Mushfiqur Rahman Chowdhury, MTS ’17

“I remember a lot of times when I got jumped. I got my sneakers stolen, my bicycle stolen, my basketball. There are many things I lost. And there are many things I gained because I was going through that struggle with other people. I gained friendships. But the constant violence was difficult. I asked, ‘How do I respond to this?’ The non-violent practices that I committed myself to don’t respond in that way, don’t give fodder to this fire. It’s partly due to the teachings that my parents gave me through the lens of Islam, talking about our faith and how our tradition doesn’t ask for us to respond in violent ways. You have the right to defend yourself, but is it beneficial? Are you really going to get what you want, what you really need, out of violence? The contrast between how we lived as Muslims and what I see on the news is a totally different story—and so I think if other American Muslims have similar practices and peaceful ways of being, why can’t they practice their religion in the way that they want to?”

Mushfiqur studied International Relations at the University of Southern California before coming to HDS to focus on Religion, Ethics, and Politics. He is a first-year master of theological studies candidate with a passion for peacebuilding. Last summer he worked as a counselor for Seeds of Peace, where he helped Jewish and Muslim youth engage in interfaith dialogue, healing, and peace practices.

Born and Bred in NYC

I go by “Mush.” I was born and bred in New York City, and that very much has to do with the way I carry myself through certain spaces, how I interact, how I think. The city is where I’ve solidified the values that are important to me, where I’ve gotten my spine. Thankfully, I’ve been able to take that spine and use it well in different spaces.

Diversity Lottery

Both my parents emigrated to the United States in ‘91 on a diversity lottery. Every few years the U.S. chooses countries whose citizens they believe would be of benefit to the States to come live here. Bangladesh was added to that list for the first time, and it made sense because it had just became a country in 1971. It was a fairly new country, 20 years of age, and the U.S. wanted to open up space for its people. So my mom and dad applied, and my mom got in—to this day, my dad thinks my mom’s the lucky one. Fortunately and unfortunately, my parents were afforded a new opportunity. What I mean is they had to leave behind the world that contained their legacy, their history, their heritage, and their sense of comforts that they had become accustomed to.

Potpourri Identity

I consider myself their first project in the States. I was born a year after they got here. I was fortunate enough to grow up in New York City, in Queens, one of the most diverse counties in the world. That impacted me from the get-go. I’d cross the street and be in the Latino enclave. I lived in a building full of Bangladeshi immigrants. Five blocks east, Tibetans had made a home for themselves. This diversity had a lot to do with the way that I negotiated spaces. I spoke Bangla in the household with my parents, I went to school and spoke English, and in my neighborhood I heard Spanish. 20 blocks away, I saw a plethora of different south Asian cultures I didn’t even know I belonged to. Hindi and Urdu sounded like distinct and different languages from my own, yet people perceived me as a part of that group. There were all these different factors going on, and as I became aware of those differences, I simply had to exist in those spaces. I didn’t really belong to one group per se—I had a little bit of each, a potpourri of all of them.

The Posse

I went to University of Southern California on the Posse Scholarship. Deborah Bial, the founder of the scholarship, was a New York City public school teacher who noticed that after she sent students away to elite colleges, some of them would drop out. She wondered why this kept happening until one student confronted her and said, “I wouldn’t have dropped out of college if I had my posse with me.” It was the ‘90s and posse was a familiar term. The student meant that she didn’t have a familial network with her at college. Being an urban high school student, you get entrenched in these networks that you can’t let go of—and you’re not often given the opportunity to go elsewhere.

Intertwined Freedom

I wanted to do biomedical engineering, the whole shebang, but after my first semester at USC I realized, “This seemed like a great idea before, but I don’t think I really like it in its minutiae.” I ended up talking to my mentor and he asked, “What do you do outside of the classroom that really motivates you?” I was like, “What do you mean?” and he said, “Your extracurriculars—tell me about them.” I didn’t think my extracurriculars mattered for the conversation, but he insisted and so I said, “You know, I do a lot of work with students. Especially post-9/11, it’s been a difficult time for Muslim students in New York City. I’ve tried to envelop myself in that type of work—how the American and Muslim identity go hand in hand.” My mentor said, “That’s exactly what you should focus on.” I thought, “What does that mean? What am I supposed to do? There’s no class like this.” And he said, “Why don’t you try taking a race and immigration class with Professor Vallejo, who’s renowned in the field. I think you might like it.” I was reluctant. But I ended up doing it, and my mind was expanded immediately. I started thinking about things in a different way. I left the classroom feeling like my mind was pushed to boundaries.

I started thinking about my motivations. I took a social issues course and one of the talks I attended referenced Linda Walker, an aboriginal activist. She said, “If you come here to help me, then leave. But if you come here to help me because your freedom is intertwined with mine, then stay.” That meant so much to me. I realized I can’t just study things for the sake of studying them—that’s all I’d been doing up to that point. There needs to be some sort of purpose to it, and it’s not just about making money, it’s about finding what intrinsically motivates me. I thought about the things that my mentor had told me—he had asked me to think about what I was doing outside of the classroom. Those are the things that motivate you, right? There’s something inherent in that, like, you’re fighting for your identity and trying to negotiate other spaces, and that type of work is really important to you. So I started thinking about the way that Muslims were perceived on the larger scale and that got me into international relations.

I ended up focusing on the Middle East. How is my freedom intertwined with this region and why? It’s because of growing up in post-9/11 New York City, where others quickly associated me with the Middle East so many times. People thought, “You must know what’s going on there, you must have some sort of connection, you are exactly like them because you share a label.” That felt wrong. I didn’t understand why I was being associated with that population as a whole. I think my decision to study the Middle East was about self-exploration. To understand, empathize, and humanize that set of people was really important to me in thinking about my heritage. To think about how south Asian American Muslims have been denoted in ways that are not helpful and are stigmatized.

My Muslim Identity

A few weeks into my first semester at HDS, I emailed my mentor from USC. I remember telling him, “Dean, I’m having a difficult time with some of these theological questions, and I think I have to decide the type of Muslim I want to be here.” He said, “That’s the right place to be.” I still haven’t figured it out and it might change tomorrow. 

There’s an Islamic concept of fitra, which is an innate belief in connection. The first thing that matters to me is that Muslim, in its etymology, means someone who submits. And I do submit. Every day, there are so many things that I want to go a certain way. I want my test to come back with an ‘A’ on it, I want to make sure that a girl replies to my text in a sweet way, or that the smoothie I ordered is going to taste as good as the last time I ordered it. But sometimes smoothies go wrong, sometimes I don’t receive the kind of text I want, and sometimes I get papers with a not so stellar grade. I know life is about the work I put into it, but I also know that to a certain extent, all I can do is limited. I can only reach so far, because some of the direction and fate of these things are in the hands of another. I attribute this to a being above me, and I submit. I’m submitting to a will that’s bigger than me. In that way, it’s easy for me to attach myself to the label of being a Muslim.

Then, it comes to my tradition. I grew up with this tradition. Both my parents are from a historically Muslim society. It’s a pretty high concentration in Bangladesh, and sometimes in a negative way for marginalized communities there. But everything has to do with how my parents have prioritized their values, how they view life, how they frame things—a lot of those teachings and practices have been passed down to me. At several times, I tried running away, probably because I was growing up in post-9/11 New York City. It’s a difficult space to be in. You always have to defend yourself, and after a while, I was like, “I don’t want to defend myself—why do I have to keep defending myself?—no one gets these questions except for me.” But I rushed back to Islam when I realized there are simple tenets to it that I fundamentally connect with. It’s easy for me to comprehend God as one being. There are different traditions that I find value in and appreciation for, but Islam is my tradition, a tradition that’s been passed down to me. I find credence with that tradition because it’s easy for me to identify the being that I was talking about earlier as God. That’s important.

I also feel it’s my responsibility to carry on the Muslim label because people are being persecuted by association to that label today. If I can exist as a normal person in spaces and have no negative consequences from attaching that label to myself, then it can prove in some sort of respect that there are other people who have the same right to feel that way and have basic freedoms to practice their traditions in a peaceful manner.

Practicing Peace

I grew up in a rough neighborhood where people around me belonged to the gang known as the Bloods. I saw the transition of different mayors and the police efforts. It was a rough time in that space, and I remember a lot of times when I got jumped. I got my sneakers stolen, my bicycle stolen, my basketball. There are many things I lost. And there are many things I gained because I was going through that struggle with other people. I gained friendships. But the constant violence was difficult. I asked, “How do I respond to this?” The non-violent practices that I committed myself to don’t respond in that way, don’t give fodder to this fire. It’s partly due to the teachings that my parents gave me through the lens of Islam, talking about our faith and how our tradition doesn’t ask for us to respond in violent ways. You have the right to defend yourself, but is it beneficial? Are you really going to get what you want, what you really need, out of violence? The contrast between how we lived as Muslims and what I see on the news is a totally different story—and so I think if other American Muslims have similar practices and peaceful ways of being, why can’t they practice their religion in the way that they want to?