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Muslim students bridge gap with US teens
WASHINGTON, June 18(The News): He doesn't know Osama bin Laden, but 16-year-old Pakistani student
Waleed Nasir found himself answering questions about the al-Qaeda leader during
his year as an exchange student in the United States.
The teenager from
Karachi was one of a group of 675 students participating in a US State
Department-sponsored programme that brought Muslim students to the United States
as part of a post-Sept 11 cultural exchange.
Nasir, wearing a "Chicago"
cap and talking like an American teenager, said he did not mind the questions
from people he met during his year in the United States because it gave him a
chance to explain his country and correct misperceptions. "All they really knew
was the way the media portrayed Muslims, as extremists," said Nasir, who studied
for a year at a high school in Crystal Lake, Illinois. "They often asked me,
'Have you seen bin Laden? Are there tanks rolling in the streets?" Nasir said
adding he told the American students they were more likely to have seen a tank
than he had.
"They asked me all kinds of questions that at home wouldn't
be right. But that's OK - that's why we're here," he said in an interview just
before returning to Pakistan.
One such question was: "Is your dad married
to four wives?" Nasir said. He and two other students - Dana Aljawamis, 15, from
Amman, Jordan, and Leila Kabalan, 16, from Beirut, Lebanon - said they were also
often asked if they rode camels at home.
Aljawamis, dressed in a T-shirt
and sweat pants, said her year in the United States offered a good chance to
explain her religion and culture. But she often had to explain why she did not
wear the Muslim head scarf known as a Hijab.
"They always asked me, 'Are
you wearing the Hijab in your country but not here?'" Aljawamis said, adding she
had to explain not all women choose to wear the head scarf. She said she stuck
out in the town of Plymouth, Minnesota, especially when she went places with her
"host mother." "In Plymouth ... I didn't see anyone with dark skin. They would
stare at me and my host mother and try to figure it out."
US students
often had no sense of geography, Nasir said, confusing Pakistan with Afghanistan
and assuming the entire area was desert. "Some people had no clue. They asked,
'Is Lebanon a country?'" added Kabalan, who attended a high school in Greenbelt,
Maryland, near Washington. "I thought it was kind of cool to go and teach people
about my country."
As challenging as it was to explain their countries
and cultures, it might be even tougher to convince people at home that Americans
aren't so bad, they said.
"It's our responsibility to do it. People
often think all Americans are their government," said Nasir.
The
students, who struggled to get used to US customs like calling adults by their
first names, said they were going home with the hopes of making even a little
dent in bridging the cultural divide between their countries and the US.
"I have a more global view (of the Middle East) now," said Aljawamis.
"We need to move on. We can't stay focused in our conflicts. ... It's time to
move on."
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