learned intellectually:
When I first saw the video about different levels of oppressions, it changed and reshaped how my mind thinks about certain issues or racist behaviors from others and even from me. The video made me realize how racist behaviors are originated or built on some racist and voluntary ideas. My personal view is as follows; the ideological and institutional levels are done by someone or some group with a clear intention towards a certain group of people. However, the internalized and interpersonal are just the long term effect of the ideological and institutional levels. As a Muslim, I started to apply these 4 levels in regards of how non-Muslims communities see Islam as a religion and as practitioners. Therefore, as a Muslim, I wanted to take the initiative through my Soliya experience to try and change the ideological view of how and why non-Muslims communities sees us as Muslim this way and try to correct any mis-understandings.
This activity affected me on a personal level. It made me realize what are my key and primary characteristics and attributes that I should focus on and be proud of. Nevertheless, this realization started to get to me when we did first the 10 identity markers activity and we had to cross the first 3, then the second 4 and we kept only the most important 3. This activity actually started my journey in the course. It made me realize how important and how proud I should be with my 3 important identity. They are being a Muslim, being an Egyptian and being an Accountant.
Regarding this reading, I personally not a reading person and I didn’t have any personal experiences regarding the topics/themes/true stories that was mentioned in the article. However, when I looked at some of my colleagues annotations, I have realized and noticed how can a same piece of reading affects one person than the other and this helped me reflecting on my game that I will make later in the course. How I can choose a topic or a theme that touches and relates with most of the users. I haven’t decided yet but this will be a criteria of my own.
Daily and Morning activities
The morning activities are super important and not only for energizing, but sometimes when we get into groups to discuss something or play a game like cloud 4 we discuss deep and important point of views and get know each other more. Also through this experience, I have developed a systematic way of thinking before responding into a group discussions. First, I observe each member and how they might be feeling today, then try to think if the discussed topic is sensitive to anyone in the group. Finally, I pass my opinion in a passive way without showing any emotions.
learned about yourself:
I learned to embrace my identity as a Muslim, Egyptian, Arab and even African. Those terms before this course were just terms for me, a way to label my self within a group. But when discussing with foreigners I have realized that I should be showing those terms or words in a better way. For example, the last Soliya session, we were voting on what the reflection paper should be on. I voted that I wanted religion to be this topic and I elaborated why. My answer was that I wanted to see how non-Muslims in my group sees me as a Muslim and that it is my role/responsibility to clarify any misunderstandings and I knew what I did was correct because everyone in the group started to appraise and congratulate my standing and the discussion shifted for some moments from talking about religions in general to focusing on Islam.
learned in terms of interactions:
Regarding interactions, I have learned this from Dr Maha. Dr Maha first talked to us about how she herself as a Hijabi have many different friends who are some how different in terms of religion and other aspects like being gay for example and at the beginning it was strange for me since I have not been in such situation. I have first encountered this in my First GCC session when me, Shady and Yasmin entered a breakroom with Wesley. I was slightly nervous, but later on it felt nice and ok, my only problem was that I didn’t travel before so I wasn’t able to participate that much in the conversation.
Moreover, I learned to show my pronouns in Arabic and English, this was in the same GCC session. For me this was like protecting my identity from things that I am not okey with on a personal level… This part is hard to explain for real. I need to express it in Arabic probably with Dr Maha.
But All in All, I have learned to respect people with different point of view even though I am totally against there way of thinking, but I should respect it as well.
Future Expectations:
In Soliya, when we voted for talking about religion and I asked a general question about how people in the group sees Muslims, they automatically brought up the Palestine situation and I felt that the war on Gaza became our 9/11 in terms of their point of views. If I had more time I would have directed the discussion into knowing more about their opinions although some of them were clear that regardless of anything what is happening in Gaza right now it totally unfair. But I think the facilitator didn’t want to move away from our main topic that we choose and for the sake of time being.
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