Identity and Islam: Being American-Arab-Muslim in America
By Shir Haberman
Fosters.com
Robert Azzi is a photojournalist, a columnist and an educator. He is also a Muslim.
It was in all of those capacities that Azzi appeared at the Water Street Bookstore on Sunday, where he gave a talk titled “The Other: To Be or Not To Bbe.” The talk was subtitled “A talk about identity and Islam; Being American-Arab-Muslim in America.”
Azzi said the talk was part of his “Ask a Muslim Anything” program that is seeking to dispel American preconceptions about Islam and its followers. Many of those preconceptions, at least here on the Seacoast, stemmed from the inclusion of a DVD of the film “Obsession” in a 2008 edition of this newspaper, he said.
According to the film’s web site, the film “explores growing Islamist ideology among Muslims in the West, the rejection of notions of tolerance and inclusion, and the role of Jihad (the religious duty of Muslims to engage in a Holy War against infidels).”
Calling the distribution of this film an attempt to “vilify” the then-Democratic nominee for president, Barack Obama, in a war on Muslims for profit and power, Azzi said that, as a result of the film’s release, “Muslim became a code word for ‘other.’”
“For many Muslims it was like waking up and seeing a cross burning on their lawns,” Azzi said. “Today that cross is still burning.”
Azzi contended that rather than being “others,” Muslims “are irrevocably woven into the fabric of America.”
As proof, he pointed to information that the first African-American slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619, a year before the Mayflower made landfill at Plymouth, and that between 20 percent and 25 percent of the slaves in America were Muslim. He also said Thomas Jefferson had a Koran while he was a student at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and that the owners of the largest mill in Biddeford, Maine, had built a mosque inside the mill for the many Albanian Muslim workers employed there. There is even a section in the cemetery in that local town in which the headstones are situated to face Mecca, Azzi said.
Aside from learning about Muslims in this country and correcting some of the attitudes that have led to questionable U.S. governmental actions in Iraq, Iran and concerning the Palestinian issues in Israel, Azzi said he sees education as an invaluable tool for bringing people together.
“I think we need a core curriculum in this country,” he said. “We need to know what other people think and give our children knowledge of the ‘other.’”
Azzi was asked his opinion on this year’s presidential candidates, specifically, about their abilities to handle the issues he was discussing.
“Looking at their resumes, I’ll just say that the person walking into the Oval Office on day one most ready to deal with those issues is Hillary Clinton,” he said. “I’m not a great fan of Hillary Clinton, but she’s wicked smart and knows a lot of these world leaders.”
As for the Republicans, while Azzi initially urged those present not to vote for either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, he noted that there could be a positive side to making either the GOP nominee.
“There is a part of me that says ‘I hope Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee” because it forces America to make a choice between the dark side we’ve always had and some path forward,” he said.
Source: www.fosters.com