Religon- Grill the Muslim

The Muslim Student Association hosts a week of events on campus to celebrate their own culture and expose the public to their religion. One of these events was “Grill the Muslim,” an information session and Q&A that allows people to learn more. While I did learn a lot about something very foreign to me, I also felt a sense of alienation while at the event. I was in the minority group in attendance, which is something that I do not experience frequently, and allowed me to understand how minorities involved in everyday life must feel.

Throughout the evening I noticed many things that are different from my own religion. Although this experience was not exactly a ritual, some behaviors mirrored what they would do during a ritual. I noticed that as people entered, the young men and women (who I assume are students at UAB) were all very social with one another but when they sat down, the separation between male and female was obvious. Genders only mixed when they were older couples. Also all of the informants who spoke about Islam were male. It seems that leadership positions within this culture and only for men.
We were briefly introduced to Islam and terms within it. Then, the speaker read from the Qur’an. I had never heard someone speak Arabic before, and it almost seemed melodic in the way he read, almost like a song. They explained the role of prophets in their religion. I was surprised to hear the mention of Jesus, and reverence toward him. Because I have never had any encounters with Muslims, I assumed that they all hated and went exactly opposite of Christianity. Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet, but not the son of God and that all the glory was placed on him by men, not by God.

I also learned that Allah is the same thing as God to us, and that they just call it a different name. Another difference is that Muslims believe faithfully in Muhammad, the prophet who received the first revelation, organized the early church, and developed the Qur’an. Also, they believe that people should dress as modestly as possible, especially women, who should only show the face and hands. I did notice, however, that as the generations go on, more and more girls are choosing to dress in western attire instead of their traditional garb.

I was a little leery to attend at first, I was really glad that I decided to attend. While I felt a little out of my comfort zone, but that is the point of the culture blog. I was able to learn a lot about a culture that I am constantly around, but never knew anything about. I think that events like this are a good idea because it creates an environment where everyone can come to learn more, and I would have liked to see more people in attendance. If people took an effort to learn more about those who are different from them, acceptance and coexistence might be a little easier.

Global Connections- My trip to the Dominican Republic

A week ago I returned from the Dominican Republic and I feel like I just now have had time to take the whole experience all in. While it was my fourth visit to the island nation, every time it touches me in a new way and captures my heart. From the time I step off the plane, it is obvious that things are different. Things that we take for granted, such as clean drinking water and reliable electricity are scarce there. This is mostly due to the corruption within the government that prevents progress on public works.

Spending this week in their culture really allows me to become a participant observer because I experience life on a daily basis in the same way they do. Many people visit the Dominican Republic as a tourist and never leave the gates of the all inclusive resorts, but drive only a few minutes away from the beaches and crystal clear waters and you will find the poverty that the majority of people live in.

The amazing thing is to see how happy the people are despite their dire situation. The entire way of life is different. There is no concept of doing things on a schedule or being on time. Many times, Americans can get frustrated with this idea, but you must use cultural relativism to understand the things that are most important to those people in that culture. This trip has so many aspects that we discuss in my Anthropology 101 class that I could go on for pages, but I will discuss a few.

The purpose of the trip is a medical mission trip, and for this trip I traveled with a group of three doctors and a dentist into the campo (countryside) each day to set up temporary medical clinics. We had a group of translators that would go with us to assist, and this allowed me to see firsthand the differences in language. Even though the translators had studied and practiced English thoroughly, their native tongue was still overbearing. When speaking about his family he would say “mudder” and “fadder” because in he was raised without the phones of the sound –th. This is just one of numerous examples.

Their food getting methods also differ very much from ours. While some fast food chains do exist, most of the poor citizens cannot afford to eat there. All over the countryside are fields filled with plantains, rice, wheat, pineapples, and other crops. Not only does this allow for healthier food, but is the way that many Dominicans make their living. Women have many children, and it is not viewed as socially unacceptable or unusual for a girl to begin her family at 15 or 16. While men are out working in the field, women stay closer to home taking care of children, cooking, and tending to the home. Gender roles tend to follow the expected norm in this country, although there is a new revolution of young girls becoming educated and receiving employment instead of staying home. With every trip it seems that the Dominican tends to exhibit influences from America and other more developed countries.
I have attached the video that I made which contains all my pictures from the trip. This country and the people have captivated me. I look forward to going back and this experience has made me even more interested in a career in Public Health. While there are so many things that I can do to help them, I feel that I also learn so many things from them.

Diversity and Culture- LGBT Dialogue Session

Recently in class I attended a Safe Zone Dialogue Session which highlighted the lives of those in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans gender community. For me, this was a very enlightening experience because I have never had many personal experiences with individuals such as these, or so I thought. Within our session we had two panelists, one a student here at UAB who is gay, and another who is an academic adviser at UAB who is a lesbian.
I was able to connect a lot of topics discussed in the dialogue group with concepts learned in my anthropology class. Before understanding these ideas, I really thought that someone’s sex and gender was the same thing, and to me it was simply a box that you fill in on standardized tests and really didn’t have much meaning beyond that. However, I learned otherwise. Sex is the determination of whether something is male or female. As humans, we have the need to put it in either one box or the other. Gender is the way that sex is interpreted and expected to behave. Sexual identity is orientation, defining yourself as gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, lesbian or any other category that may exist.
Gender is something that is socially and culturally constructed, and this concept was reinforced by the student panelist from our session. While his college friends and even his siblings knew that he was gay, he had not come out to his parents yet, and addressed the fact that his father would probably exhibit some feelings of disappointment. It had never occurred to me the stereotypes that we place on certain genders within society. Males are expected to be athletic and tough, and any male who exhibits interest in arts or is emotional is automatically labeled as being gay, even if they are not.
I was interested to learn that in different cultures, who are more primitive than America and have to forage or hunt for their food, duties are often divided based on the woman’s physical abilities and need to be able to child rear while performing a task. While the men may conduct the more laborious work, the food gathered by the women often accounts for more of the caloric value. This shows that although men are often labeled as providers, women are also a vital role in survival of the community. Because of these differences, each instance of gender roles is culturally relative.
Also, I was able to exercise the practice of cultural relativism in this situation, which means understanding another culture on its own terms. Having never really been in contact with anyone with a sexual orientation different from my own, I was not even familiar on terms that were acceptable and those that would be offensive. I felt that this experience allowed me so much insight into a world that is often very disconnected from the general public.