While many of us studied to study at DePaul for tis academic strengths, diversity, and friendly student culture, there is one additional benefit that had me convinced that this University was the one for me. That invaluable benefit resides in the Student Center, third floor, far in the recesses of the women’s restroom.
Rest assured, I do not honor the porcelain express, nor the environment-friendly hand dryers. This appreciation is deep-seated in my Muslim experience. For the past few years, what’s troubled me most is the lack of accommodation for those who practice five daily prayers as part of the Islamic faith. This goes beyond creating a small carpeted room in which a Muslim can pray. The process of thoughtful reflection with God begins even before the prayer itself.
If you’ve ever entered a bathroom to find a young man washing his arms to his elbows at the sink, or a woman removing her headscarf to wipe over her head with water, you’re witnessing Wudu. Not a magical religious rite, this Arabic term refers to ritual purification. Before Muslims pray to God, they maintain a state of purity by washing certain body parts in a process of preparation. This process includes washing each hand three times, rinsing one’s mouth three times, rinsing one’s nose three times, and washing one’s face three times. This is followed by washing one’s arms to the elbows, wiping with water one’s head and neck, and ending in a washing of one’s feet.
As a young Muslim American, it has always been traumatic to be caught with dripping elbows and ankles in a restroom that must conform to my purification needs and necessarily confound passers-by. This is why I felt truly blessed once I discovered DePaul University was the first and only non-Muslim institution that went so far to accommodate this need.
The Student Center offers Muslim students on campus a secure and clean foot-basin facility so that we can practice Wudu in comfort, and truly appreciate the climate of tolerance on campus that’s ingrained even within our washroom facilities. To those who consider this inconsequential, I say: So what if the Muslim prayer room is not as larfe as Hillel’s? So what if the room-label has said “Muslin” because the ‘m’ broke? So what if we don’t have a Muslim chaplain in University Ministry?
As we struggle to practice Islam while balancing work, classes, and our hectic lives, DePaul’s non-Muslim community is struggling along with us. I commend the powers that be, for recognizing something so mundane, as a practice deserving respect and accommodation. This is a thanks to the open-minded; an acknowledgement to the Wudu practicing; a tribute to the foot-basins that inspired this homage.
-Usra Ghazi
Student Interfaith Scholar 2006-2007
Published in the Spring 2007 Issue of the Interfaith Review