Many commentators often jump at the opportunity to talk about Muslim students on campus, usually in the context of extremism. However, there is always a failure to mention a key problem faced by Muslim students. On the one hand Muslims are urged and encouraged to get involved in student politics and if they don't, such non-involvement is seen to demonstrate Muslims' unwillingness to engage and their isolationist tendencies. But if Muslims do get involved and take an active stance against issues they consider to be important, then Muslims are accused of hijacking the agenda. Dichotomous thinking like this does little to address the issue of student apathy on campus and the signals that get sent out are not only confusing, but further confirm for Muslims that their religious identity is constantly under surveillance.
Thankfully though, Muslim students (and students more broadly) are thick-skinned and do not grouse endlessly about the negative criticisms directed at them. Instead, they tend to just get on with things and involve themselves in the issues concerning students on campus. This robust, positive attitude has produced some exceptional examples of student activism such as the annual charity fundraising initiative Charity Week. Established in 2004 and initially involving only London based universities, Charity Week has continually evolved and in October 2008 was eventually launched nationwide where students from many UK and Ireland universities took to the streets and raised a phenomenal £330,000 for orphans across the world. This initiative was setup with the aim of bringing together students from across different universities to raise awareness and money for a charitable cause. Since then, Charity Week has proved to be a huge success, uniting students from different races, backgrounds and religions and has continually surpassed the previous years' total.
But this may still not seem much to some because another accusation levelled at Muslim students is that they only involve themselves in Muslim-centric issues. Yet such an accusation is deliberately one sided, especially in light of an increasing number of Muslim students taking up positions within student unions. What this means is that Muslim students are often in the front line campaigning for issues that affect all students such as climate change and the spiralling top-up fees. The SOAS Student Union ongoing campaign to raise awareness of the university's proposed increase in the fees for first year research students is an example of a campaign in which there are a number of Muslims involved, but who are working together with all students irrespective of their religious identities to achieve a common goal.
Despite this tremendous amount of activity and energy on university campuses, some continue to view the Muslim student through a particularly tainted lens and one that is unhelpful and perhaps even untrue. There is a concerted effort by some in academia and the media who wish to perpetuate the notion that extremism is rife on university campuses, but they fail to provide substantial evidence to back up this claim. What this does is draw attention away from all the positive work done by thousands across the country and focuses on a particular phantom menace.
Whilst there is certainly a case for not enough students getting involved in the student political arena, surely the question should be what can be done to encourage more people to get involved as opposed to complaining about those who do participate. Because of this skewed perception and lopsided approach, Muslim students are always caught in a bizarre predicament of 'damned if you do and damned if you don't'.
