Yale's "Call the NYPD" Protest and the role of the MSA in the American University

I haven't posted in a very long time! I've been pretty busy corralling application forms and figuring out the next step for myself. Which is close to being figured out, by the way. I'll explain some more in my next post because, in the interest of aforementioned corralling and figuring, this post will have to be a short one.

Side note: That title sounds like a paper title. Maybe I do miss being in school.

So, getting to the meat of today's topic. Recently, my sister's college MSO hosted a lecture by Ingrid Mattson, former president of ICNA. After a girl, claiming she was a photography student, asked to take a picture of my father, my sister brought up the recently publicized NYPD investigation of Muslim college student organization that, shockingly, pervaded the east coast much further than NYPD jurisdiction does.

While I am disappointed, and slightly confused since Bloomburg openly supported the Park51 Mosque, I would prefer to call attention to Yale's response because the way we respond to what gets thrown at us is what defines us and the way Yale students have responded is highly respectable.

To protest racial profiling, Yale students are posting pictures captions "Call the NYPD" of people on campus holding signs declaring "I'm a Muslim," "I'm a feminist," "I'm just trying to help," "We used to be Muslim," or simply, "I'm against racial profiling." The wide range of photos posted and wildly varying signs proclaiming personal identity effectively condones racial profiling.

Further, I believe that this act reflects the desire in the American Muslim community to be addressed as an individual. Though Muslim culture is generally collective, American Muslims have a tendency to either flout or walk the line between individualism and collectivism. I first noticed this after reading a ton of Sherman Alexie last summer, particularly his novel Reservation Blues, because I believe it's an experience shared by most minorities strongly associated with enduring stereotypes.

I was never an MSA member myself, though my school's chapter was the largest organization on campus. Most members were fairly conservative Muslims. There weren't any non-Muslims as far as I remember and being a female, semi-practicing Muslim who was grew up pretty American, I didn't feel like I fit in. I don't think the MSA was intentionally exclusive but I think the Yale protest certainly hints at a need for more diverse involvement within similar organizations across America.

Afterall, the MSA is not the campus mosque/masjid. Though it can certainly function as that as well, in the end, it is a campus organization and has to address the needs of the campus as well the Muslim community at the school. It has the opportunity to serve as a platform of discussion between Muslims and non-Muslims an intermediary is sorely needed there. Though mosques can do this as well, as a campus organization rather than a house of worship, this is a responsibility of the campus MSA.

Finally, I don't think the response from the Yale community at large can be dissociated from the character of the Yale MSA. The Yale MSA has a reputation for what some would call "liberalism." But this is a place where Americans Muslims walk a similar line as that between individualism and collectivism and should not be mistaken, though it often is, as counter to good religious practice. Islam, like other religions, historically adopted the culture of the land and mixed religious expression with cultural expression. I don't think that men and women praying side by side on a college campus, though it contradicts Islamic orthodoxy, can so easily be condemned as the religiously conservative are wont to do.

All in all, in my book: Yale 1, NYPD 0.