"Not Just Any One Thing"

Hussain Turk is not a terrorist. He does however, attack the way white America sees and reacts to Muslims in this country and in the world. The Kalamazoo College sophomore is resolute in his fight against bigotry and narrow mindedness. He wants to shake-up your world view. Hussain looks at the world through different lenses that make it hard to see in 20/20.

Turk, who was born in Champagne, Illinois and has lived most of his life in Portage, is (at least ostensibly) fully assimilated to the upper class suburban world in which he has been raised. He wears shoulder to toe Ralph Lauren; any one of various pairs of designer sunglasses block the sun and the critical look of the eyes behind them. He has at his disposal all the material privileges the kids of the Turk’s white, Christian, and (largely) conservative neighbors receive. Money has been both a shield from discrimination and has opened-up new forms of it.

When class was not a dividing line between Hussain and his peers, skin color was. “After 9/11 my locker at school was trashed; a lot of kids called me Saddam.” For Hussain, whose parents are from Pakistan, who speaks English at home, and who played in the American Youth Soccer Organization, the racial slurs directed at him have always been bewildering and frustrating.

Around the time that his peers at school made Hussain aware of his ethnic otherness, another minority identity was becoming a part of his young life. When he was 14 Hussain’s parents discovered gay porn on the computer and became immediately concerned with the corruption of their son. Hussain was sent to a Muslim psychiatrist with whom sessions focused on homosexuality as a sin and the righteousness and pleasure of having a wife and kids. Half therapist and half intervention facilitator, Hussain’s psychiatrist dealt with his being gay as an illness to be cured, not as an identity, and certainly not as something that could ever fit in the Islamic tradition.

After only a few months the sessions ended. “I told the psychiatrist and my parents that I was cured,” says Hussain. Knowing that he was gay and that it was not something that could be cured, he told the lie to be done with the treatments. He blamed his sexual confusion on the alcohol that he had been abusing at the time. Drinking and substance abuse during the teenage years would be a conflict that cemented Hussain’s struggles in the world of contemporary American familial life. It would take great inner struggle and two trips through rehab before the conquering of this demon could be turned into a meaningful symbol of personal identity and strength of character. In the meantime, it would be a copying device for the inner and outer battles Hussain simultaneously fought.

If you did not know him personally, you might assume that the Hussain Turk who today stands with other Kalamazoo Non-violent Opponents of War at protests, who sits in to silently protest pro-Israel forums, and whose opinions arouse great support and outrage in the Kalamazoo Gazette, is a young man who has had to abandon one identity to fight for another. But what Hussain has discovered is that reconciling two identities that are traditionally at odds means building an individual identity that is untraditional.

In a forthcoming Op/Ed piece for the Gazette, Turk reveals to readers that he is gay. In his previous appearances in the paper the author has left this identity out and focused on the identity of being a young Muslim in (what he views as) a anti-Muslim America. Hussain decided to out his essayist self to complicate the attacks of critics who view him as an un-American Islamic extremist. Having decided that he is one thing, Hussain was interested to see how these opponents would react to learning that his apparent one-sided viewpoint was more diverse and unique than they could have thought.

In Hussain’s experience, “to be Pakistani is to be Muslim,” there is no separation between the two; identifying as the former means identifying as the latter. Growing up, Hussain and his siblings attended Islamic Sunday school and were aware of the customs associated with diet, holidays, etc. of their religion. However, like many of their peers, (Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or other) the religious practices of their parents were lax and irregular customs in their lives. For Hussain it was only when his identity broke with a traditional Muslim identity did he become aware of the boundaries and conservative values of his religion. The struggle for finding and claiming an individual identity began with determining how to hold on to one identity without having to forfeit another.

It seemed that in order to survive Hussain would have to pick one or the other. The Muslim community which acts as one extended family in the Kalamazoo area did (and still doesn’t) have an accepted place for gays or lesbians. And where you might assume that the gay community—a community accustomed to marginalization—would be accepting to doubly marginalized individuals, Hussain often finds more discrimination. To gain acceptance, gays expect Hussain to reject his identity as a Muslim, believing that identity to be the antithesis and the enemy of the gay identity. It seems that for Kalamazoo, two minority identities are too many.

It is because there is no easily reconciled identity for a young gay Muslim man in Kalamazoo today, that Hussain Turk, to make his own identity, argues unapologetically for his right to weigh-in his opinion from multiple viewpoints. While many respond negatively to Turk’s unabashed defense of Palestine and Muslim rights, they do so from the security of having an accepted identity that legitimates their critical voice. It is not Hussain’s opinions that are the most radical part of his speech. It is that without an established community to support him he carves out a place for his voice. Whether you agree with his opinions or not, it’s a hard case to disprove the honesty of his thoughts that come from the singularity of his identity. His words explain their legitimacy best, “the truth of my experience is not just any one thing.”