Zack Kelleher, a junior psychology major (left), Dr. Nicholas Joyce, an assistant communications professor (center), and Sanna Darwish, a freshman Hearing and Speech Sciences major (right), have a discussion about the documentary Islam Rooted, in the McKeldin Special Events Room on Wednesday, April 22, 2015.
Hoping to shed a positive light on Islam and its influence on Western education, a class of communication students premiered their documentary Islam Rooted last night.
“We went into this project with a genuine curiosity,” communication professor Nicholas Joyce said. “We wanted to use this project as a bridge for community-building with other cultural organizations on campus.”
The documentary, created by students in COMM498A: Applied Social Campaigns: Anti-Extremism Messages, denounces the conflation of Islam with extremist groups — specifically Boko Haram, which translates to “Western education is forbidden,” according to the National Counterterrorism Center.
The film includes interviews from students, professors and community members, a majority of whom are Muslim.
The class decided to focus the film on Boko Haram — which was founded in 2002 and seeks to establish an Islamic State in Nigeria — because it targets education and would resonate with students on a college campus, Joyce said.
The documentary screening took place at McKeldin Library in an environment that encouraged audience involvement. Attendees sat at tables and discussed questions that were projected on the screen during breaks in the four-part documentary.
“A lot of advancements in education are faith-based because they were made in an effort to get closer with the Creator,” College Park’s Al-Huda School Vice Principal Abdul-Qaadir Abdul-Khaaliq said in the documentary. “The lack of education is what leads to extremism, not the other way around.”
Senior Julie Himelstein, an anthropology and communication major, said she and her class wanted to show the separation between extremist groups and Islam.
“We just want to credit Islam [communities] for what they’ve done for education and make people aware of the contributions they’ve made,” she said. “Islamic extremism does not define the religion as a whole.”
Some students and teachers in the film blamed the media for an inaccurate depiction of Islam and for creating a negative stigma toward the religion. The film points out that the media do not predominantly report on Muslim condemnation of Boko Haram in the United States, especially after some expressed disapproval after the group’s kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls.
Naliyah Kaya, the Multicultural Student Involvement & Advocacy coordinator, teaches a course on multiracial identities and attended the screening after hearing about it from a graduate student.
“The media focuses on what’s sensational, and that’s the negative,” Kaya said. “That portrayal becomes what people know to be reality.”
The documentary also focused on the integration of Islam into American culture. Islam Rooted portrayed a potential struggle for Muslims in finding an appropriate identity in a diverse culture.
Freshman hearing and speech sciences major Sanna Darwish attended the screening and said she was able to relate to the adversity some students who were featured in the film mentioned.
“I was once asked by a lady where I was from. I told her, ‘I am American,’ and she said, ‘But where are you really from?’” Darwish said. “When I told her I was from Maryland, she still persisted.”
Darwish, who wears a hijab, said sometimes when she notices people staring at her, she does not think it is out of hate, but curiosity. She said she feels everyone at the University of Maryland, no matter their background, is supported and minorities are welcome.
The documentary’s central message is that Islam is an important part of American culture and should receive credit for that, Joyce said.
“We wanted to create an alternate narrative on Islam,” Joyce said, “in contrast to the narrative that the mainstream media creates.”
