Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Jim Moldenhauer / Daily Vidette Photo Editor Dr. Junaid Rana speaks to students Tuesday evening about U.S. racial formation in his lecture "Islamophobia and Racism."

Dr. Junaid Rana, an assistant professor of Asian American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, spoke about Islamic history and the effects of Islamophobia Tuesday evening.

He included information about the origins and conceptions of race, which emerged with the theologians who created the concept of La Raza in the 15th century.

"Spain, for better or for worse, is the home of the concept of race," Rana said. "You see a growing clash between Catholicism and Islam."

Rana connected Columbus' voyages to explain where some racial stigmas stemmed from.

"These same documents that Columbus was using were very famously interpreted by an Arab who had converted to Catholicism," Rana said.

Rana also said that the explorers who discovered the Americas spoke Arabic to the indigenous people first and assumed they were Muslim.

"One of the mandates they had was to bring back converts," Rana said. "Part of that mission was to civilize the indigenous people of the Americas."

He said that the Native Americans for "all-intensive purposes, were almost obliterated."

I think sometimes we seriously underestimate the power of the word 'genocide,'" Rana said. "We're talking about the complete annihilation of a people."

Rana also tied the slave trade to the expansion of Muslim racism.

"A large portion of the African American slaves were…Muslim," Rana said. "It's estimated that probably two to four million were Muslims."

Rana also highlighted the impact that Noble Drew Ali and Mufti Muhammad Sadiq had on the Muslim community in Chicago.

Rana also addressed the current racial implications plaguing the Muslim world in the wake of September 11.

"Many of the things we're still grappling with today…all of these questions, go back to a central part of American history that incorporates…how we understand each other," Rana said.

"All of these phobias are [rooted] from the fear of the unknown," Musa Summers, a former ISU student and resident of Bloomington-Normal said. "These stereotypes have been going on for a very long time."

"The key is to find out [correct] information about Islam to dispel these myths," Rashid Muhammad, a 1999 graduate from ISU with an M.A. in counseling psychology, said.

Rana said that the Muslim community needs to come to terms with the fact that the entire story is not always told, hence the reason for unnecessary discrimination.

"We are constantly being racially identified," Rana said. "Biological science will tell you there's no such thing as biological categories; we're all part of the human race."

Rana's presentation was sponsored by Diversity Advocacy and held at 7 p.m. in the Old Main Room of the Bone Student Center.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools