Collegiate Times

Imam Goma Makhlouf delivers a khutba, or sermon, and leads prayers in Squires Student Center on Friday afternoons.

With all of the cultural diversity within the Islamic community, the experience of shock resulting from entering a new place with new cultural mores binds those within the Islamic community.

"When I first came here, I wasn't really paying much attention to the details of my religion until I was put into a situation where I had to speak about it. Like I tell my students, if you want to understand something try to relate it to someone else," Riad said.

For Chigani, who did his undergraduate study at Radford University before coming to Tech for his master's and Ph.D., the question of identity raged within him as he navigated a campus without a Muslim Student Association.

"First of all, I am labeled an international student, not an American resident student. So you accept that fact, and you either embrace the diversity you bring in or you want to hide it - your accent, the way you talk, you dress, you eat," Chigani said. "Are you going to be a Moroccan or just an Arab? You are a Muslim whether you pray, whether you drink, whether you like it or not because your name is so-and-so, and you're from so-and-so country. That is something we never had to go through back home. We have people back home: they drink, they smoke, they don't pray, and they never had to question themselves, so when you come here, that doesn't cut it anymore. If you are going to be a Muslim, you're going to be clear about it, and if you're not going to be, you're going to be clear about it."

This need for introspection has led Chigani to consider the Muslim communities in the United States as test communities for the interaction of Islamic peoples and Western cultural norms.

"My decision was, this is who I am: I am Muslim, I am international, I am Moroccan, and I bring the diversity that the United States really prides itself with and that I should never, ever give that up," Chigani said. "One of the things I'm extremely passionate about and one of the things that people are discussing is the notion that Islam and Western culture are incompatible. I think it's false, and I think it's wrong, and more and more people need to be vocal about it. We're bringing together our Muslim identity and the American dream."

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