Muslims Students Discuss
Time Spent in American Cultural Exchange
Washington,
DC: Most Americans wanted to know if we rode camels at home,
said three students Waleed Nasir, 16, from Karachi; Dana
Aljawamis, 15, from Amman; and Leila Kabalan, 16, from Beirut
while talking about the year they spent in the United States
as part of a post-9/11 culture exchange program organized
by the US State Department for 675 Muslim students from
around the world.
Nasir, wearing a ‘Chicago’ cap and talking like
an American teenager, told interviewers that he did not
mind answering people’s questions because it gave
him a chance to correct misperceptions. “All they
[Americans] really knew was the way the media portrayed
Muslims as extremists,” he said, just before returning
to Pakistan.
“They often asked me, ‘Have you seen Bin Laden?
Are there tanks rolling in the streets?’” said
Nasir.
“They asked me all kinds of questions that at home
wouldn’t be deemed appropriate. But that’s OK
that’s why we’re here,” he said after
studying at a high school in Crystal Lake, Illinois. One
such question was: “Is your dad married to four wives?”
Aljawamis, dressed in a T-shirt and sweat pants, said her
year in the US offered a good chance to explain her religion
and culture. But she often had to explain why she did not
wear the Muslim headscarf known as a hijab. “They
always asked me, ‘Are you wearing the hijab in your
country but not here?’” Aljawamis had to explain
not all women choose to wear the headscarf. She said she
had really stuck out in the town of Plymouth, Minnesota,
because there did not seem to be anyone there with dark
skin. She said people used to stare at her and her ‘host
mother’ whenever they went out together.
According to Nasir, US students seem to have no sense of
geography, often confusing Pakistan with Afghanistan and
assuming the entire area was a desert. “Some people
had no clue. They asked, ‘Is Lebanon a country?’”
added Kabalan, who attended a high school in Greenbelt,
Maryland.
As challenging as it was to explain their countries and
cultures, it might be even tougher to convince people at
home that Americans aren’t so bad, they said. “It’s
our responsibility to correct the misconception that all
Americans are equivalent to their government’s foreign
policies,” said Nasir.
The students, who struggled to get used to US customs like
calling adults by their first names, said they were going
home with the hope of, at least partially, bridging the
cultural divide between their countries and the United States.
“I have a more global view (of the Middle East) now,”
said Aljawamis. “We need to move on. We can’t
stay focused in our conflicts...It’s time to move
on.”
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