Today marks a day that I have been looking forward to since December. I will see people I haven’t seen in a while, have discussions I’ve been waiting to have. Today, the Jordan Interfaith Action group from Amman, Jordan is coming to Chicago. The second leg of our exchange has begun.

The first was six months ago, when we, the Chicago Youth Council (a program of Interfaith Youth Core), went to their city. Saw their history. Danced. Sang. Tried our best to experience their culture. Talked. Learned precious few words in Arabic.

And that is what I have missed most. Just having them there. To talk.

So I may not write for a while, because I’ll be having conversations.

I think I have done it all.

I have ridden a camel between the pyramids in Giza.

I have snorkeled in the Red Sea.

I have been violently ill on an overheated, under-aerated, 14-hour train ride to Aswan.

I have exploded my blow dryer in a confusing jumble of outlets and adapters. You may ask, “Liz, what was the worst part of that harrowing ordeal, of nearly dying from the electric shock as the device shot sparks across the room?” The tragedy is the two weeks my coif must suffer without it, to be sure.

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It’s officially the start of summer for DePaul students. After today, the last final of the school year will be taken, and some will go back to their homes for another few months.

Some students will move on to graduate school. Others might travel the world. Some of them might even go to The Real World of nine to five jobs and yearly salaries. That’s a little frightening, if you ask me.

And still, other students have not ended their year. There are still active protests, still angry faculty and staff, still upset parents and academics. DePaul has not reversed its decision to deny tenure to two professors, Norman Finkelstein in the Political Science department and Mehrene Larudee in the International Studies department, despite the obvious support from faculty. In the case of Professor Larudee, this support was unanimous.

Yesterday, at an open DePaul faculty meeting, I sat with students who had spent their finals week dedicated to speaking out. The day earlier, these same students had been threatened with expulsion, merely for a sit-in protest that had not even lasted a week.

DePaul has now officially silenced students as well as professors. For this reason, there are parents who no longer wish to send their children to DePaul, academics who are boycotting our school.

A friend of mine said, “DePaul has let me down.” And he is right. Because there was a sense of trust that has now faltered, a trust that DePaul must attempt to repair by doing what is clearly right.

But rebuilding trust? Well, that takes a long time.

"Welcome to Egypt," the captain of my plane announced over the speaker, first in Italian, then in English. He did not need to remind me that I was in a strange place: the imposing, interminable desert loomed in the distance outside my cabin window. If I were landing on another planet, I would not know the difference.

I am taking an overindulgent post-graduation jaunt to this Middle Eastern country, where I will tour for another two weeks. When I am able, I will blog and hopefully try to make sense of what I am experiencing.

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Recently I've been reading Building the Interfaith Youth Movement, a
series of essays and reports compiled by Eboo Patel and Patrice Brodeur. Patel,
whom I know and like very much, founded and runs something called the Interfaith
Youth Core, the theory of which he discusses in the book. His claims are very
insightful and, I think, quite right. In today's world, people by and large
have no choice but to interact with people of other backgrounds. With
interconnectedness given, cultural and religious institutions depend on their
members continually choosing to remain faithful to those institutions,
especially in America. Even the faithful, though, draw a strict line between
their interconnected lives and their lives of faith. At best, this division is
disingenuous. In times of communal and intercommunal crisis, this division
becomes dangerous. Patel's response is to create "spaces where people from
diverse religions come together and are intentional about matters of
religion."

Patel suggests using public service as transportation to these spaces. But the
final point is to define citizenship in the language that Americans have always
defined citizenship, since the Puritans: religious language. Now, however, we
don't have the luxury of orthodox explanation. We must be pluralist in our
citizenship. I wonder whether Patel is winning, and where these spaces are. Who
thinks about citizenship at all? I am interested to know the thoughts of everyone reading this weblog. Is there a common citizenship to which the faithful, especially the faithful youth, of America can appeal?

Just when you thought it was safe to turn on your radio, a breaking news story: the Spice Girls are back together. Fasten your pop culture seat belts, its going to be a Spicetastic ride.

According to People.com, the awesome fivesome plans to release a Greatest Hits album and begin touring. The shocking announcement has put me in a reflective mood.

Which of their insightful songs could possibly be chosen as their Greatest Hit? Perhaps an investigation of some lyrics would help.

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Amid sunshine and the distant screeching of cicadas that have infested the Chicago suburbs, I woke up the morning of my birthday by no means refreshed. The day earlier had consisted of signing a lease for my apartment, going to a Harry Potter event at the Chicago Printer’s Row Book Fair, and finding out a professor at DePaul had been denied tenure.

On Friday, June 8, 2007, Professor Norm Finkelstein was denied tenure, presumably because of his position on the Israel-Palestine issue. Not because of his teaching style. Not because students hate him. Students love him, in fact. A friend of mine always talks about how he loves going to his class.

Finkelstein says in this article, “They will never stop me from saying what I believe.”

No matter if you agree with Finkelstein or not, there is a value in this country I think my university has forgotten, if only for a moment. Academic diversity and integrity have been challenged.

Finkelstein’s words have taught me something. I will forever have to defend my thoughts, my beliefs, my faith. Because of recent events, and because of the way Muslims are portrayed in this country, I will always be one step behind. But they will never stop me from saying what I believe.

Dear Strapping Young Man at the Bookstore,

Thank you for running to open the door for me as you saw me walking toward Barnes and Noble’s oversized entrance. While you are of course aware that I can open my own door, thank you very much, the gesture showed me that you would put your woman's needs ahead of your own. I like that.

And if you were considering how to get my attention, then you did the right thing by meandering down the Religion/Christian Inspiration aisle as I was sprawled across the floor. You smiled at me and said hello, and seemed very interested in the display of C.S Lewis’s books. Be still by heart!

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From the Washington Post:

“Among Christians, Catholics are substantially less likely than Protestants to get divorced, according to a 2004 study by the Barna Group, a religious research organization. Among Catholics, it found, 25 percent have had a divorce, compared with 39 percent of Protestants. (Among the largest Protestant groups, Pentecostals were most likely to get divorced, and Presbyterians were the least likely, the study found.”

Yeah, Catholicism!

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In my Islamic World Studies class, we learned the reason for so many generalized stereotypes against Islam and Muslims. The decentralization of the religion, specifically in the majority Sunni Islam, makes it so hard to spread what Islam is really about. That’s because so many Muslims, most of them I would say, probably don’t know themselves. Since we don’t have a papal system in Sunni Islam (there is a similar version in Shi’a Islam), there is no one left to answer our questions beside ourselves.

Recently, Liz sent me this article, about the search for an American Imam. While I applaud them tremendously, I doubt the essence of the title.

The American Imam? There are so many things in that phrase that we haven’t defined yet. First of all, what is American? Ask different people, and you will surely get different answers. Also, what is Islam? This is a question that I surely don’t know the answer to. Not yet, anyway.

I think it will be a long way before we can have our American Imam. I look forward to that day. Because that day means that we have been accepted. That we as Muslims are just American, not a foreign entity trying to break the West.

I boomeranged.

I packed up my fourteen bottles of shampoo, three hundred twenty four books and two thousand Hallmark note cards and drove to Lawn Guy-land, to move back into the humble suburbs from which I was expelled four short years ago. The S.U.V. I drove back was fatter than a fois-gras duck on his execution day, and I kept having visions of the car exploding on northbound I-95 from the pressure of being overstuffed with my girlie things. While driving, I had no peripheral vision, which could be a metaphor for my singular mission to move everything I own back into my parent’s house. I left Georgetown behind, and barreled towards New York. Free room and board, here I come!

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Yale graduates her students with the pomp of a Northern European, 15th century, Catholic university, in the circumstance of an American, 21st century, vaguely atheistic college and university.

Senior Week, an ecumenical Baccalaureate Service, festive Class Day exercises, traditional Graduation Exercises, and various Diploma Granting ceremonies: In some ways four years of college are preparation for the whole affair. Graduates smash clay pipes on the ground, symbolizing the end of the joys of youth, and they sing about the “Bright College Years” they will always remember. That last song, our alma mater, concludes with the famous aphorism “For God, For Country, and For Yale.”

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