Rahima, MS2, Co-leader of Syrian Refugee Initiative
It was Sunday, September 16th at noon—the day after I had posted the volunteer application on the “Penn State College of Medicine Class of 2022” Facebook page for the Syrian Refugee Initiative (SRI) group I co-lead. I was reaching out to our new class of medical students, in hope of finding more people to support the families we work with. When I checked the volunteer application Google form to see if we had any new signees, it caught my attention:
Name: “no more terrorist scum”
Email: “[email protected]”
Please provide a brief description of why you are interested in being involved as a 1st-year representative for the Refugee Initiative: Enough of bringing these terrorist scum to the USA.
I read this over and over again. My first thought was “Is this a joke?” I immediately took screenshots of the submission and sent it to the other members of the board, partly to ask whether this was meant to be funny and partly to share my anger as I felt myself shaking with rage. Whoever this was and whatever the intention might be, this person was potentially from our community and had ill-informed and malignant views toward a group of people s/he had probably never met.
I had been working with eleven Syrian families for the past year and they had touched my heart. Every one of them had a story to share about fleeing their homes and building temporary homes in refugee camps—in Turkey, Jordan or Greece—in a land that was not theirs. They had come here, to the “land of opportunity”, as America is known to immigrants, with hopes of starting a new life. They had accepted hardship as their destiny and traveled across the world, only to be met by people who branded them “terrorists” based solely on their faith/ethnicity.
Shreela, MS2, member of Syrian Refugee Initiative
I remember seeing the post on the group chat for our executive board. Initially I laughed because I thought it completely ridiculous, almost surreal. But as I kept reading, I began getting angry. This kind of anger had a sense of responsibility to it and made me want to go out and do something.
I have heard inappropriate comments made to students of our Muslim community, and I have witnessed the reaction of people on the receiving end of those comments. I am and have always been aware of the fact that ignorance and hate will exist in any community no matter where you are in the world. But to have something like this said in our medical community, my medical school, my place of education, felt like it wasn’t just one individual who was misguided; it felt like the whole community had failed.
Ghazal, MS2, Co-leader of Syrian Refugee Initiative
Ironically, I wasn’t shocked when I first read the message. As a Syrian, I had personally encountered many situations like this in the past, and I understand that many people don’t share the goal of serving others, as my friends and I do, through practicing medicine. My lack of surprise is not to say, however, that uttering such horrific words about anyone can be condoned. Only a person who is ignorant of what a war can do to a country and its citizens would say such things about refugees who came here because there was no other option. They came here to escape death. Refugees are human, just like the rest of us. I had come to understand just how “human” they are as I visited their homes, ate their food, played with their kids, and witnessed how they were treated. It was not uncommon to hear stories of girls whose scarves had been pulled from their faces and heads.
Rahima
I just sat there staring at the screen and recalled how this was the second incident of Islamophobia I had experienced in medical school. I had believed that since we were all pursuing a career in medicine, we would be open-minded and respectful toward others who appeared to be different. Obviously this was not the case. Earlier in the year, a classmate shared a first impression of me, stating that he had felt threatened by my hijab and thought I was a radical. For a while, I felt a sense of isolation and lack of belonging in this community. Were people just ignorant because of lack of exposure to other head-covered Muslims? Or was this a manifestation of the hatred and racism rampant in our country today, allowing others to lash out from the shadows with no repercussions for their slurs? Thinking about Islamophobia and how others perceived me as a woman wearing a hijab was not what I had envisioned would be my biggest struggle in medical school. I feared that others, too, saw me as a radical, stereotyping me based on my appearance. This incident felt like a direct attack on me and my faith. It was very disturbing to be accused of indirectly supporting terrorism.
Ghazal
I actually feel sorry for this person who thought s/he could challenge our cause behind anonymous online templates, and I feel even sorrier that s/he believed s/he is entitled to make such a statement. Such action shows ignorance, cowardice, and a basic lack of human compassion. I would’ve gladly talked to anyone about these families that we help. In fact, we often share their stories at fundraising dinners and lunch lectures.
Rahima
It was maddening to feel that I had no one I could direct my anger to or even confront and ask why s/he felt this way toward refugees. I was frustrated at the system: why aren’t there platforms for discussing, combatting, and dealing with things like prejudice and bigotry? Penn State emphasizes valuing diversity and fostering humanism in medicine, so I was dismayed to think such a person could be accepted into our medical school, much less care for future patients. I knew that I had to bring this problem to the attention of our leaders. I wanted to see exactly how important diversity, tolerance, and a respectful learning environment was to our deans, so I sent a mass email to all of them, hoping they would act.