Influences of the media on a Muslim-American
For me, walking was equivalent to praying in my family. As I progressed from walking to running, I advanced from praying to reading the sacred texts of Islam. My daily life as a young inquisitive boy consisted of: praying five times a day, attending prayers at my local mosque, and filling my night with the words of the Qur’an. My parents, devout Shia Muslims, felt they held the responsibility of introducing this religious world and experience to my sister and me. To establish this seed of religion into my fervent mind, my parents utilized media to find informal ways to educate me. To embark on my journey, I first had to learn Arabic so I would be able to fully grasp the sacred writings of the Qur’an. While becoming multilingual, I also entertained my learning of my religion through religious movies, online sermons, and faith based children’s stories. I can recall my morning cartoons consisting of the typical shows and Shia Muslim cartoons as a sustainable way to build on my learning. The inside of my house walls were draped with alluring Quranic Calligraphy as a reminder of the shared faith that we all
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Starting public school opened my eyes to the differences between my family and the traditional American family. Through my progression in school, I noticed majority of my friends were Christians and their experiences in the United States were significantly different from mine. I remained perplexed by how unalike our lives could be even though we were all born and brought up in America. My friends ate pepperoni on their pizzas, had crushes on girls, and didn’t have to pray five times a day like I did. This led me to investigate what else was different about my religion. I marveled if the “God” in the pledge of allegiance we recited in class was the same God that my family ascribed