Fear grips US Muslim college students after Trump proposal

Muslim students worry that many Americans have voiced support for Trump's largely anti-immigration proposals

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, US: At colleges and universities across the United States, Republican White House front-runner Donald Trump's proposal to stop Muslims from entering the country was met with fear and concern - but has so far triggered no large protests.

The billionaire real estate developer and television personality's call, which followed last week's massacre in California by a married couple inspired by Islamic State militants, has been harshly criticised by world leaders and members of his own political party.



But so far, there has been no reaction on campuses of a scale similar to the anti-racism protests that rocked schools from Yale University to the University of Missouri this fall. Muslim leaders said this reflects both fear and a desire not to attract even more attention.

"There is some fear among Muslims on two fronts," said Taymullah Abdur-Rahman, the Muslim chaplain at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just outside Boston.

"We fear as Americans that these terrorists will somehow affect our lives as well – we don't want to be hurt. And more importantly, that there is a sense that we don't belong."

He and several counterparts at major US universities said they have been spending a lot of their time with Muslim students who described feeling afraid and exasperated at having to defend their faith since Trump vowed on Monday to stop most Muslims from entering the country if elected next year.

Adnan Adrian Wood-Smith, the Muslim chaplain at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said students he works with had discussed organising anti-Trump protests but chose not to because they did not want to call more attention to Trump's remarks.

"One of the things that has worsened this whole situation is a culture of acting emotionally and acting quickly, and we don't want to constantly be in reaction mode and engaging with the latest thing that Donald Trump says," Wood-Smith said.

Posters at Harvard's leafy campus on Wednesday promoted an upcoming lecture by a Nigerian imam titled "Islam and Peaceful Coexistence: Conflict or Conciliation" but had no calls for protests or other action to defend Muslims.

Anne Myers, a 25-year-old Muslim student at Harvard University Divinity School, said she was scared about the possibility of Trump winning the Republican nomination or being elected president in November.

"It's just another example of the fascist direction this country is taking," said Myers, who wore a black head scarf as she walked across campus. "It's not just Muslims, it's Mexicans, African-Americans, he's said terrible things about Jews. It's basically anyone who isn't white."



Muslim students at several US universities said their biggest worry was that a significant percentage of Americans have voiced support for Trump's largely anti-immigration proposals.

"I was just looking on Twitter, and 70 percent of people say that he’s right," said Usama Khan, 20, an Ohio State University student who serves as president of the school's Ahmadiyya Student Muslim Association.

A Bloomberg Politics/Purple Strategies poll conducted on Tuesday found that 65 percent of likely Republican primary voters favoured Trump's statement, and 37 percent of likely general election voters backed the idea.

Following the California attack and Trump's threat, some Muslim students fear they could become targets of violence, said Ahmad Shqeirat, an imam and member of the Arizona State University Muslim Students Association

"There is concern and fear for the backlash of the San Bernardino shootings and Mr. Trump’s statement," Shqeirat said, adding that he was advising Muslim students to walk in groups and avoid out-of-the-way corners, "especially the students who wear the hijab."

The Dec. 2 attack in San Bernardino, which left 14 people dead and 21 wounded, came 2-1/2 years after a pair of ethnic Chechen brothers inspired by al Qaeda's militant Islamist ideology killed three people and injured about 260 with a pair of homemade pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon and the des.

Muslims have long been viewed unfavourably by many Americans, particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

A Pew Research Center poll last year found that U.S. residents rated Muslims lowest among believers in seven major world religions. The poll found that young people aged 18 to 29 had a slightly more positive view of Muslims compared with the broader population.



Kaiser Aslam, the Muslim chaplain at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, said many students felt a strange responsibility to defend their faith.

"What I end up doing as a chaplain is telling students, 'Hey, do you need to respond? Why is this need on you?' Does every Muslim organisation need to respond every time something happens?"