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Biology and letters sophomore Muneeb Ata prays on the South Oval Sept. 21. Ata practices Islam.
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Health and exercise science senior Hope Atiya worships in a chapel Sept. 21. Atiya is a practicing Catholic.
FINDING FAITH M
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Speech pathology sophomore Bella Silberg worshipping on the South Oval Sept. 28. Silberg is Jewish.
What religion means to four OU students
uneeb Ata rises at dawn each day in prayer. Hope Atiya worships in the pews at her church for an hour every day. Bella Silberg celebrates the new year with her family in September. Tyler Dang walks in quiet and solitary devotion. On a campus of thousands, these four students have one thing in common: faith. Ata, Atiya, Silberg and Dang were each raised in separate religions, but all four grew up with faith and tradition passed down from their families. And at a time when 18 to 29-year-olds are the least likely of any age group to be engaged in faith or belief, all four found their faith in their own way as they entered high school and college. For these OU students, faith is everything: a tradition, a community, a family, an anchor. MUNEEB ATA The year he arrived at OU, Muneeb Ata took a break from his faith. The biology and letters sophomore, raised Muslim since birth, was ready to find the truth for himself. “I went on this little period of just trying, looking at all religions, looking into different faiths, looking into science, stuff like that, and it all led me back to Islam,” Ata said. Ata partially credits his brief departure from the faith to being
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a part of the wrong community of Muslim believers, those who didn’t represent Islam’s true values. But he attributes his return to the miracles he found in Islam and the Quran. “I read a lot of great writing and I also learn a lot about science, and in the Quran, there’s a lot of science and there’s a lot of great writing — it’s actually a linguistic miracle,” Ata said. “So the more I read the Quran, the more I fall in love with it a bit more every time I read it.” Growing up Muslim in Oklahoma and Alabama was once a burden for Ata, who was always aware he might be the only Muslim some people would ever meet, the one to dismantle negative stereotypes surrounding his faith. Today, Ata would say that duty is a privilege. “It used to be a burden, but now it’s very humbling, in a way — like I have something greater than me to kind of represent,” Ata said. Ata’s religion does reflect a low percentage of Oklahoma’s population — less than 1 percent of Oklahomans identify as Muslim. 2017 is also an increasingly difficult time to be Muslim. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights group, there were 91 percent more hate crimes in the U.S. during the first half of 2017 than there were during the same period in 2016. For Ata, that lack of representation and abundance of misunderstanding surrounding his faith is a motivator to represent
Islam as best as he can. Still, he notices others’ common misconceptions. “ Mu s l i m s a re n ’ t s e x i st — that’s one misconception that people have,” Ata said. “So it’s just something that is kind of odd to me — I guess culturally, there are a lot of countries that are sexist in a way, but (in) Pakistan, we’ve had a woman be head of state twice. America has never had that.” Today, Ata’s faith is rooted in testimony — of what he sees as God’s work in his life and in the world around him. Ata, born in Pakistan with little hope of progress and brought to America by his father’s pursuit of education and career, said his life story is one that draws him back to God. “I see God in everything — I look around me at the university, I look around me at my homework and I’m like, ‘okay, this is organic chemistry — look what God created,’” Ata said. “And for the life of me, I may not like O-chem, but I can appreciate it a bit more. “I was created, and everything around me was created too, so I’m here for a reason, and that gets me through the day, that makes me want to be better, that makes me want to go do things for other people that God created.” HOPE ATIYA Hope Atiya’s church gave her a place to start over with her faith. For the health and exercise science senior, St. Thomas More, a Catholic church just steps from OU’s campus, offered her space
and guidance to rediscover the tenants and heart of the religion she’d grown up with. W h i l e At iya i s a s e l f-p ro claimed “cradle Catholic,” baptized into the faith as a baby, she didn’t find her own sense of faith until college. Growing up, she attended mass and claimed Catholicism because it was something her family did, but attending St. Thomas More made her realize how little she knew about her faith. “It challenged me to dive deeper into the faith and to learn what the teachings of the Catholic church were, so I had answers to tell my friends, ‘Oh yeah, this is why we believe what we believe,’” Atiya said. “And so once I started really diving into the teachings of the faith, it just opened up a whole new world to me really, of just how beautiful the faith was.” Atiya credits the start of her journey at St. Thomas More to the friends who originally invited her during her freshman year, but also to those who have mentored and taught her along the way. She now helps lead a Bible study of her own and mentors another student in the church, she said. Though Oklahoma is overwhelmingly Christian, the state is only 8 percent Catholic. Atiya said while OU is a welcoming place to practice her faith, she has encountered misconceptions about Catholicism here. “I think a misconception is that Catholics worship Mary, and that’s definitely not the case — we venerate her in the sense
that we give her so much honor ... one of (Jesus’) commandments is to honor your father and mother … he honored his mother, our lady, and held her in such high regard that we should imitate him in that aspect and honor her as well,” Atiya said. But Atiya wants to answer questions — she’s passionate not only about her personal faith, but about sharing it, especially as the world around her becomes more politically and ideologically divided. “ I t h i n k r ig ht n ow e ve r y body, whoever they might be, is just desiring to be loved and to seek love,” Atiya said. “I know that I experience that from the Catholic church, and from this community here, just encouraging me to deepen my faith.” BELLA SILBERG The greatest moment of clarity in Bella Silberg’s faith came when she was farthest from home — when she was in Israel her sophomore year of high school finding her Jewish identity. The speech pathology sophomore was raised Jewish, but didn’t find roots in her faith until that trip to Israel. “A lot of people are scared to go to Israel ... my parents were scared to send me, but whenever I was there I just felt at home and at peace,” Silberg said. While Silberg established a strong connection to her Jewish community throughout high see FAITH Page 2