More than a Soundbite

You get two minutes, maybe five, maybe ten. You get two hundred words, maybe five hundred, possibly one thousand. You get two pages, three pages, at most five.

You could get three hours or maybe two thousand words, you might get a chapter or a whole book. But you still won't have a voice, because someone else wrote it, someone else is speaking for you.

You see, a Muslim college student is just that: a Muslim college student. Maybe they'll throw in "Muslim, woman and American college student". Maybe they'll be generous and throw in "Muslim, Pakistani, woman, American, college student". But in the end, your identities get reduced to five or six words, and your words are written by someone else.

The school newspaper does a story about Islamophobia, local news covers a vigil on campus and a student wants to write an interesting story for a campus publication and they interview a few Muslim students.

There may be good intentions behind each of these, but in the end, they all end up reducing a diverse population with complex and varying ideas and identities into the same story: "Muslim college students feel alienated." "Muslim college students feel the spotlight." "Muslim college students are tired of apologizing." "Muslim college students hate terrorism as much as everyone else and they've been saying this for ages but Islamophobia keeps increasing so we keep interviewing them and writing about them, and who needs to focus on any other aspect of Islam while we can keep repeating the same story about Muslims condemning terrorism?"

I'm not accusing student journalists of anything. We welcome questions, we welcome interviews. We want to be heard, and if articles in the school newspapers or projects for religion and anthropology classes are some small way for our voices to be heard, we of course want to keep doing them. I don't expect a newspaper article written by someone who has talked to five Muslims over the course of three days to be able to express the varying perspectives of such a large population accurately.

But what I am thinking is this: "Why can't we speak for ourselves?"

Because you see, it's not like we don't have voices. We do. We have our perspectives and we want to share them but why must we always share them through someone else? Why must we wait for interviews to speak?

Knowing the Muslim community at Syracuse University, I know how many Muslim students are amazing writers and poets and speakers. I know that we have people in our community excelling in every field, so why is it that we somehow still need that sophomore taking Religion 101 to ask us what we think?

Of course there are projects, new publications that allow Muslims to speak for themselves. I see more and more being developed and becoming popular, but there still aren't enough. Because it's 2016 and Donald Trump is telling us that almost all mosques preach hatred and that "Islam hates us" and Ted Cruz is calling for patrols of "Muslim neighborhoods" (whatever that means), and yet, so often on campus we still feel like there's no outlet that allows us to speak without being asked a question.

I'm not saying it's easy to be heard even if you do speak out. Voices speaking out against racism and bigotry and xenophobia have historically been suppressed, but we need to keep trying. We need to start that blog, start that newsletter, write that poem, have that open mic night, present that art, and develop that forum for expression. We need to keep coming up with new ways to allow our community members to express themselves.

We need to keep speaking, louder and louder, even if it is frustrating and it feels like no one is listening.

We need to realize that it is time for us to stop asking for permission. It is time to stop being passive. It is time to stop waiting to be asked a question before we speak our minds. Because until we start to speak out, loudly, unapologetically, independently, we will not be heard. Our voices will be reduced to a sound bite, our words will be reduced to a quotation. And I know, and you know, that this community is so much more than a soundbite.