A Matter of Faith

By Tim McCahill '03

Toward the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, five students make their way toward a basement room in Forest Hall. Classes have ended, and the November sun hangs low and dull orange above the Adirondack Mountains. Two South Asians (one male, one female), two Jordanians (also of opposite sexes), and a tall, muscular American Christian enter Forest Hall, descend to the basement, and drop their bags on the floor of a rectangular meeting room. They sit cross-legged on colorful prayer rugs and start to break their fast together.

The students tear into the food in front of them—as any other hungry college kids might after a long day without sustenance—tossing back dates and other fruits, ripping off pieces of pita bread, and downing glasses of milk. While consuming their fill of these traditional Ramadan staples, the five also dine happily on chocolate chip cookies, cereal, and a sickly sweet blend of fruit juice so thick it leaves a film on the plastic cups.

"Good times, good people, and good fellowship" is how a Christian student, who spent November observing Ramadan with the Middlebury College Islamic Society, described the daily evening ritual of breaking the fast.

Fellowship. It's an apt word to describe the Islamic Society. Meaning friendship or companionship, fellowship also implies the bonds formed by a common interest or background. For Islamic Society members, those bonds are formed not just by celebrating Islam but by celebrating each other, by building the fellowship that lends cohesion to life on campus and beyond. 

"For me, the purpose of the Islamic Society is to keep the Muslim community close," says Khurram Jamali '04, who came to Middlebury from Pakistan. "People do look out for each other."

***

That Muslim students now have a place to forge these connections says much about the changing face of religion at the College. Where New England Protestants once set a rather austere tone to life on campus—exemplified best in regular mandatory sunrise and sunset chapel services—religious life at today's Middlebury presents a more colorful tableaux of Islam, Judaism, and various denominations of Christianity.

With several dozen members—Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the Islamic Society is a small but meaningful part of this tableaux. Founded in the mid-1990s by a handful of Muslim students, the Islamic Society has grown in size and in significance, establishing itself as an organizer of cultural events (dinners and symposia) and as the spiritual home for Muslims of varying orthodoxies and nationalities. Despite its growth and increase in visibility, however, building this home hasn't been easy for Islamic Society members. Just ask Wasim Rahman '02.

Rahman, whose family emigrated to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia in the 1980s, came to Middlebury with a strict belief in Islam and a passion for its rich cultural history. When he arrived on campus in February 1999, Rahman says, he was drawn immediately to the Islamic Society. Growing up in a conservative Muslim family, being able to maintain his religious beliefs was a critical part of preserving his cultural identity.

"For me, being in the Islamic Society was about creating the community I had back home," explains Rahman, now a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. "We saw the opportunity to celebrate religious holidays and educate the College community about Islam."

This dual purpose helped the Islamic Society flourish, but it also sparked vociferous debates between Rahman and equally impassioned members of Hillel, the College's Jewish student organization. Many of these debates focused on the intifada in Israel, which began to worsen in 2000, during Rahman's junior year, and spawned political arguments waged on posters in the McCullough Student Center and in the opinion pages of theMiddlebury Campus.

Yet while circumstances in the Middle East made for some turbulent moments, the political and religious debates of 2000 are not what Rahman and older members of the group remember most—or hold as the society's most important early achievements.

"We all grew close as friends," explains Rafat Kapadia '04, citing field trips to New York and horse-play during meetings in Forest Hall. "We developed a support system for each other."

In 1999 the Islamic Society moved to its current space in the Forest basement—"a spiritual home," remembers Rahman, and a welcome switch from a much smaller room across the hall. Between 1999 and 2000, the Islamic Society lobbied hard for in-kind food credits that members could use during Ramadan at the Grille; not only did the group get the credits, but in 2000 College administrators also approved a request to serve halal meat (sanctioned types of meat slaughtered according to Islamic rites) in one of the campus dining halls.

Underscoring the Islamic Society's successes were traditional events held to observe religious holidays—such as Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan—or to raise awareness about the culture and politics of Islam. "We try to be inclusive to that effect," notes Kapadia, referring to the dinners, screenings, and symposia the Islamic Society organizes each year. "We don't confine ourselves to just [our members]."

The annual events help to put a human face on Islam, an understanding tested in the months after the terrorist attacks of September 11. Jamali, then a sophomore, recalls that period as one in which Islamic Society members became linked all the more inextricably to each other and the College community in grief. "I had two or three people I didn't know asking if I needed help," he says. "The community here was so awesome."

***

As they sit and eat, the group gathered in Forest Hall discusses everything from faith to classes to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. They break their fast and quietly start Maghreb,the sunset prayer that marks the end of the day in the Muslim world.

The College's Islamic Society is small by comparison to similar groups at larger institutions, and current members say that over the last year the society has returned to its more informal roots.

But small numbers and informality lend the Islamic Society an intimacy that links it to the larger College community, a smallness that serves as the cornerstone for a group that has shared times of uncertainty as well as fun.

The society hopes to bolster those relationships within and outside the group by continuing to organize events that highlight all aspects of Islam. Abdelqader Sumrein '05, the current president of the Islamic Society, says that more lectures and symposia are planned for the winter and spring ahead. "I'd like to get someone to talk about Islamic art, or Arabic calligraphy," explains Sumrein, a soft-spoken Jordanian educated in the Middle East and Canada. "And maybe the Palestinian issue."

Broaching these topics is another day's task; now, the focus is on the sunset prayer, which is recited over the soft hum from laundry machines spinning nearby. One society member, a first-year student from Jordan, dons a head scarf and listens as the prayer is chanted in a voice barely above a whisper. After a few moments the prayer ends, and the sounds of Arabic and English signal a return of sorts—a return to college life, to the rhythms of class time that runs simultaneously with the rituals of the holy month of Ramadan. Pausing to put their shoes back on, group members bid farewell to each other, close the prayer room door behind them, and venture out into the late autumn twilight.

Tim McCahill '03 is a reporter for the Associated Press.