This article was originally published in The Muskegon Chronicle
By Megan Hart | The Muskegon Chronicle
When Jad Mahmoud arrived in Muskegon, he was surprised to have to explain the Middle East is made up of more than one country.
Some of his peers believed his homeland of Lebanon, an independent country north of Israel, is a territory of Iraq in the way Michigan is a part of the United States.
“The whole Middle East is perceived as one,” he said. “If they don’t like Iraq, and they perceive the Middle East as one, they involve Lebanon in the image of war.”
The 16-year-old exchange student, attending WayPoint Academy, said he is working to correct those misconceptions by giving presentations during international week and just talking to other students.
“Exchange students are here to remove the stereotypes,” he said. “I, probably for some people, will be the only one they meet from Lebanon.”
He said he surprised by some American students’ lack of knowledge of world geography, but most have been interested in hearing what he has to say.
“I never really thought about how people perceive my country,” he said. “Stereotypes are huge here. Stereotypes are sometimes the only resources here to perceive another country.”
Another misconception is that all people from the Middle East are Muslims, he said. Lebanon is about 60 percent Muslim, 39 percent Christian, and 1 percent other religions, according to the CIA World Factbook.
Mahmoud is a member of the Duruze religion, sometimes spelled Druse or Druze. The faith had its origins in Islam, Mahmoud said, but its adherents don’t follow some Islamic practices, like praying five times per day.
Another important difference is that Duruze followers believe in reincarnation, and the religion is closed to converts. Followers are taught to respect Muslim, Christian and Jewish prophets, as well as some ancient Greek philosophers, like Plato.
Most Duruze people live in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, and there is a small Duruze population in the Detroit area. Estimates of their numbers vary from 350,000 to 900,000.
Mahmoud said he arrived in August 2010, and will leave at the end of the summer. He grew up in the Lebanese town of Barouk, a village of about 300-400 people in the country’s central mountains. He came as part of the Youth Exchange and Study program, with exchange organization Youth for Understanding making the arrangements.
The Youth Exchange and Study program was founded after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to bring students from primarily Muslim countries to the United States to foster understanding. Students, ages 15-17, are selected based on their English skills, academic achievement and leadership potential.
The program, funded by the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, has brought students from Algeria, Bangladesh, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen over the past decade to various communities throughout the U.S.
Mahmoud is staying with Emma and Gerald Faught, who live in Muskegon Township and have three sons. They also are hosting a Muslim boy from the West African nation of Senegal. That was a change for Mahmoud, who has two older sisters.
Mahmoud said he decided to study in the United States because he wanted to “be more global.” He has gotten to know the U.S. by participating in the student council to meet new people and learn about a different way of running schools.
“It was something new to me,” he said. “The decisions student council takes would be more decisions the principal would take at home.”
Other differences include views of poverty and the role of teenagers in the family. In Lebanon the children of poor families are generally viewed as smarter than rich kids, because their parents push them harder to succeed, he said.
“They are raised that they should push their way into life,” he said. “Here, if students are poor, if they can’t depend on their parents, they depend on their government.”
American teenagers also tend to make more decisions on their own and take more responsibility for helping with their siblings than Lebanese teens, Mahmoud said. He attributes that partly to a higher rate of divorce in the U.S.
“The family structure here pushes them to take more responsibility,” he said.
He also got to learn about a variety of cultures by attending an interfaith conference in Baltimore earlier this year. The students came from 33 countries to share their religious beliefs and find common ground, he said.
“They were trying to prove we all get along,” he said. “We pretty much formed our own perfect small world.”
American political leaders tend not to be popular in Lebanon because of American involvement in the Middle East, Mahmoud said, but most Lebanese don’t mind the American tourists who come to visit the country’s Mediterranean beaches. “There’s no clash or anything,” he said.
Email: mhart@muskegonchronicle.com
Chronicle photo by Kendra Stanley-Mills
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