Stereotypes About Islam Shattered at the "Young African Immigrant Voices" Panel at Fordham

Anyone who thinks immigrants from Muslim countries are here to wage war on Christianity, or that Islam is a "terrorist religion" would have left yesterday's "Young African Immigrant Voices" Panel at Fodham,organized by the Bronx African American History Project, with their belief system shaken to the core.

On the outside, the panel looked like White Conservative America's worst nightmare. Five of the seven young women on the panel wore hijab's and both of the men, and one of the women had "Muhammed" in their names

But once they started speaking, every stereotype started to shatter. One young woman, a recent immigrant from Ghana who attended Kappa International HS across the street from Fordham., wore an Army ROTC shirt along with her hijab and spoke how much she loved the military and of her plans to pursue a career in the US Armed Forces.

One of the men on the panel, an artist and teacher whose work promoting peace and gender equality has taken him all over the world, spoke of how his father, an Iman in Ghana, sent him to a Catholic boarding school, allowing him to sing all the same songs as his Christian friends and endowing him with a lifelong commitment to bringing people of different nationalities and faiths together

A young women recently arrived from from Nigeria, now a student leader at Lehman College in the Bronx, spoke of how her Muslim faith did not separate her from her Christian siblings and spoke proudly of her family as a model of mutual understanding between people of different faiths

And finally three of the elders in the group, two Muslim, one Christian, who had worked for groups ranging from the Mayor's Office, to the City Commission on Human Rights, to the offices of Bronx City Council members and Congressman Serrano, spoke of how you could not work effectively in the African Immigrant communities of the Bronx by dividing people along religions lines- that Christians and Muslims faced the same issues and lived and worked in harmony,.

On a panel that was diverse in age and experience as well as religion- there was not a single moment where anyone spoke critically of people of other faiths. And when people spoke of their own religious background, they invoked that tradition as something which promoted peace and the building of strong families and communities.

At a time when fear of immigrants, and of Muslims, is being promoted in the highest places, the Bronx African American History Project provided an extremely valuable counterweight to misinformation and hysteria

Special thanks must be given to the organizer of this panel,Dr Jane Edward, a brilliant scholar brought up Christian in South Sudan, who has worked closely with the African Islamic Community of the Bronx since her arrival at Fordham ten years ago, and has won their respect through her writing, speaking and advocacy.

The young people she brought together exemplified, for all who wanted to see it, the promise of an American future where people of all faiths, and nations and values live together in harmony and mutual understanding