Cross-cultural friendship survives in face of prejudice

On Wed., Feb. 10, three Muslim students were fatally shot at Chapel Hill campus near the University of North Carolina. The suspected shooter, 46-year-old Craig Hicks, displayed multiple accounts of Islamophobia through various Facebook posts. Hicks was charged with murder without any mention of religion outside of social media speculations. The alleged motive? A parking dispute.

For 16-year-old Kareem Danan, a practicing Muslim, the media-propagated Islamophobia is particularly disturbing.

“I really don’t think that’s fair,” Danan said. “I wouldn’t call it just a random act of murder. At the end of the day, it really looks like a hate crime because this guy had been known for having racist views and being angry at Muslims for God knows what reason. It really puzzles me because if it had been anyone else, if it had been an African American or an Asian or an Amish man getting his beard cut off, for example, that would’ve been deemed a hate crime.”

Although he hasn’t experienced discrimination first hand as a junior at Hawken School and as a Solon resident, Danan acknowledged that many other Muslims have been personally impacted. This has particularly affected their relationships with people of other ethnicities and religions. However, previously unbeknownst to Danan, his faith has had an impact on one of his closest friendships– it helped his best friend to see beyond other people’s differences.

Solon High School junior Ben Moore has been best friends with Danan since kindergarten when they played recreation-league soccer together. Eleven years later, the two still spend a lot of time together, doing everything from going on a family trip to Mexico to playing Mario Kart for four hours straight.

“We’ve always had a really easy-going, fun friendship,” Danan said. “I can’t remember a single time in which we were actually really angry at each other. Even with my moving to Hawken and not seeing him on a daily basis, we still get along really well.”

One aspect of that easy-going relationship was lack of discussion about politics between the two friends. While it may not have caused conflict had it been brought up, Danan and Moore had differing views of GOP candidates; namely, Donald Trump.

As a self-identified political Libertarian, Moore formerly endorsed Trump.

“[By Trump] being a businessman, I feel like it would give him a more enlightened viewpoint on how to fix the economy,” Moore explained. “I feel like he would have a better idea of how to fix the economy than just a normal politician.”

Danan expressed a strong dislike towards Trump, and he was previously unaware that Moore even supported Trump’s campaign.

“When it comes to being friends with people, I don’t really care about politics very much because I don’t think that should be something that gets in the way of a friendship,” Danan said. “You can support whoever the hell you want. As long as you’re not a total idiot and we can get along, there’s no reason why we can’t be friends.”

Danan also identifies himself as a Libertarian, meaning he is economically a Republican but socially a Democrat. Although he won’t be able to vote in the 2016 election, he personally supports Ohio Governor John Kasich, who he feels is the most moderate of the Republican candidates.

Moore also currently supports Kasich; when Trump began to aim derogatory comments at ethnic and racial minorities, particularly followers of Islam, his political alliances began to change.

“[Trump] started saying dumb things,” Moore said. “He kind of dug himself a hole, and started to fall into that hole. It may not have been a huge hole, but he’s getting into trouble with people. He still has good ideas, but saying certain things about certain racial groups or ethnic groups just isn’t necessary to his campaign.”

Moore cited his longstanding friendship with Danan as one of the reasons for this political shift, since he felt as though his friend and his culture were being hurt and attacked.

“I really don’t like some of the comments he made,” Moore said. “I don’t want to be associated with that.”

When Danan found out the thinking behind this political change, he not only felt surprised, but also emotionally touched.

“It warms my heart to hear that,” he said. “I love that he places that value on our friendship.”

Moore explained that his deep-rooted friendship has impacted him in other realms outside of the immediate presidential endorsements, including blinding him from the surges of Islamophobia that have arisen in the aftermath of 9/11.

“I just never really thought of Muslim people any differently,” Moore said. “We’re all just people. I feel like the people that are saying these things about Muslim people or even about African-Americans or Latinos or any minority group or any racial group at all are just being ignorant in their ability to judge people because they put the way someone looks or the way someone acts ahead of their personality, their characteristics, even the intelligence of the person, and that shows another sign of ignorance within the person who’s committing the hate crimes or saying things that are rude and offensive for any instance, no matter what racial group, cultural group, ethnic group you are.”

Both Moore and Danan agreed that their friendship has not been impacted at all by the recent anti-Muslim sentiments in America, and attribute their overall asylum from these discriminatory attitudes to the liberal community in which they live. While Moore viewed SHS as being very accepting and diverse, Danan stated that the environment at Hawken is “socially much more accepting.” However, he did concede that this may be due in part to its private school status and small class of only 100 students.

Regardless of the accepting environment in which Danan and Moore live, Danan said that as a nation, we need to be doing more to combat the double standard placed on the Arab and Islamic community so that it doesn’t reach a local level.

“I think we need to call a crime by what it is,” Danan said. “Call a mass shooting domestic terrorism, don’t call it a white man that’s gone crazy. Don’t label something purely because of a shooter’s or [a victim’s] ethnicity or race or religion. If you start calling something by what it is, you’re able to start breaking down those walls and actually start facing the root of the problem and that’s this massive Islamophobia you see in our country today.”