Muslims Feel Welcome at BYU

[smac97]

Here:

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The average July temperature in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is about 97 degrees.

But for five of those July days, Hind Alsboul slowly circled along the roof of her family’s home, wobbling in unsteady lines atop her brand-new bike. In two weeks, she and her parents would fly to Salt Lake City, where she would begin life as a freshman at nearby Brigham Young University. And a particular orientation course had caught her and her father’s eyes. It involved canoeing, biking, hiking – in short, many things that Ms. Alsboul had never done since her family moved to the Kingdom from Jordan, nine years before. 

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Today, dashing back from statistics class in a pink and white sweatshirt, Alsboul is embracing life at BYU – and is an enthusiastic survivor of her orientation. She likes the popular Sunday night singing sessions in campus tunnels (her favorite hymn is “Come, Come Ye Saints”), and the department she wants to major in, communications disorders.

Alsboul is also one of 44 Muslim students on a campus of more than 33,000: a campus where roughly 98 percent of students are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Sometimes, those students say, it can feel isolating. But their experiences also offer a unique window on what ideas like acceptance, and understanding, look like day to day, playing out between two frequently misunderstood faiths.

Like Islam, the LDS Church has at times been one of the most popularly reviled religions in America – with early criticisms of founder Joseph Smith, in fact, comparing him to Muhammad, and not as a compliment. Today, that legacy has informed a quiet but firm defense of religious freedom, particularly for Muslims in the United States. Historians of the church, not all of them members, filed two amicus briefs in opposition of the Trump administration’s recent “travel ban.”

One of these 44 Muslim students is friends with my daughter.  She is from Egypt, and is have a wonderful time at BYU.  A few weeks ago she and a group of other friends came to our house on Saturday morning, where we treated her to a first: waffles with home-made blueberry syrup and whipped cream.  She was . . . happy.  So I'm glad that these two (my daughter's friend and the young woman in the above article) are having an enjoyable experience at BYU.  I hope the others are as well.

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BYU is hardly a place you’d expect a non-LDS student from halfway around the world to spend some of their most formative years, perhaps. It is a hub of LDS thought and faith – and “a kind of finishing school for Mormons,” jokes Islamic studies and Arabic professor Daniel Peterson. But BYU is also a place of openness. Here at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, a string of peaks and blazing, nubble-covered slopes, nearly half of students have lived abroad, and two-thirds speak a second language – thanks, in part, to the lengthy missionary trips so many serve. An all-encompassing Honor Code, prohibiting alcohol, drugs, premarital sex, and immodest dress both on campus and off, can be just as welcome for Muslim students – and their parents – as for Mormons.

Muslims aren't the only ones who appreciate the atmosphere at BYU.  Years ago, when I was a missionary in Taiwan, I knocked on the door of a man who immediately ushered us in and angrily asked what was taking so long.  Confused, we asked him to explain what he meant.  He then said that a few months prior he had sent his daughter to the U.S. to attend school at BYU.  He had researched American schools and heard that BYU did not have a "partying/drinking" culture, so he sent her there.  As it turned out, though, her roommates, though members of the Church, were big into partying and drinking (and having boyfriends stay the night), which was distressing and disconcerting to this man's dauther.  She had called him, and he had called someone at BYU to complaint.  A few days later, here we were, missionaries from the Church knocking on his door.  He thought BYU had sent us.

I explained that we had not been sent by BYU to address his daughter's issues, but I agreed to help anyway.  I called the mission president's wife, Sister Horner, and explained the situation.  She asked if I knew anyone at BYU.  I gave her the name of Sis. ___________, one of my MTC teachers, who was at BYU and who spoke Mandarin.  Sis. Horner then called Sis. ___________, who in the middle of the night went over to the girl's apartment, picked her up, and moved her to a different complex.  Problem solved!  

We went by the next day and explained things to the father.  He was very happy.

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Church history “makes us really aware of … people who are seen as marginally American by others, as maybe not fitting in, as being the Other,” says James Toronto, a BYU associate professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, who has been involved in LDS academic and humanitarian engagement in the Middle East for decades. Church members know about “that struggle to find our place in the broader polity and society, and so I think there’s a lot of empathy for other minority groups who are going through that same struggle.”

Most of the Muslim students are international, including a significant percentage who identify as Palestinian or Jordanian.

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For Nada Almassry, a sophomore from Egypt, BYU’s initial draw was the strength of its business program, and the cost. (Tuition for non-church members this year is $11,240; church members pay half that.) After spending her first year in the US at the University of Oklahoma, she appreciates BYU’s Honor Code atmosphere for making her lifestyle a point of connection, not distance.

“This actually helps [me]” meet people, she says, gently tugging on her headscarf and grinning, “because I’m easily stopped. ... Some people are curious, some people want to learn Arabic, some people are just like ‘As-salām 'alaykum’ [Peace be upon you], and that’s it!”

Ha!  Nada is my daughter's friend (who enjoyed my blueberry syrup on waffles)!

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At BYU, faith infuses more than social life. Among the hardest classes on campus, for LDS and non-LDS students alike, are the religion requirements, including several classes specifically about the church’s history and doctrine.

And religion courses aren’t the only place faith shows up in class, with LDS history occasionally making its way into material from accounting to science, and the use of prayers to sometimes kick off class. 

“It can get pretty difficult from both sides,” academically and emotionally, says Laith Habahbeh, a junior from Jordan who, in his role in the Student Advisory Council, tries to look out for non-LDS students’ needs. 

Sometimes people “gift you the Book of Mormon or something, that’s not a coincidence. They would like you to read it,” Qutob says. “But it’s in a smooth way. You don’t want to read it, they don’t follow up … it’s their way of sharing their gift, and we have to respect that,” he says.

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Many Americans’ image of the church involves neatly-dressed, name-tagged pairs of missionaries proselytizing. But many aspects of LDS doctrine encourage openness toward other faiths, such as belief in continuing revelation.

“We’re open to the idea that there’s truth out there, and part of our job is to gather it up, wherever it is, and it doesn’t matter where it comes from,” says Peterson. “Could there have been inspiration outside the Mormon community, or outside Christendom? Yes, absolutely. We’re not only not surprised, we expect it.… It’s faith-affirming, if anything else.” "

The whole article is worth a read.

Thanks,

-Smac