Amina Rahman and her daughter, Hafsa, discuss increaseing uncertainty about travel for the Muslim community and the experiences of immigrants. Follow along each Friday through May with this J-Corps Audio Journal.
Hafsa Rahman: This is Hafsa and Amina Rahman with our audio journal for this week. As we mentioned last week, we've begun to start putting the episodes together, confirming the final different elements of the episodes for our final storylines.
Amina Rahman: I also wanna add, one thing I learned in this process is initially we thought aboutdividing the segments into the history and then the current events, and then we found that doing it that way, it might sound a little bi t textbooky, so we tried to create the episodes around themes so that it created a more interesting storyline for the listener.
Hafsa Rahman: Eid will fit there, which is the celebration at the end of Ramadan, just happened over last weekend. There are a lot of things that are significant in our communities that happened during Eid.
Amina Rahman: We had a big celebration over the weekend in the community. There's gonna be more festivities over the coming weekends, the Sunday school will have a celebration. Nadia is an international student studying in the area who finds support in the Muslim community.
Nadia: My name is Nadia. I am an international student from India. I am not only a student, I'm a mother. This Eid we went to Malibu Jacks. Iit relieves the burden of the parents. If I am a student, I don't have that much money to take them to anything. But when they went to Malibu Jacks, they started playing. They had a very good time. All this you plan for the kids. This is what the community does and makes the Eid special whether or not your are with family, you're feeling good. You spend it whole day doing something, not sitting at home, because the community kept you busy with the party.
Amina Rahman: Then there's some people who traveled outside of the city to visit extended family for Eid like our family does. That's pretty common. In the central Illinois Muslim community, families often will travel to meet with extended families for special occasions with the end of Ramadan and Eid coinciding with spring break for a lot of people. They may have originally planned to travel overseas to see family. We've heard from a lot of families that they've decided to cancel those plans because of the current situation in the country. But there are people who are still going ahead and traveling. They've left to go to weddings or other occasions. Some people have traveled for work or study abroad as well. It seems that the people who are keeping their plans tend to be citizens though as they feel more secure that they won't have issues coming back.
The university (UIS) has been a big draw for foreign students and Muslim students for many years. Members of the Muslim community have been attending training sessions with the Springfield Immigrant Action Network to learn about how to support students who are here on visas or with green cards. They often have many questions about what they need to know with regards to their rights, as Nadia has faced.
Here, the life is very challenging for the students because the environment is new, the rules are new, the country is new. When I came here, how I'm going to adapt? How it'll be?Nadia, Indian international student
Nadia: Here, the life is very challenging for the students because the environment is new, the rules are new, the country is new. When I came here, how I'm going to adapt? How it'll be? There is so many questions that was coming into my mind. But coming over here, it was a pleasure and most important, they build back my confidence. When I reach here, when I meet the people, they made me so comfortable that I forgot they're Americans. They taught me you are human. You have a right to stay. You have a right to smile. You have a right to wear clothes. You have a right to do everything.
I used to be very much reserved. I never spoke out first, so I never realized my value before coming here. When I came here, I realized it. I feel great. I feel like, oh my God, I can do anything.
Hafsa Rahman: That's all for our J-Corps Audio Journal this week. Please stay tuned in to the rest of our audio journals and the final episodes that we create.
Edited for length and clarity.
Press Forward Springfield is awarding its first project grants. NPR Illinois along with the Illinois Times and Capitol News Illinois are each receiving funding to report on different untold stories in our community. The three reporting projects will be posted in May.
Community Foundation for the Land of Lincoln in collaboration with the Field Foundation and the Illinois Department of Human Services are leading this project as part of their Healing Illinois program.
NPR Illinois is using the grant to test its vision for community reporting and journalism training — the Journalism Corps or "J-Corps."
