Opinion

JENNIFER CALFAS

EDITOR IN CHIEF

AARICA MARSH 

and DEREK WOLFE 

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The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, April 1, 2015

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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

O

n Thursday, March 26, the 
Muslim Students’ Association 
and Students Allied for Free-

dom and Equality 
co-hosted an event 
titled 
“Confront-

ing Islamophobia.” 
The event was a 
panel followed by 
a question-answer 
session with guest 
speakers 
Dawud 

Walid, the execu-
tive director of the 
Michigan chapter 
of the Council on 
American-Islamic Relations; Fatina 
Abdrabboh, the director of the Amer-
ican-Arab Anti-discrimination Com-
mittee; and Sheikh Yassir Fazaga, who 
is on the advisory board of the Islamic 
Studies program at Claremont Gradu-
ate School.

The panelists covered many aspects 

of Islamophobia and its effects on Mus-
lims and American society. One aspect 
that the speakers highlighted was the 
problems associated with oversimpli-
fying Muslims and how Muslims, in 
turn, deal with their Muslim identity.

When asked about the effects of 

Islamophobia on Muslim identity, 
Walid explained that he has seen a mix 
of responses from Muslims. He reflect-
ed on how after 9/11 many Muslims 
changed their names to hide their Mus-
lim identities, but he also explained 
how he saw Muslims embracing their 
identities. Walid said, “I also saw this, 
especially in Dearborn, where there 
was a group of younger Muslim ladies 
who weren’t wearing hijab who also 
began to start wearing their hijab 
almost as a form of resistance and 
showing off their identity.”

Walid’s example highlighted an 

instance in which Muslim women 
decided to wear hijab voluntarily, 
another narrative not commonplace in 
the media. Abdrabboh expanded on the 
media’s oversimplification of Muslims, 

using Muslim women as an example: 
“Somehow there is a green light that 
our very womanhood can be described 
as cheap, or as you know, with one sen-
tence, genie in a bottle or you know 
burkha head to toe, abused, the whole 
stereotype.” She then continued to 
explain how this stereotype should be 
viewed in the broader context of wom-
en’s issues in America.

So, let’s talk about the stereotypical 

Muslim woman in this context of wom-
en’s issues in America.

The idea that somehow the only 

way a woman can be liberated is if she 
abides by the impossible expectations 
set by society is a problem that women 
in America face. Women are expected 
to be proud of their bodies and put them 
on display as people point out every 
flaw and imperfection. A confident 
woman is seen as someone who dresses 
a certain way with the right body.

The stereotype that the Mus-

lim woman who wears a hijab is 
oppressed and in need of saving is a 
misconception that portrays the idea 
that a Muslim woman isn’t capable of 
making her own choice — specifical-
ly to wear the hijab. The idea that a 
Muslim woman is in need of saving is 
parallel to the narrative of the dam-
sel in distress ingrained in society.

I am not a damsel in distress and I do 

not need saving.

So when I tell you that I’m very 

aware of the decision that I have 
made to wear my hijab, I would hope 
that you understand that it was an 
informed decision that I am com-
pletely capable of making.

Wearing hijab to me is an act of 

servitude to God and my understand-
ing of His infinite wisdom. Everyday 
I wake up and am reminded that I am 
a Muslim as I carefully pin my hijab 
to ensure that all my hair is covered 
and check my clothes to see if they are 
loose-fitting. It keeps me aware of my 
faith and away from being influenced 
by the media, which places impossible 

expectations on women’s beauty. Peo-
ple continue to view the Muslim heads-
carf as oppressive by separating it from 
the long standing tradition of women of 
faith covering their head.

When you meet me, you confront 

my faith — my success in explaining to 
others why exactly I wear hijab has had 
varying success.

When confronted about by my 

hijab, people often ask me what I 
am. If you ask me what I am, I’ll tell 
you I’m human.

If you ask me where I’m really from, 

I’ll explain again that I was born and 
raised in America and that my first lan-
guage is English.

In frustration, you ask me where 

my parents are from; I’ll tell you they 
are South Asian.

Finally you can whisk away my pre-

vious remarks and put me in one of 
your boxes, although the answer you 
were hoping for was Arab.

You may think that my hijab is 

slowing me down, but it only makes 
me focus more on what is really 
important to me. I am one of those 
snowboarding, 
poetry 
slamming, 

fun-loving hijabis that will not be 
constrained by stereotypes.

And so when you ask me who is 

making me wear my hijab, I’ll explain 
that it is a choice I made as I believe 
it as the command of God to dress 
modestly. With a concerned look you 
reply, “But you are in America, you 
can be liberated here.”

In my eyes there’s nothing more lib-

erating than the feeling I get when I 
wear my hijab. I put it on with the hopes 
to impress God and no one else. So 
when people confuse something I see 
as a beautiful act of worship with some-
thing inherently oppressive, it’s dis-
tressing. I hope that people will begin to 
learn more about hijab and Islam before 
making such assumptions.

— Rabab Jafri can be reached 

at rfjafri@umich.edu.

“Girl crush” on country 

MELISSA 
SCHOLKE

I am a survivor. I am a survivor 

of sexual assault. I am a survivor of 
sexual violence. I am a survivor.

It took me a long time to feel like I 

could claim this identity. I didn’t like 
the term, the way it implied that I had 
the choice to give up, or as if I was car-
rying that weight with me wherever I 
went. The thing was that I was carrying 
it, every day, every moment, wherever 
I was. I would hear someone use the 
r-word, in class, in a joke, in passing, and 
felt myself shut down, check out, physi-
cally and mentally disassociate.

For the longest time, I didn’t want 

to call myself a survivor. I didn’t know 
how I felt about the term “victim,” and 
more than anything, I did not want 
those instances, those times, to define 
who I was. I have found that I tend to 
shut things out, black out memories, 
forgive too easily, attempt to forget. In 
ignoring the hurt, I failed to begin the 
process of healing.

When I signed up for a conference 

called “Culture Shift” on campus, I 
didn’t know it was about sexual assault 
and violence on campus. I wasn’t 
ready for what I found myself thrown 
into. After the first evening, I wasn’t 
sure if I would go back the next day, I 
wasn’t ready to talk about these things 
with my peers. I had never understood 
the speak-out events in which survi-
vors told their stories. They triggered 
me and reminded me of things I was 
trying so hard to forget.

But I decided to go back. I chal-

lenged myself to share with this group 
of strangers that I was a survivor. I 
didn’t need to tell him anymore, I 
didn’t need to explain myself, and if 
I ever felt like I could not handle it, I 
knew I could leave.

I almost did leave multiple times 

that day. Near the end of the day, they 
asked us to make signs that said, “I stand 
with survivors because …” or “I stand 
against sexual assault because ...” I spent 
what felt like ages staring at the paper, 
not knowing what to write, and when 
I finally did it the sign said, “I stand 
with survivors because … I am one and 
I no longer want to live in fear in my 
own community.”

Claiming the identity of a survivor 

has helped me to begin on the path 
of healing. Sharing that day, holding 
up my sign for others to see and ver-
bally saying that to my peers, without 
any judgment, without any pity, made 
me realize just how much I had been 
holding myself back. By attempting to 
forget these parts of my history and 
identity, I had been allowing them to 
control me even more.

A couple of weeks after the confer-

ence I went to the peer-led Support 
Group with SAPAC. Another girl 
from the conference was there, just 
the two of us, both totally new, and 
the facilitators. We didn’t have to talk 
about anything we didn’t want to, 
we didn’t have to share. But I knew 
that I could. We talked about coping 
mechanisms and how we had been. 
And while we didn’t share our whole 
stories, I found a safe space in these 
people. I went back the next week, 
and plan on continuing to do so.

I want to start to tell my story 

so that I can start to heal. I wasn’t 
ready to call myself a survivor 
before, I wasn’t ready to start that 
healing process, and I know that 
there are many people who are not 
either. But I can now understand the 
power in sharing our stories. The 
power in reclaiming ourselves and 
our memories without letting them 
define us, just acknowledging how 
they shape us.

In April 2014, I was assaulted by 

someone who I thought was a good 
friend, someone who was close to my 
partner at the time, someone I trust-
ed. My partner pushed me to press 
charges, and I did, just to be told later 
by the judge that my actions were not 
reflective of someone who was being 
assaulted. I was being blamed by the 
government, being told that I should 
have said, “no more,” louder, should 
not have let them come to my place in 
the first place.

Almost a year later, I am still work-

ing to heal and process. My partner 
left me, in many ways because I think 
that they felt they needed to do the 
same, and for each of us, that looked 
different. But after a year, after that 
conference, after sharing myself with 

a group of strangers and peers, after 
finally admitting to myself that I am 
a survivor and that I am carrying that 
weight with me wherever I go, I can 
finally reclaim myself.

In August 2009, at the age of 16, I 

was assaulted by two men in my sub-
urban hometown outside of Boston. I 
spent that fall in the mental hospital, 
and the following years doing trauma-
focused CBT, DBT and other types of 
therapy to help with my PTSD and 
severe depression. I faked my way 
through most of it, feeling that if I 
lied and said that I was okay, that the 
pain would go away. It wasn’t until last 
spring that I realized just how much 
healing I had neglected to do. I real-
ized just how much of myself I had 
tried to erase.

When people ask whether there 

is one thing I would go back and do 
differently, I think about this weight 
that I carry and I wonder what I 
would do differently. A lot? Noth-
ing? Regardless of the alternate 
realities I could live in, I am here 
in this one and I wouldn’t change 
a thing. I will only make the choice 
to continue the process of healing 
as I move forward. I will not black 
out years of my life or moments in 
time because of the pain. I will work 
through them and understand why 
they are important in who I am.

It took me five years to call myself 

a survivor. We all heal in different 
ways and at different rates. I wasn’t 
ready to share my story before, to 
claim this identity, but I now under-
stand why others could and have. It 
is not so that others can hear their 
stories and say, “What strong peo-
ple, how much we must change.” 
This is a part of it, but that is not 
why I, as a survivor, want to tell 
my story. I want to tell my story so 
I can say that this is what has hap-
pened to me, but this does not define 
me. This is what I come from, but 
it is not who I am. I am more than 
those who blamed me, more than 
the decision of the judge or the lost 
friendships. I am reclaiming myself.

Corine Rosenberg is an LSA junior.

CORINE ROSENBERG | VIEWPOINT

I am a survivor

RABAB 
JAFRI

I

f you know me closely, I make my predilec-
tion for music apparent. My iPod isn’t just 
a device I carry with me on my walks to 

class, on jogs or during study 
sessions at the library; it’s an 
appendage. My conversations 
— perhaps to the chagrin of 
my friends and roommates — 
revolve almost solely around 
newly released singles, the 
quality of recent music vid-
eos and album critiques. I’ll 
often surprise (read: annoy) 
my friends with random bio-
graphical tidbits about artists 
when we’re riding in the car 
and listening to the radio. My love for music is 
easily described as an obsession lingering on the 
cusp of an addiction.

I proudly (and quite frequently) declare my 

immense appreciation for indie and pop art-
ists, like Florence and the Machine, Marina and 
the Diamonds, and Bastille. Despite my self-
declared status as an indie and pop music aficio-
nado, country music — much to the surprise of 
my friends — is a genre that remains entwined 
in the measures of my life. Scroll through my 
music library, and you’ll discover a small selec-
tion of country amid tracks my mother prefers 
to call “my weird music.”

I vividly remember her shock when she heard 

“Amazed” by Lonestar playing from my iPod. 
Admittedly the song is a bit before my time, but 
it’s connected to a memory. Memory and recol-
lection are the forces responsible for my country 
music appreciation. Contrary to what some may 
suppose, a love for country music is not hard-
wired into my DNA because I’m a Yooper. Rather, 
the genre connects me to recollections of every-
thing I have left behind in the Upper Peninsula. I 
can vividly remember the nights my cousin and I 
would sing along to Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel 
like a Woman” when we were little girls.

Fast forward to our first summer back home 

from college, the incessant plays of “Cruise” by 
Florida Georgia Line on the radio quickly led it 
to acquiring the title of the “song of the summer” 
among my friends. Whether it involved awkward 
school dances, sitting around a bonfire during 
summer nights, driving with friends or even 
going to the bar with my family when I was back 
in the U.P. during holiday breaks, country music 
was most likely playing in the background.

My fondness for the genre occasionally leads 

to defending it when people refer to it as “hick 
music.” As my mother once aptly explained, 
country is music meant for common, everyday 
people. It’s a relatable depiction of working-class 
life, which easily explains its popularity in areas 
like the U.P. I look fondly upon my hometown 
and love the people who reside there. However, 
like some residents of that same area, country 
music, in recent years, continues to uphold prob-
lematic and archaic ideologies I passionately 
 

disagree with.

Despite the progress made toward obtain-

ing marriage equality and other rights for the 
LGBTQ community in recent years, various com-
munities across the country continue to display 
vehement disgust and prejudice toward anything 
remotely homosexual appearing in the public 
arena. A subset of country music listeners can 
now be added to the list.

Within the last week, a single released by 

Grammy-winning country group Little Big Town 
became an object of controversy, as an abundance 
of listeners nationwide experienced selective 
hearing. Meant as a song about a woman desir-
ing the physical features of her ex-boyfriend’s 
current girl and wishing she possessed those 
attributes in order to win back the guy, the track 
entitled “Girl Crush” was viewed as propaganda 
to “promote the gay agenda.”

Focusing solely upon lyrics like “I want to 

taste her lips/Yeah ‘cause they taste like you/I 
want to drown myself/In a bottle of her per-
fume,” angry listeners ignored the rest of the 
song and automatically thought the track was 
about a lesbian relationship. Parents active-
ly opposed the notion that their children be 
exposed to such material. As a result, the track 
was removed from radio stations playlists, and 
its radio rankings plummeted to No. 33.

The fact a song mistaken for presenting a 

homosexual relationship caused such an incen-
diary uproar only further illustrates the flawed 
nature of our media industry. Country music, in 
its contemporary state, features sexually explicit 
lyrics and objectified descriptions of submissive 
female conquests in order to appeal to a hetero-
sexual male audience. This trend, accurately 
described as “Nashville’s bro explicit adventures” 
in a Washington Post article was mocked by two 
young country starlets Maddie and Tae when 
they wrote a “Girl in a Country Song” to illustrate 
the ridiculously sexist representations of women 
in many of today’s country songs.

Taking into account that I can remember 

hearing Big & Rich’s highly suggestive track 
“Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” frequently as 
a 10-year-old in 2004 when it was released, 
I find it hard to understand why sugges-
tive, sexually explicit and misogynistic lyr-
ics aren’t as concerning as the possibility of 
a song portraying a romantic relationship 
between two women or two men.

The “gay agenda” parents and politicians 

are exceedingly suspicious of creeping up in 
our media and “infecting” the minds of chil-
dren, in reality, is exactly the same as the agen-
da of every human being. Humans, regardless 
of sexual orientation, want to appreciate the 
everyday, to be respected, to experience love, 
to enjoy our family and our friends, to have 
fun, to grow as individuals and to sort out 
our place in the world — basically partaking 
in every theme ever discussed in a song. The 
entire point of creative expression, whether 
in the form of writing, artwork or song, is to 
encompass and celebrate the entirety of expe-
riences available to humanity.

Considering the ever-present struggle to both 

extend and ensure basic rights to the LGBTQ 
community, trying to enclose children and the 
general public in a world of heteronormativity 
will only further inhibit future legislative and 
societal progress. Music provides an excellent 
example of this. If you refuse to expose a student 
of any age to a subsection of notes solely because 
some individuals incorrectly deem them immor-
al or inappropriate, their ability to comprehend 
and play music — possibly music they strongly 
identify with or enjoy — will be limited. Limiting 
awareness of the world will likewise inhibit the 
ability to enact future change we need.

— Melissa Scholke can be reached 

at melikaye@umich.edu.

Not a damsel in distress

When I showed up to my first Relay for Life 

event my freshman year of high school, I had 
no connection to cancer. Sure, it was inspiring 
to see my friend Marissa fight against cancer 
so passionately, but I never felt a ton of emo-
tion toward the cause. Just a few weeks after 
attending my first Relay, my grandpa got up 
early from the lunch table after a round of golf 
and said, “I gotta go, I have an appointment.” 
When my mom asked what was wrong the reply 
was, “Just a tickle in my throat. Probably just 
a cold.” My grandpa was a doctor. A Michigan 
alum. He knew what was wrong, right?

After a week, the diagnosis of Stage 1 thy-

roid cancer came to my family. He waited a 
week to start treatment because the doctor 
said it wasn’t too urgent. I wasn’t worried. 
This is a man who had served in Korea, raised 
seven kids and gone to Egypt eight weeks after 
having knee-replacement surgery.

After a week, it had progressed extremely rap-

idly. The treatment plan changed. Chemotherapy 
once a week and radiation twice a day, seven days 
a week. When I looked up his actual diagnosis, 
Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer, I read some pretty 
scary stuff. “Anaplastic tumors are the least com-
mon (only 1% of thyroid cancer cases) and most 
deadly of all thyroid cancers. This cancer has a 
very low cure rate with the very best treatments. 
Most patients with anaplastic thyroid cancer do 
not live 1 year from the day they are diagnosed.”

As his condition worsened, we did get to spend 

more time with him. My mom went to help 
my grandma cook dinner while my sister and I 
watched TV with my grandpa. When he became 
too ill to eat solid food, I made him my famous fro-
zen chocolate mousse pie. To this day, some of my 
best memories are sitting with him on the couch 
listening to him yell at Tiger Woods to let some-
one else win for a change.

After less than 90 days, we were told he would 

live three more days without treatment or three 
months living in the hospital. Ultimately, he 
decided that having three months staring at a 
hospital wall and having everyone worry wasn’t 
worth it. My aunts and uncles flew in from San 
Francisco, Manhattan and Savannah to say good-
bye. He passed away after we had all left for the 
night, holding a picture of my grandma.

Even though cancer stole my grandpa, it 

brought my family closer together. Before his 
diagnosis, we hadn’t seen my uncle from Savan-
nah for years. Now he comes to visit us twice a 
year. We started a family e-mail chain and shared 
our favorite stories and quotes about grandpa. 
Now, when I ask for support for Relay, I get notes 
from all my aunts and uncles saying how proud 
my grandpa would be. All that makes me feel like 
I’m doing all I can to honor his memory.

After my grandpa’s passing, I have watched 

countless friends and families be affected by 
this disease. When I was 15, my friend Matt’s 
dad died from cancer. When I was 16, my friend 
Angela’s dad died in less than 60 days from his 

MEGAN BOCZAR | VIEWPOINT

Why I relay

diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. One 
week to the day after he passed, my 
best friend Anna’s mom was diag-
nosed with breast cancer. Three 
months later, my aunt was diagnosed 
with breast cancer. The list goes on 
and on, unfortunately with more peo-
ple losing their battles than winning.

Every time I go to an MRelay 

meeting, all of these people are in my 

thoughts. I Relay so nobody else has to 
go through what my friends and fam-
ily did. I Relay because I know that, in 
my lifetime, we will find a cure. Grand-
pa was a doctor, and when my mom 
used to ask how his day was when he 
got home, he’d say, “just another day of 
saving lives and stamping out disease.” 
Well, I want to stamp out this disease. 
I have seen what MRelay can do, rais-

ing more than $1,000,000 in the last 
three years. I know we are making a 
difference, and I’m so excited to see 
what we can do together this year.

Please join us on April 11 at 10 a.m. 

on Palmer Field to help finish the fight 
against cancer. Visit mrelay.org for 
more information.

Megan Boczar is an LSA junior.

