Muslim, Amercian, Idenity...and the power of imperfectly wonderful youth

Amina is standing at the front of the auditorium juggling iPhones, surrounded by students from Glen Burnie, Meade, and Arundel High Schools. “I’ve somehow become the conference DJ,” she explains with a shrug, plugging the next Smart Phone into the speaker system.  This is the first annual Muslim, American, Identity Conference and Amina is a member of Arundel High School’s Muslim Student Association (MSA), which is hosting the event.  This impromptu World Music Mix was the result of not one but SEVERAL unanticipated accidents at the conference today. 

A wise nun once told me, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” She promptly followed this advice with, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” So during the conference when the busses were delayed by rain, and the keynote speaker was stuck in traffic, and the CD mix we brought wouldn’t play, and we forgot the MSA tri-fold display, and the MSA president had a fever of 102, we were still remarkably…jubilant. Because all that mattered was that we were part of something that mattered.

Some things you ought to know:

1. Anne Arundel County has rapidly growing Muslim, Middle Eastern, and Arab populations. 
2. The above categories are often interrelated, but not the same thing. The first is a faith, the second a region, the third an ethnic/cultural/linguistic group. So, for example, most Pakistanis are Muslim but not Middle Eastern or Arab. Pakistanis, by the way, represent the fastest growing immigrant group in Anne Arundel County from a predominantly Muslim country.
3. Arundel High School is the only school in the county with a Muslim Student Association, despite the fact that other high schools have much larger Muslim populations. It was for this reason that Arundel’s MSA invited students from Glen Burnie and Meade High Schools to attend the conference.  We ended up with roughly 25 students from each school.
4. The conference was planned in partnership with Arundel’s MSA, Signature program, and AACPS’s International Student Services Office (ISSO).  We also received input, advice, and support from many community members and parents foremost of whom was Ambareen Jafri, the parent volunteer of the year. Speakers also included Agha Mehdi, Nicole Corerri, and college students from College Park and UMBC.
5. I am the sponsor of Arundel’s MSA though neither a student nor a Muslim.  You need not be either in order to be a part of the club or part of this conference which brought  together high school students who were Middle Eastern, Muslim and Arabic (MMA) as well as other student leaders from student governemnt, National Honor Society, and IB programs.  The goal was to create partnerships and strengthen connections in order to: (1) better understand and meet the diverse needs of the MMA community and (2) better educate the Anne Arundel community about MMA culture.

These are the facts, and they are important, but perhaps more essential to understanding the power and import of this conference were the following wonderfully imperfect but delightfully authentic moments.

Glen Burnie students on seeing the various flags from Muslim and Middle Eastern Countries used as centerpieces:

Student: “Hey! Where is the Syrian Flag?”

Me: “…umm…do you want to draw one?”

GBS: “Yes!”

Me: “Okay…let me find you some markers.”

GBHS Guidance Counselor: “Can I draw a Canadian flag, too?”

 Arundel and Meade parents in conversation with guidance counselors and the ISSO and Family services: 

AHS Parent: “I try to let my son’s teachers know about dietary restrictions like marshmallows at the beginning of the school year.”

ISSO: “What’s wrong with marshmallows?”

Keynote speaker: “They have gelatin in them which are often made from pork products.”

ISSO: “That would never occur to me!”

MHS Parent: “I just use the medical form and write ‘Allergic to Gelatin.’”

ISSO: “Maybe we need some kind of cultural form.”

I could go on with these quick tableaus. Little moments of misunderstanding followed quickly by improvised solutions. There was a lot of laughter amidst students trying on head scarves, contemplating the difference between religion and culture, chowing down on halal cheese steaks, examining the role of gender in Islam, admiring student artwork, identifying stereotypes, showing off their traditional garb, fighting over music, discussing challenges and opportunities in their school communities.

The tragedy of course is, too often people avoid settings like this, afraid that it will reveal their ignorance and they will be judged for it. What we must realize is the first person who fails, laughs, and asks for a hand up, gives everyone else permission to do the same.

So at the end of the conference when one of our speakers pointed out the student crafted welcome sign which read: “Welcome to the Muslim, Amercian, Idenity Conference”…all I could do was laugh, and shrug and be grateful that it needed not to be perfect. It needed simply to be good. 

So good.

God bless Amercia.

This project was made possible by an award from the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) of the U.S. Department of State, through a program administered by IREX (International Research & Exchanges Board). None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed herein.