Before dawn, students are either fast asleep or still pressing the snooze button on their alarm. But for practicing Muslim students, their day starts before sunrise and begins with prayer. For business graduate student, Asmaa Zantout coordinating her prayers around her schedule is essential to her routine.
"The first prayer, I need to pray it at about 6:30-7:00 [in the morning]. So I set an alarm to be up before that. The first prayer is called fajr, and then I go back to sleep. When I wake up I kind of base my day around where I'm going to pray," Zantout said.
In Islam, daily prayer occurs five times a day, spanning from sunrise to nightfall. Before each prayer, one must perform a ritualistic washing, wudu to cleanse and purify themselves before they recite the prayer.
"You have to wash your feet, hands, mouth, face, arms, legs, nose, neck, and head. You have to do that in a specific manner that is told to us. Then you can perform the prayer," Hamza Saleem said. Originally from Pakistan, Saleem came to USC to complete his PhD in computer science at the Viterbi school, doing research in computer security.
For Saleem praying throughout his day is manageable while in school, it's where to pray that can pose as an issue. "Performing daily prayer is not really related to an academic schedule but more related to your environment, and where you're living. In Pakistan, mosques [or prayer areas] are always near you. If you are in a building they have prayer areas in those buildings. If you are at the shopping malls, they have prayer spaces at the mall," Saleem said. "In the US, the problem is that there are very few mosques and that they're distant from you. Luckily, we have a mosque near USC, so that's not much of a problem for me."
Asmaa moved to Los Angeles from Lebanon this past summer to complete her masters at the Marshall School of Business in Social Entrepreneurship. She also agrees that she needs to be aware of where she is going to pray throughout her school day.
"I keep in mind that I need to be around the Office of Religious Life because that's where the prayer area is. Or if I'm late, which happens sometimes because of class, I just pray quickly in my car," Zantout said.
Moving to America, Zantout and Saleem had to adjust to the new environment, where Islamic daily prayer is not widely recognized or understood by non-Muslim Americans. "In Pakistan you can pray wherever you want. Here sometimes I feel uncomfortable, you cannot pray outside because people don't know what you're doing," Saleem said.
Hamza recalls when he once had to perform the mahgrib prayer in the parking lot. "When I completed the prayer there were a few cars standing near me and the people were surprised because they didn't know what I was doing. After that I just started praying mostly in the mosque," Saleem said.
At Disneyland, Zantout had to perform prayer, but admitted that in a public space she prays sitting down instead of doing the movements of bowing and kneeling. "Being veiled you have this extra attention that you never ask for, especially when you're in communities that are not used to seeing veiled women," Zantout said. "So praying on top of that? I'm afraid that someone will do something. That's why I choose to sometimes pray in my car or at a place where not a lot of people are. If I'm praying in public, I'm definitely not going to focus on the words that I'm saying, I'm going to be focusing on who's looking at me," Zantout said.
For Mehmet Sencan, his perception is a little different. Born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, Sencan came to Connecticut for boarding school in the small town of Putnam. Afterwards, he studied at Cal Tech and is currently completing his PhD in electrical engineering at USC. The way in how he practices prayer slightly differs from Zantout and Saleem's, he prefers to pray in public.
"Part of the reason why I pray in public [is because] there are so many things to be aware of, so I don't mind people coming up and asking questions. I've been more conscious of doing it more prominently. This is my country too, I'm not going to hide anything," Sencan said. "It'd be nice if it just becomes a part of an everyday experience, which it is for a lot of people. And I don't think we'll get there, if people don't ask questions and learn."
Daniela Cedillo is someone who asked questions and learned about Islam, eventually converting to the religion in 2017. She was motivated to convert after Muslim author Zohra Sarwari came to Cedillo's school, Radford University to discuss her book, No! I Am Not a Terrorist. Coming from a conservative Christian family, she was inspired to understand another religious perspective. "I went because I wanted to learn more about Muslims. In the city I was born in there was a mosque and I didn't know about it. The only time I saw other Muslims was when I went to university," Cedillo said.
"A good amount of Muslims are more tolerant of the LGBT community. That's another reason why I joined, whether you agree or disagree for whatever reason, it's between you and God. God is the only one that can judge, no one on Earth has the right to judge. And at the end of the day its what's in your heart and that's what counts," Cedillo said. Recently moving from Virginia, she attends Muslim Student Union meetings at USC and is immersing herself into the Muslim student community, planning to attend the university in Spring of 2019.
Asmaa has always been a practicing Muslim but she was not always comfortable practicing her religion outwardly, specifically during her high school years in Lebanon.
"The crowd that I was with was taking me in a direction that wanted to just to be culturally Muslim, but not practice. Because that's looked down upon if you do practice. Being in that group, I felt like I had to just be a Muslim by name," Zantout said.
"Back home my mom and dad stressed that it's important to try and believe in what you're doing, don't just do it because you have to. Try to believe in the words [during prayer] that you are saying, don't just recite because you want get it over with. So that's when this conflict happened. When I decided to put my hijab on, I kind of saw how this group I was in started growing further away from me," Zantout said. "I was going back to believing religiously, not just being a cultural Muslim but a religious Muslim too. And I tried to combine both together, taking into account what my culture and society wants me to do, and integrating what my beliefs want me to do at the same time."
