed the same.”
I do not know what possesses a man to feel it necessary to harass women, especially because they wear the Hijab. Did he really harness enough hate that it simply could not be contained and suddenly like a boiling pot spilled over the side in a hissing and splattering mess that stains both pot and stove? I do know, however, that by simply hearing about the incident I learned a great deal about the interconnectedness of hatred and ignorance.
The election of Barack Obama did not usher in an era of “post-racial” American discourse, no matter how much the popular media tried to push the story. Hatred and its big brother ignorance are alive and well. However, I do not hold with those who argue that hatred is an aberration solely evident in the Western world, or those who claim this nation churns out ignorance and hatred like a lucrative puppy mill. It is, nevertheless, a lesson learned through the demonstration of a particularly virulent and nasty form of American thinking. It is a way of thinking that is forged through intimacy with all things bigoted and culturally centric.
The situation as I observed it was this: with no small amount of poetic justice and irony, an angry man told two Americans, they were “in America.”
The man who felt compelled enough to forcefully display his ignorance was a man who allowed himself to be governed by hatred and intolerance. Presumably the outward display was meant to exhibit his preference that they not be Muslim, even though one was not.
The lesson I learned is this: no matter who is elected to office, as long as boastful ideological ignorance is a cherished and encouraged foundation for cultural literacy, there will continue to be social interactions built on intolerance. And more importantly, when someone seeks to learn about a different culture, they might learn more about their own.
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