The Muslim Students Association is featured in today’s New York Times, with an emphasis on inclusiveness and acceptance of Muslim students who are not quite as conservative as others.  The article opens with an anecdote about a Muslim girl in a short skirt walking up to a recruting table and asking to join the campus organization.  Although some members were uneasy and accused the girl of being “un-Islamic,” the president defended her right to join.

 

Muslim Students Association chapters are present at colleges and universities across the country, and like many other cultural and religious organizations, are trying to negotiate questions of morals and identity while fitting in with the larger mainstream campus culture.  On the one hand, an organization like the Muslim Students Association can be a safe-haven for students who feel alienated from the ways of life their classmates and roommates lead.  On the other hand, students who might be more assimilated or less traditional might also want to join these organizations—which might not make some members (and parents) very happy. 

For MSA, gender rules and norms are among the most significant hurdles to fitting in with campus life:  “Gender issues, specifically the extent to which men and women should mingle, are the most fraught topic as Muslim students wrestle with the yawning gap between American college traditions and those of Islam.‘There is this constant tension between becoming a mainstream student organization versus appealing to students who have a more conservative or stricter interpretation of Islam,’ said Hadia Mubarak, the first woman to serve as president of the national association, from 2004 to 2005.” 

Another student claims that inevitably, certain aspects of Islamic culture could give way as Muslim-American identity evolves:  “‘As American Islam gets its own identity, it is going to have to shed some of these notions that are distant from American culture,’ said Rafia Zakaria, a student at Indiana University. ‘The tension is between what forms of tradition are essential and what forms are open to innovation.’”  Anyone would agree that the Islamic world is extremely diverse, and Muslim Student Associations are grappling with this diversity as they explore the essence of what it is to be Muslim and a part of American campus culture.  It seems that everyone has a different answer.