Portland State Magazine Spring 2016

SPRING 2016 pORTLAND STATE MAGAZINE 15 on campus; insensitivity during Ramadan; lack of single-sex student accommodations and lack of a Muslim chaplain. Faculty, meanwhile, point to their own concerns about Muslim students, such as difficulties with critical thinking, expressing opinions in class, and classroom tensions between Muslim and non-Muslim students and between Muslim students who follow different branches of Islam. “There are some gaps in there that need to be filled,” Halimi says. Nonetheless, she says, “PSU is perceived as a very welcoming place. From what I’ve read about other campuses, we’re way ahead.” AMONG THOSE who would agree is Bashar Al-Daomi, an Iraqi doctoral student whose specialty is wastewater engineering. After spending four years as a teaching assistant at the University of Baghdad, where he had to be much more guarded with what he said, he sees PSU as an oasis of tolerance in an often intolerant world. When Al-Daomi first arrived in Oregon, he lived with a Christian family that went out of its way to ensure he was able to practice his faith. “I got a warm welcome from my adviser. I don’t know if he was Christian or Jewish or what.” He later became a mentor for other international students, spending time with students from Canada, China, India and Vietnam. “That was a life-changing experience,” he says, as he observed students from around the world, of multiple religions, all showing respect for him and for each other. Al-Daomi takes a philosophical view of life as a Muslim student in a largely non-Muslim university. “College is not just giving us technical knowledge, like how to build a better water treatment plant,” he says. “It also teaches us to accept each other.”  Harry Esteve is a staff member in the PSU Office of University Communications. The identifying headscarf worn by Hanan Al-Zubaidy ’15 has led to unkind questions and taunts. Tahmina Karimyar finds that friends define her as “less faithful” when they find out she is Muslim.