On US campuses, religious students' ties cross faith lines
Devotion provides common ground in secular setting
By G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Globe Correspondent
September 11, 2005
Their ancestors once killed one another, and in certain hotspots, some of their distant kin still do. But on American college campuses, traditionally devout students are forging close ties across religious lines that once seemed impenetrable.
Certain signs are subtle, such as when Jews and Muslims fast together during each others' holidays at Washington University in St. Louis.
...With or without institutional encouragement, believers of varied stripes are bonding in these collegiate settings and others that many regard as hostile to their values. From classes where they say faith is mocked to parties where drinking, drugs, and flirting are standard order, observant students say they often feel out of place, even marginalized.
But irony would have it that in the company of historical rivals, they're finding kinship among others who pray, read scripture, bear witness, and keep a Sabbath holy — even if it's not their own.
''I don't feel that history or what's going on in the world at large should affect my relationship with another individual," says Michelle Palmer, a sophomore at Washington University. ''College in general is a very secular environment. It makes religious people of different religions sort of stick together [because] we're thinking along the same lines."
''I don't feel that history or what's going on in the world at large should affect my relationship with another individual," says Michelle Palmer, a sophomore at Washington University. ''College in general is a very secular environment. It makes religious people of different religions sort of stick together [because] we're thinking along the same lines."
Palmer's experience is a case in point. This year she chose, as have other religious Jewish women at her school, to share a room with a religious Catholic. The reason: ''It was easy for her to relate to the things I do that might seem weird." For example, both pray in their rooms, observe religious diets, and never have men spend the night.
Her friends aren't too different. A 150-student, substance-free dormitory attracts so many
religiously observant first-year students, she says, that ''what ends up happening is that religious Jews, religious Christians, and religious Muslims all become really good friends."
...And interfaith friends, it seems, believe in sticking up for one another. When a menorah was stolen at Georgetown University in December, the Muslim Students Association immediately denounced the offense and sent a leader to give a speech about it. ''We're all very vulnerable because we're religious groups, and students are very antistudent-religious groups," says Hafsa Kanjwal, a Georgetown sophomore who cochairs the university's Interfaith Council, which formed last year. ''Anything against a religion is also going against us" in the Muslim Students Association.
Support goes both ways. When Muslims at Washington University were petitioning a campus store to stock halal food three years ago, some asked Rabbi Hershey Novack to support the cause, which he did. ''It sounds counterintuitive — why would Muslim students reach out to a Jewish rabbi?," Novack says. ''But on a deeper level, it's very logical. . . . Both have a respect and value for their own faiths. . . . We have every reason to be supportive and hope they would be supportive of our kosher products."
Whether bonds forged on campuses will ever come to dissipate religious rivalries on the world stage remains anybody's guess. Still, some participants are reporting signs of hope.
Kareem Khozaim of Cincinnati, for example, has Egyptian-born parents and lots of relatives in Egypt who, he says, would never consider going to Israel even though it's just next door. Still, he chose to fast on Yom Kippur with his Jewish friends at Washington University. They in turn would fast with him at Ramadan, and some visit his family.
''I would bring home a Jewish friend, and say, 'She's very close to me,' and kind of force some of my relatives to come face to face with this phenomenon," says Khozaim, a 2004 graduate. And it may be working: one younger cousin in Egypt, he says, is now seriously considering a visit to Tel Aviv.
Source: The Boston Globe, September 11, 2005. For the full article click here.