Muslim Student Ibrahim Rashid: “I’m Not Scared” (Highlights)
Interview Summary/Highlights for Ibraham Rashid – the boy behind BU Today’s Article
Full Article Here: https://www.bu.edu/today/2016/ibrahim-rashid-my-muslim-friends/
What motivated Ibraham to start his own campaign towards eradicating violent extremism and dehumanization of Muslims?
Ibraham was motivated to continue researching and studying about radicalization after he worked in the summer with BU Professor Jessica Stern
He noticed that after going through some case studies, he noticed that there was a sense of Muslim victimhood. He thought that this victimhood was exploited by extremists who thought could take advantage of their situation and justify dehumanization of these people
He wanted to eradicate that social disconnect between people who aren’t Muslims and people who are.
He felt that the more people did this, it only strengthened the “Muslim identity”, which shouldn’t exist at all.
His personal experiences also effected his decision to create his My Muslim Friends campaign and step up to make a difference.
Being Muslim himself, he saw this dehumanization of his people happening around him very personally, as he gave an example of how his cousin and him were watching the news on TV after the ISIS attack in Bangladesh and his cousin who is 6 years old, asked, “Why are Muslims so bad? Why do people hate us?”
HE felt that the fact that little children were so quickly being affected, pushed him the need to build a community of awareness to save people against violent extremism and radicalization.
About My Muslim Friends
-He thinks that this campaign really helps to let people see how serious Muslim victimhood is because it is more personal, since the campaign includes stories of how Muslim Americans go through life themselves and the daily struggles they have to face, because of their identity
-He essentially says how in order for a campaign to be successful, it needs to have credibility through people who have gone through the situations themselves.
-Going through these struggles himself made him connect to other people who went through the same situation, which became a strong point in making the campaign happen.
