When Farheen Momin left her home in India to come to the States six years ago, she was right in the middle of high school. After being separated from her dad for a decade, Momin’s father decided it was best for her family to join him in America. Right as she was about to enter her junior year, Momin had to drop everything to move across the world to a country she had never been to before with a culture largely ignorant of her religion.

 

“It was so hard for people to accept me,” Momin said. “Imagine me being 16 years old with a very strong Indian accent. Also, I was very awkward.”  

 

Momin said it took a while for her to get over her culture shock. She was mostly surprised at how un-perfect America ended up being.

 

“I never expected there to be homeless people or there to be poverty,” Momin said. “So to see that was shocking, because it was like, ‘Oh, these things still exist no matter what part of the world you go to.’”

 

Momin said that in a diverse city like Houston, she’s never personally felt victimized as a Muslim. When it comes to defining her identity, Momin said that she’s always struggled with the term “Muslim American.”  

 

“I identify as Muslim, but I’m not sure if I identify myself as American yet,” she said. “I think I’m somewhere in the middle because I do come from a very strong Indian background. I grew up there, (and) I have heritage from there, but at the same time, I also identify myself with an American identity.”

 

When asked whether she thinks becoming an American will force her to give up a part of her identity, Momin was quick to respond.

 

“Your identity is who you are to yourself. You’re always evolving as a person so I don’t necessarily think you have to give up anything,” she said. “Just because I’m giving up my Indian citizenship doesn’t mean I’m giving up all the heritage that I carry with me.”

 

Momin said people who are prejudiced of Muslims are missing the bigger picture. All religions can be tied together in a universal sense, according to Momin, and the discourse that has spread about Islam has convinced people that Islam is a religion for terrorists.  

 

“People fail to realize that there have always been groups of extremists that have taken religion and tried to justify their actions with religion,” she said. “People who are afraid of it have just seen the extremist side, and they believe that’s the entire religion.”

 

Momin has hope for a future where Islam is seen as any other religion, but it’s still a work in progress. And to get there, we need to educate ourselves: read the Quran, read about the religion and make fewer rash judgements about things we do not understand.

 

“We live in a world today where people concentrate so much on the differences between communities, between two people, that they are forgetting that there are similarities that exist between us,” she said. “Just educate yourself. I think the day that people realize that we are just as human as they are, they will stop believing that every Muslim is a terrorist.”

 

Momin stressed that as an example of a typical Muslim student in America, she hopes people will stop pitying her just for practicing a religion she believes in.  

“Don’t feel bad for us. If someone is Muslim, whether it be someone who wears a hijab…whether it be someone like me who just wears regular clothing, or whether it be a guy who has a long beard, has a cap on his head and goes to pray every single day, or it be someone who’s sitting in a corporate office and has a suit and tie on -- we believe what we believe. I don’t think anyone needs to feel bad for us.”