By Kelsey Rogers, Asst. News Editor
Islamic Awareness Week was hosted at Susquehanna to provide context on the political climate in the Middle East and introduce students to Muslim culture through various events from March 25 to March 29.
Led by David Heayn, visiting assistant professor of history, the awareness week hoped to leave an impact on Susquehanna’s campus that is lacking in Muslim representation. The university currently does not have a Muslim Students Association and Heayn is the only professor at the university that works with Islam.
“The reason that I’m emphasizing my singularity is because of the fact that there’s so much misunderstanding and so little ability to access that information,” Heayn said. “In the digitized media world that we live in, there’s a great variety of information out there, but it’s also hard to filter through.”
Heayn said that even if users found Muslim sources online, they would not be able to tell what is representative and accurate.
“What does it mean to be Muslim? What type of Muslim are they? Those are types of questions that you can’t answer just by looking at a website,” he said.
The week began on March 25 with a film screening of “Caramel” in Bogar Hall. The Lebanese film was a romantic comedy featuring Oscar nominated actress and director Nadine Labaki.
Heayn and representatives of other religions on campus hosted the event “Round Table of Faith: Foundational Figures” on March 26 in Seibert Hall. Alongside Heayn were Tom Martin, Eli Bass, Scott Kershner, Nina Mandel and various Susquehanna students.
According to Heayn, each speaker took turns explaining to some extent who, what or how the dynamics of the kind of foundational figures of those traditions are perceived. The panelists then took turns talking amongst themselves while encouraging members of the audience to jump in on the conversation. Heayn said that at first the audience wasn’t necessarily jumping in.
“But after a few minutes of our conversation back and forth we started having students, people from the local community and even faculty that were there start asking questions or making their own comments and it was pretty good,” he said.
“The conversation was dynamic, vibrant, however you want to say… It was a good solid conversation. It wasn’t just a lecture. It was actual conversation,” he continued.
A discussion on political Islam continued the awareness week on March 27, featuring Heayn and senior international studies student Shelby Karpa. The setup for the discussion was similar to the round table of faith, according to Heayn. Karpa was the interviewer and introduced conversation topics regarding political Islam.
“The subject that was probably the most important for others to hear was just the basics about Islam since most people don’t know what it is,” Karpa said. “It is also really important to talk about the variety of factors that influence Islamism and radicalization such as nationalism, identity and location.”
Heayn said that he and Karpa got pretty deep into conflict on specific topics, like the Arab Spring and current geopolitics in regards to the Persian Gulf. The two also discussed the role and methods of dictatorship in the Islamic world along with Islamophobia and the weaponization of female modesty.
“I think we went pretty deep in things you may not get or have access to in normal coursework, especially at Susquehanna,” Heayn said.
The event that Heayn thinks was the most impactful was the least formal. Muslim students hosted a booth on “Ask a Muslim: Culture, Art, Music, Dance and Food” in Degenstein Campus Center on March 28.
Susquehanna Muslim students, including senior Mimi Diallo allowed students to ask them questions about their culture. The event also featured art and photography from Ala Hamdan, a photographer from Jordan that Heayn had brought to campus in the previous semester.
The International Fair closed out Islamic Awareness Week on March 29 in Mellon Lounge. International students had the opportunity to present food and artwork from their culture to share with the students.
“My favorites were probably the baba ghanoush and baklava from the Middle Eastern table,” senior Caroline Woodward said. Woodward said she tried all of the food available at the fair, featuring Japanese candy, Chinese tea and French rosemary bread.
“I also loved having the tea at the Chinese table because I actually went to China for my GO long and enjoyed the very same kind of tea several times there,” she said. “I haven’t been able to have it since coming back.”
Karpa said that domestic students should really make an effort to try to reach out to international students.
“The international students really impact our community in a positive way,” Karpa said.
Heayn said that awareness is a need that Susquehanna still has and that without having an MSA or islamisist on campus it’s hard for Muslim students but also non-Muslim students to access the world of nearly two billion people on the planet.
“Imagine how many people we have that represent a great variety of things on the planet, which is fantastic,” Heayn said. “But nothing on the middle east or the Islamic world which is two billion people that are left unrepresented.”