Georgetown Award-winning Program Examines the topic of Muslims in America
A group of 11 students who took part in the award winning co-curricular program at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) called Zones of Peace, Zones of Conflict (ZCZP), recently returned from their U.S.-bound trip where they visited Dearborn, Michigan and Washington, D.C. The focus of this learning trip was for the students to examine the complexities revolving around the core issues affecting Muslims living in the U.S. post 9/11 and post emergence of ISIS.
As part of the ZCZP program which schedules two trips a year, one during the Spring Break in March, and the other over the summer holidays, students have the opportunity to engage with the local communities affected by various types of conflicts through meetings with politicians, journalists, students, community organizers and other change-makers in the destination country. “This trip was unique not only because we were looking at ongoing and complex societal challenges, but also because many of the students felt a personal connection to the subject which seemed to give them a greater ability to connect the experience of Muslims in the U.S. with the global community and vice versa,” said Sheena Martinez, GU-Q Educational Enrichment Manager who manages the ZCZP program curriculum.
“We have selected Dearborn, Michigan, as one of the two U.S. destinations where the focus was more on the community level engagement because of the fact that in this particular area lives the largest concentration of population of Arab descent outside of the Arab world,” explained Martinez. “By meeting with members of Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), professors specializing in Islam in America, various community leaders, members of the Arab American Chamber of Commerce and the Arab American News, our students were able to obtain a unique, community-wide perspective and understand the views of average Muslims in the U.S. about the problems impacting them in the wake of 9/11 events,” she said.
To investigate the subject further on the larger, policy-making side of things, the group visited Washington, D.C., where they met with Congressman Keith Ellison who is the first Muslim elected to U.S. congress. They also visited a mosque and met with representatives from United Voices of America, an organization that promotes civic engagement and democracy, and lobbies for minority groups. The discussions revolved around topics of Islamophobia and dual identities of Muslim Americans.
Martinez said that this trip was different from previous ZCZP trips because the destination and the focal point was a conflict situation with no clear end in sight. “The circumstances surrounding the status of Muslims in America are constantly evolving and the challenges continue to exist, and this was something our students really identified with on a more personal level,” she concluded.
Previous ZCZP program trips took students to Cyprus, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, East Timor, Rwanda, Germany and Poland concentrating on broader exploration of the concepts the students have learned in classroom which examine conflict situations, conflict resolution and the accompanying processes of reconciliation.