Opinion
JENNIFER CALFAS
EDITOR IN CHIEF
AARICA MARSH
and DEREK WOLFE
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITORS
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MANAGING EDITOR
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Ann Arbor, MI 48109
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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.